This year has been challenging from the get-go. From the very start I knew it wasn't going to be fantastic. Everything has been steadily sliding horribly into death and renewal... and everything in between. But I just feel.... in a tailspin. Like everything keeps hitting me, again and again.

My friend who is like a sister to me, whose mother was like my own, lost her mother in February. It was known it was coming. She suffered from alzheimer's. It was a slow descent and to watch her deteriorate was gut-wrenching and infuriatingly unfair....

Today... I got the news that my brother has been found dead in his home by his adopted mom.

Accidental death, they're saying. Not a suicide. So.

My brother, who I wanted so badly to reach out to. My brother who was separated from me when we were little. Five years older than me. My big brother, who I wished I had my whole life, someone to look after me and watch over me. My poor, damaged, tormented, mentally disabled brother, who struggled with his creative genius and his depression and manic anxiety and delusions. He was too broken to be my brother but he was still the only family I had left... and still. Still. I find myself feeling both sorrow... and anger... than now there is no chance he'll get the help he needs. No chance he'll be better. And I'm left feeling like I am cursed. That all that I love is being slowly drained away. And for what? I'm afraid.. I'm afraid that all of this pain and this turmoil is just going to leave me feeling numb. And that isn't fair to the people who are still with me.

I wanted my brother to be my brother. Instead, I have the story of a memory that isn't mine. Of finding his body decomposing in a room. Because he didn't want anybody around. No friends to check on him. Family who he kept at arm's length. And for whatever reason, he cut himself off from me (again) and.... I have never gotten to say goodbye... and I feel horrible. Did I make him ashamed? Did I make him feel like he was a burden to me? Because I hope not. I just wanted him to be fucking happy... I just wanted him to lift himself out of the clutches of his mania and reach - reach for the hands being offered. To get rid of this directionless anger, and stop hurting his mother and father that took him in... He was *loved*. He just didn't want to accept it. Spoiled rotten, loved, but... still. Somehow. Broken.

I hope he's happy now.

I'm still here.