A delayed response

It's been rather quiet lately. I've been keeping to the regiment of sleeping meds, and I haven't experienced any hallucinations in the past few days. The Paradox guy seems to think things are going to start going downhill, though.

I've been thinking a lot lately, and I've decided that I'm going to put that post up about my family that I promised the docs a while ago. It'll give me something to focus on for a while, at least.

My mother was a good woman. She took care of me and my three brothers after my dad left when I was five. I never really knew him all that well, and I'm sure by this point that he's long dead. Mom was a simple person, and cared for all of us the best she could. She couldn't really afford to send us to an amazing school, but she handled the child support money well enough so we could eat, sleep and learn without worries. Of course, I never realized this at the time. As a child, I felt that we were being cheated out of a good life. At one point, I gathered the idea that God was to blame for our troubles. At another, I blamed our father. I didn't realize how lucky we were to actually have a house and food and an education. I thought for the longest time that Mom wasn't doing enough to better our situation, and it took me a while to learn that she was doing all she could. She's a great person blessed with enough good sense to know what she needs to do and how her children needed to be raised.

My brothers were named Benjamin and John. Ben was a year younger than me, and we didn't really get along very well. Whatever I liked, he hated. And whatever he liked, I hated. We would constantly get into fights in home and at school, and neither one of us could stand to be around the other. Ben was the brother I knocked out last year at the family reunion. He's the reason I ended up starting therapy.

John is our youngest brother. He was a year old when Dad left, and I think the reason he left was because he couldn't handle the thought of raising four kids. He's the most timid of all of us. Ben and I were loud and outgoing, but he kept to himself a lot. He got along with the two of us much better than we got along with each other. When we were older, he became the mediator, settling our fights before punches were thrown. He was the only friend we had in common, and he's the only reason we go to the family reunions knowing the other brother would be there. He and Mom were the only level-headed people in the house, and so I guess Ben and I take more from our Dad...

I guess now's as good a time to talk about the reunion as any. The family reunion isn't necessarily the happiest of times in the year. Ben and I hate being around one another, and our aunts and uncles just seem to avoid us as best they can. They obviously don't think well of Mom for marrying Dad, having so many kids by him, and then just letting him leave. As such, they really don't like us, either. To them, we're as good as bastards. This past year, the mood hadn't changed at all. The reunion was as cold as ever. I don't quite recall what started the argument, but I remember how quickly it escalated. We were throwing punches long before John could intervene. I got a couple of good punches in on his temple, and dazed him. Three blows to the face and an uppercut later, and he was out cold. But I didn't let him fall. I grabbed his collar and held him there for an instant before throwing him on his head on the concrete below us. They called an ambulance, but I left the reunion before it could show... The next morning I got a call from my mother saying that I needed to get help... And that I wouldn't be allowed around my family until I did.

So here I am. I came to get help so I can see my family again, but I guess I wound up in a deeper mess than I thought possible...