Helpless.

Its 2:30 in the am and honestly I feel helpless. I received a phone call from Bellevue

Washington Crisis Center. Missed call vague message left. But deep down I know. Return phone call just to confirm my suspicion it has happened again. My older brother who was my rock has been involuntarily hospitalized and is waiting a bed in a psychiatric facility. I am thousands of miles away in Chicago, il. 9 months pregnant feeling helpless. I want to run to him and let him know that I love him and that I am here for him the way he was there for me when I was little. The way he protected me as a child.

Many people do not know this but he stopped me from being sexually assaulted. I remember him kicking the door in ripping the perpetrator off of me and whisking me off to safety. Not everyone has a hero but I do. How do you repay a hero?

So I am sitting here softly crying trying not to wake my sleeping 2 year old daughter. Knowing there is nothing I can do to change the course of my hero’s life.

This summer he tried to live out here in Chicago. But it is different out here more violent. People do no recognize psychiatry illness. He was put through court systems in stead of treated. And he was shot twice in both legs. So he lives thousands of miles away.

I know there is nothing I can do change the course of his life. I can only sit and watch him spinning. Watch his life play out.