welcome to state of minda section of Slate and Arizona State University dedicated to exploring mental health. follow me on twitter.
Last fall, an unfamiliar phone number with an Alaska area code was lined in red in my phone’s recent call history. I declined assuming it was a telemarketer and didn’t even bother to listen to the voicemail left by the caller. That is, until the same number texted me stating that they were an FBI agent looking for someone to accept custody of some items belonging to my brother.
I stared at the text. Part of me wanted to dismiss it as a clever scam, but the part of me who was always in close proximity to my brother’s mess knew better. But it wasn’t long ago that my brother was wanted by the U.S. Marshals.
Over the years, this mess has made me a reluctant collector of belongings. In my basement are several garbage bags full of things from my brother’s last imprisonment. Piles of legal papers, piles of letters, cards from his grandmother, books, art sketches from recycled envelopes and torn folders, and plain black canvas sneakers are his only possessions. I have two similar plastic tote bags from years ago that I have left untouched in hopes of returning them to him one day. When spending time, they are forced to become minimalists, leaving their families with little to cling to in their place.
I called this self-proclaimed FBI agent back because I was worried about the belongings he had to return. He said he can’t give things directly to his brother while in prison and nonchalantly said he would deliver it to my house in an hour. I gave him my address and hung up. The conversation took him less than three minutes.
My husband worked from his home office, so I opened his door and stood there awkwardly saying something I wanted to say, but I didn’t know exactly how to say it. Internal struggles of shame and love have long clouded our conversations about my family. We want to keep our love for his little brother despite the circumstances he puts himself, and then us into.
“So…the FBI is going to stop by our house in about an hour to drop something off,” I told him, explaining the text.
“Did you give random people our address over the phone?” His reaction had a protective connotation that I was familiar with. “What if a criminal who wants to take revenge on your brother shows up and kills us all?” Our daughter was inside and was a baby at the time.
Luckily, the man who parked his dad-type SUV at his suburban home was actually an FBI agent. The bumpy tiles are my inner mirror.
“Nothing much. Just some papers and journals. It’s pretty dark, so you have to be careful,” the agent said with a sympathetic sigh. He handed me a small stack of papers, a folder, and a collection of his essays bound with a rubber band. The agent who helped put my brother in jail and I, one of thousands of families who cried in private that a man like him was at work, exchanged awkward greetings.
I carried the pile into my bedroom and closed the door for privacy. I didn’t know exactly what the rubber band would release from the grip.
The composition book was worn and tattered, dark in appearance and content. It held a certain embodiment of my brother’s psychosis. For most of his life the exact diagnosis was unknown. , has been given various explanations, but the focus on fighting addiction has overshadowed everything else. He told me that his doctor had diagnosed him with a form of schizophrenia. That label and this makeshift journal were the two missing pieces to my brother’s puzzle.
Despite the incredible invasion of privacy, I read the journal and turned the pages. All my life I’ve seen little bits of my brother’s mental illness, but until that day, it was like seeing Sasquatch from afar. I saw the rough shape of its contours, I spotted one or two footprints, I knew it carried dangerous air, but I had no photographic evidence. I did.
Today my brother is serving another sentence in a windowless cell in a federal prison over 700 miles from where I live. He’s someone I giggled at in the backseat of my parents’ four-door Buick when I was a kid, the father of his two thriving children whom he barely knows, and by nature is an artist whose talent reflects our mother. he also 37 percent Of adults living in state and federal prison systems with a history of mental illness.The journal, filled with dark, disjointed, rambling articles, was a physical reminder that these systems were unable to provide meaningful or consistent mental health care.At his last release, hello out of 63 percent People with a history of mental illness who were not treated while incarcerated. With no medication or treatment for him, it wasn’t long before he was pushed back into the system.
When my brother was arrested at the end of 2019, my family asked me to write a letter for the judge to consider before making his sentence. I searched for words that could describe what I knew. He was sick and needed help. The words were inadequate and the letter felt useless.
After my brother was arrested, the FBI seized the diary as possible evidence in his case. Looking at it now, I see nothing but evidence of a broken system. This paperback system he could have understood more than my letter with one glance at the journal. The system that released him from prison without admitting to mental health problems was surprised to find that he had committed the same crime and returned to the same tired loop of court and prison cells.
As the summer of 2019 approached, I often remember the sunny days getting longer. I was busy preparing for his move to my city’s re-entry center, a transitional point after years in prison for bank robbery. Addicted. I was filled with anticipation. I enjoyed the vision of a family dinner where the siblings were no stranger to the children. It’s time for family wounds to slowly be replaced with pride.
When I first met him in that transitional period, my hopes were quickly lost. He looked back over his shoulder in paranoia and made remarks about being followed and people watching us. I didn’t, but I resembled a capricious sick man within the framework of a government agency. The re-entry center was more focused on finding work within 30 days of his release than on helping him connect with a much-needed psychiatrist and therapist.
When he escaped the re-entry center and was labeled a fugitive, he did the same thing he had done before: robbed several banks for drug money. I tackled him and hugged him. This is perfect fodder for the press.I was probably the only reader who wasn’t celebrating his swift prosecution.
A few months after that arrest, I visited him at the local prison before he was sentenced. After that, he could be sent anywhere in the country.From the moment he walked through the door of the visiting area, the way he walked, the way he carried his body, the moment he opened his mouth… something changed. I saw.
“What’s wrong? You’re different…” I cried. I couldn’t hold back the tears of a lifetime of grief for my shared DNA as a brother.
With a grin I remember from my childhood, he replied shyly. It’s a kind of antipsychotic. I actually feel like myself.
I left that day with a dismay that I quietly shared with countless other families across the country. It counts but doesn’t care. It blames them but doesn’t accept accountability. I had a magical glimpse of what proper mental health treatment would do to my brother. Each institution has its own policies and resource scarcity, choosing not to look too closely at the outside world.
As I have done for the past 15 years as a sister, if you look closely, the lack of continuity and communication between individual prisons directly affects those incarcerated, their families, and our communities. Prisons and prisons are commonly referred to as the largest mental health facilities in the United States, and the fundamental problem is that these environments are designed to punish rather than treat.
When I was writing to the judge on my brother’s behalf, I wanted him to read the journal the FBI gave me. I would have asked him where he went so wrong.
I know it’s a tough question because the answer is an indictment for change. To change, you need to look at things that are easy to look away from. I keep my brother’s diary in a box. It reminds me of his reality. The problem is that not seeing it doesn’t make it disappear.
We have to start by removing the lid from where we hide things. inside.
