Repeating the same mistakes of my Brother.

Well,

Facebook memories popped up a post from this blog a thousand years ago. Has I was reading the old posts I realized that I am in a completely different place then where I used to be when writing this in 2012. a few things have not changed I am still an ardent follower of Jesus and a father,but I am no longer married and am now barely scratching the six month sobriety mark. I have 3 beautiful daughters 6,3,and 1 years old. My wife left me or has I type this she is in the process of leaving me I will get into that cluster in a later post. It has been almost 8 years since my brother died by suicide. and here I am repeating some of the same mistakes he did. I fell back into my addiction to handle life troubles and my marriage ended.
Update(2017):
I am officially divorced and have been with out my wife for almost 2 years.
I am still struggling with my sobriety, but I am in such a happier place then I was when I was married for the first time in my life I feel free and emotionally happy. I live my life defined by Jesus not if my wife is mad at me or not. It was a traumatic event to be sure but it doesn't define me it is a thing that happened to me. lets all be honest and say that it takes two people to make a marriage work and two people to fight for it.

it has almost been 9 years now and both me and my brother are going through similar circumstances but the out comes are radically different.

Chris drank himself to death and put a gun in his mouth

I went to counselling and started to pick the pieces of my life up and realize that the marriage I was in was super unhealthy and  we would of imploded somehow anyway.  I am not the reason for my divorce and she is not the reason for the divorce we are the reason together. my self identity is found in Jesus not the love or crazy expectations of my spouse (who I still talk to and we do a good job co parenting)
and now that i am free and single the only person I am responsible for is me and now I am starting my journey of self discovery. the layers of my identity have been stripped away.

I am a pretty reasonable guy but I have just expierenced some very unreasonable things

Going to try something new a video blog.

Anger and Sadness

The key to understanding the Issue with a suicide death is this" I am so sad that the person I love is dead and I am so angry at the son of a bitch who killed my loved one"
See the problem here? I will freely admit I don't "do" February very well and after a nice long talk with my Therapist/Pseudo father figure, It is most likely due to the fact that I am not "okay" with my brothers death, When I asked him what okay meant he said something like "my brother is dead and he died of suicide and I can't change It" this fact is very true stop and think for a second how many much time is spent in your life fighting the unmovable river of things you can't change? How much energy do you put forth trying to make a situation work to your advantage? probably a shit ton if you were honest with your self. Ever asked your self what it is called the Serenity Prayer? the first step in getting sober/clean/well/healthy/what ever is this

1. I am powerless over my own addictions and my life has become unmanageable. I guess to be fair suicide is a pretty good sign that that is true, if you have a gun in your mouth chances are that your life is unmanageable the problem lies in the second step

2. I came to believe in a power greater than my self can restore me to sanity - most people never get here sadly they are still stuck at step 1 or step zero

I think my issue with my brother is that he was at step 2ish... he had...crap I can't speak for him let me try that again...I feel that he knew damn well his life had become unmanageable he was gaining weight (that's right chris I just called you a fat ass) drinking like he had a hollow leg, and getting all sorts of awful tattoos and hanging out with Disturbed band rejects. What makes me most upset about chris is that he had a way out, he could of had the peace that surpasses understanding the hope of nations. but instead he said “I am not ready”. Maybe he wasn't I do believe that some people are genuinely not ready to change or are not ready to get right with their maker that's fine , what I can't stand is people who are in obvious pain....If I finish that thought i sound like a jackass who am I to judge who's pain and who’s not.

Even has I write this a little voice in my head says Chris was in denial,plain and simple he wasn't at step 1 he still though he could manage his life. The thing that pissed me the most off about my brother is these women he would have these deep emotional relationships with women who were married/engaged/unavailable. what part of that doesn't scream unmanageable

I think because I am getting healthy and going through the steps I am resentful of him and mad at him because out of my whole life the was the only one who could really understand what I went through how I was raised, he is the only one who I really want to share my victories with not because I don't love my wife or my family but because he was there and maybe he could help me gain some insight and mostly I want to share with him because I honestly wanted him to get healthy, what if in some mirror Universe their is a version of Chris who lives and is writing about his stupid dead brother Sheppard?....that's right I just blew your mind!!!!!!

Choices and the Consequences

I am listening to an Audio book the young...scratch that 20 something protagonist is presented with certain choices that to the common reader are clearly evil and will lead him down a dark path. I need to backup I have read/Listened to this series before so I know what will happen. Even when the hero decides to take his first step towards his see destructive journey of evil I still find my self asking him not to out loud even "no Jacen no don't do it" alas he does it and his path is set before him. he becomes a dark lord of the Sith betrays his family, the women he loves and causes the Galaxy to enter into the Second Galactic Civil War. besides the obvious Starwars fandom I have I find my self asking my self what does that character resonate with me so much? It all comes back to my stupid dead brother of course.....

For many of you will never know what it is like to watch a loved one go down a path that you know in your heart is self destructive and will ultimately lead to there own physical mental destruction. After writing this I think that maybe most of us do to some extent. I can honestly say that every member of my family my wife included saw this awful path my brother chose and we ...scratch that I can only speak for my self I felt helpless to stop it. No matter what I tried I couldn't fix it. That is what hurts the most I love to fix things ask Kelly I really do but I couldn't fix my brother "lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot Change the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference" a wise guy once said. I am feeling sad tonight not because a StarWars audio book led me to cry ...well a little ....allot but because I have never accepted the fact I couldn't save my brother plain and simple. ready for it....just like the reader of these books is helpless to stop the grandson of Darth Vader fulfill his legacy that his uncle has fought so hard and long to change. when It came to my brother I saw him in the throes of his pain. I knew he drank to much, I knew he was after unobtainable/Unavailable women, was chasing some mother complex girl to make him feel okay, to make him feel loved. I couldn't stop him I tried, almost to the point of alienating him he asked me to never pray for him on the phone again or he would hang up on me. Maybe he was fulfilling the lusk legacy of trying to find something anything to make your self feel okay if only for 30 seconds, a night or a bottle or a what ever. My smart and beautiful wife remarked how me and Chris traded places when I was a wild child my brother was a good kid by human standards I really got my crazy wild party drink till I puke then karate chop a Volvo while people are egging you on, wake up in a hospital with a shattered hand and a hell of a hang over done. but It was only because I gave my life and trust and made Jesus my higher power.sure I had settled down but the see destructive urge was still there. Just because I wasn't going to parties and standing in a room with the standard red cup while people ignored me didn't mean I wasn't still being a dangerous person. I would have impregnated the first women who looked at me, tried to make it work ruined it, bought an old car and a leather jacket and taken off into the sunset to "find my self" which roughly translated means hookers and drugs then a gun in my own mouth in some hotel room in Portland looking at the phone wishing it would have rang... See what I mean we all have a convergence in front of us.
we can choose HOPE
My life now is lets just say this last year and a half has been the hardest and most difficult and most challenging year yet for me. As a man of god as a father and as a husband. Also as a brother. I don't really know how it works and I certainly didn't have a dark lord of the Sith tricking me with her fancy words, until I see a vision of the future and cut down my Jedi Companion all because I see a vision of me fighting Luke Skywalker and winning.......I just ended up naked in a parking lot calmly shaking hands with the cop who arrested me telling him "I Murdered my roommate" ....so I guess I did have that kind of thing happen. that is a story to tell over pizza and a long hour lunch break john and Jeff know.....HI Ayo

I want to tell you a story that has stuck out to me dear reader. It was given to me in a little booklet about suicide It was purple and I found a pdf of it online once.
two women have daughters who are suicidal lady number one Luminaya takes her daughter to a mental hospital to get her help, Lady number two Leia take he daughter home and decides to have her in intense therapy but keep a stern eye on her. which lady do you suppose had the daughter that offed herself? ......both did and both women blamed themselves for not doing what the other women did. that is right that just happened your mind was blown.
That is the curse of suicide it is unstoppable plenty of people go to programs and fake it only to off them selves later.

I don't really have a way to end this post I got mixed up and I feel better. I will say this people are responsible for their own actions. In this book Jacen sees himself fighting Luke Sky walker and winning if this certain Jedi lives. What ever happened to personal choice just make a choice not fight Luke Skywalker it is not like light saber dueling Luke Skywalker is an addiction like alcoholism or Sex addiction. Does Jacen find him self stroking his light saber when Luke is around and at family dinners doe she pull it out and just attack Luke? Does he go to meetings? MY name is jacen solo and I am a dueling Luke Skywalker addict It has been 30 days since I last randomly attacked my uncle. Can he not control it? People seem think that things make them do stuff or people make them feel things or that he made me....you chose to plain and simple. My 2 cents

The kid with cancer won't play football with me!

Let me say that I write this for me and not for you. but part of exploring and dealing with my grief is writing. so you have this blog I hope it brings you some insight into how terrible losing a loved one to suicide is and how my faith and hope in Jesus Christ is a true comfort for me.

that being said, I have been going to therapy for about a year and I have been just recently dealing with my brothers death. First I was so overwhelmed with all the other things in my life that were crumbling around me that I put dealign with chris's death off.

I am not a very emotionally healthy person I can recognize that now and I have grown By leaps and bounds since I started this process of really examining my life and my marriage and the way I was living.

When Chris died I felt such a sense of betrayal and anger and sadness and grief and a myriad of other emotions. In my head here is how I saw it. Chris was supposed to get on a plane that night and move in with me and kelly enroll in school, settle down put his army life of awful tattoos drinking and isolation behind him. He would come to celebrate Recovery with me sober up and become the man that god wanted him to be by putting his faith in the finished works of jesus. Instead he put a gun to his and relied on the finished works of the devil.
now there is nothing wrong with this train of thought. it is normal but it is also just as crazy as putting a gun to your head, voting democrat or thinking the ACLU will sober up and realize what a mess they have made of society with all there so called "civil right lawsuits"

your problems follow you plain and simple you can't just move to a new state and start fresh your still crazy inside to what ever degree you are. I was still incredibly mentally unhealthy at the time also. I was spending more time on the computer then with my beautiful smoking gorgeous wife.

so what makes me think I could of changed chris if i couldn't/was not capable of changing my self. I was not even close to the first step. I feel that some how if only chris would of lived god would of saved him and he would of finally been happy. that is a lie i can't know the future i can only suspect and to think that chris was the victim of some cosmic struggle between the god and the devil is a pretty bold statement. I 100% think that satan had a part to play in chris's death. I also know that god gives us free will so if we choose to ignore this grace and do things he hates we can do that. I have to put chris's death in perspective and that is why I am writing this.
I can see his death in one of 2 ways
1. lets tell my family how much I hate them and that they mean so little to me i will murder my self and do so knowing it will be a giant forever cosmic "f" you.

2. I have no hope and my life is so empty and the pain is so overwhelming that the only way to end it is to end my life.

you see being mad at chris for doing what he did and choosing to live the life he chose to live is like being mad at the kid who has cancer cause the can't/wont play football with me.

ready for the weird stuff.....I had a dream and in this dream i was screaming at chris because he didn't want to play with me and my friends i was full of righteous indignation . how dare he choose not to get up out of that bed take the IV out of his veins and play football with me. it shocked me to see how crazy i looked and the whole time I felt that chris wanted to lay with us be a part of all the fun we were having he just didn't know how. He didn't have the tools and skills to get out of that bed it wasn't his fault he got sick. he didn't chose to get cancer just he didn't choose to get super sad and not have the wiring/emotional health to deal with rally difficult choices and betrayal from the women who he opened his heart to.

when some body is broken physically we don't chastise them for not being at 100%
this is what I am/was doing with chris my anger at him is real my disappointment with him and his choices he made are very genuine. I Doubt he was even thinking of me that night or any body i bet he was just so drunk and so full of fear. remember the Lusk family motto is " if I do not try I won't fail" that he couldn't stand it and he did the only thing that seemed logical and ended his life. that is why it is called being crazy because it is not a good decision. If i were to go down to the re flight district and get a hooker and some cocaine and have a wild university of miami kinda night do you think the first person i would call would be my wife? or my pastor? or any body who would stop me? of course not why would I think that my brother wold call me and say " hey man how the hell are you btw i have a gun to my head you think i should pull the trigger? oh yeah i will be at the airport around 9pm.

you feel what I am throwing down here? You get my drift? does the fact that chris died suck unimaginable ass? heck yeah! am I torn up about it inside? yes of course. Does it mean that i am fine now and i can put it behind me? probably not

but I can choose to see it in a different light than chris getting his "screw my stupid brother I never love whim anyways" gun and doing his "I hope i wound my family so deeply that my stoic cowboy of a father cries his first tears since I have known him" dance.

I will have to write a letter to him some day and I may or may not post on my blog but when i start to get mad and i have every right to by the way, i just picture his face and the pain and anguish on his face as he struggles to escape his bed and come play football with me. and i realize it is not about me it is about him and how much pain he had. have you ever had so much pain that a cold 9mm slug seemed like a good idea? a genuine legitimate good idea? if you have then you know what aim talking about If you haven't then your probably not as crazy has chris was.

Almost 3 years now

I went back and reread my previous posts, they got me thinking.I haven't written to this blog in a long time mostly due to fear or laziness.

last thanksgiving right before Kelly gave birth to my amazing beautiful daughter Mia, I went up to visit Chris's grave in some sort of movie-esque forgiveness ritual. thinking that now I was done with the whole "dead brother thing" I should be able to focus on being a good husband and father....boy was I mistaken.
Tis blog here is a rambling of my innermost thoughts it is not to be taken as how i am always feeling or how somebody should deal with a loss like mine. I just write what i think and feel and every body else be damned. that being said, If you are reading this please don't be offended at what you read or assume that what I write is the whole picture.

I am tired of feeling sad about Chris i think sums up this year, he never really gave a shit about is family when he was alive and with his death apparently now I have to give two whole poops about him? I feel my relationship with him is vastly more complicated than it ever was now than when he was alive. except now i can't call him up and cajole him, or beg him or please or threaten him to be a part of my life now he is forever, so victory???

Things have changed for me in this past year, not all of them have to do with my brothers death so I apologize if I don't go into details regardless
I have a few victories I have 6 months sobriety, going strongly on to one months and hopefully hitting my year mark some time around December.

I have been looking back at my marriage and at my family Relationships . and coming to understand what an incredibly unhealthy person I have been,and am right now, In fact looking at Chris's life through this therapeutic lens ti makes perfect sense that suicide was his next step. think the lusk family motto is "sub umbra alarum taurum" it means under thy wings Jehovah
It should be changed to "Si vos operor non tendo vos mos non deficio" IF you don't try you won't fail

That has been my motto for the majority of my life, and I imagine it was most likely Chris's motto also. Suicide is the ultimate expression of that motto.

Chris was supposed to come up to Boise that night and we were going to take him in and help him get settled here.
he had been lying every one about a job search in Texas and this was his "beard" to keep the ruse up. how do i know this? I did the very same thing once I quite TP i was supposed to find a job but the thought of getting rejected and putting all that work in was overwhelming, I didn't know where to start what to do first(my resume I suppose) and my whole life every thing had been done for me, my mother bought my clothes my father paid my bills if i failed they picked up the pieces. now here I was married and no body to make me a resume nobody to take my job interview for me. I was stuck with me IN my case I ended up going to Boise state for a semester to even avoid the job search. and because Jesus Christ is my higher power I have help and he got me a job by a series of crazy circumstances.

but I know the fear that was going on in my brothers heart. so Instead of going to boise and having to deal with his brother who was "happily" married, had a saving grace and was perfect he decided to put a gun in his mouth.

after all that has happened with me an amy "perfect marriage" in this last year I now finally can look back and understand how incredibly unhealthy i was and my marriage was and my faith was.
and me and chris came from the same family so it comes to reason he was also unhealthy.

I think he had just had enough of the pressure and had the means and had the ability to take this own life.
I have been going to therapy, 12 step programs, and celebrate recovery so i have been able to put a finger on the awful patterns that for so long ruled my life. Have you ever had a fear or pattern or thought process rule your life so completely that you don't even realize you are hurting the ones you love? you honestly think you are just doing what you need to do not to feel that feeling or have that fear? and if people understood for one moment how you felt they say "it is okay for you to do what you do"
So i now have a insight into my brothers mind I think but i will be the one that breaks the cycle, that breaks the pattern that was planted there by my upbringing and my life experiences. I will emerge from this battle fought beneath the thundering sky and raging torrent of wind and I will be victorious. I will be the last lusk that has to ever go through what I am going through or through what chris went through. I can't just grow a mustache, buy a muscle car and drive across the country in search of some vague idea of "who am I" I already know I am a mighty man of The most high and he looks at me he does not see my mistakes he sees me for who I am wonderfully and fearfully made. God Doesn't Make Junk!
Rambling again but i mean it.

trusting god

1. god is infinite, I am finite
2. God is never the problem
3. God loves me
4. Sin infects everything including my understanding of 1-3

that is my new mantra of sorts i think my problem is I am not trusting god, and denying my anger at my brother, it is true I am furious with him. he made the worst decision a person could ever make, and quite frankly I am starting to realize that he never cared about me at all. I feel hurt by him in my book our relationship was a priority to me. I told him if he ever needed anything day or night to call me. i would even drive down to texas on a moments notice for him i was willing to walk through fire for him I guess it was not the same for him. that king of cocks! he didn't even bother to call me he called my folks but not me. it is clear to me (my councilor disagrees) that i mean nothing to him has a brother he cared about all these women he couldn't have over his own brother. has he never seen an action movie? my therapist thinks that maybe i was the one person who he couldn't bare to call but i think he was so selfish i didnt even cross his mind. wow i have a few hurt feelings about this. and when it comes to where he is heaven or hell i need to trust god but it is so hard (that is what she said) i don't have that comfort of seeign him again or do i? only god knows really.