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.
