My brother is moving down from a small northern california town to live with me in Los Angeles soon. He currently survives on the "streets" of this sleepy tourist town by crashing at friends houses, buying under agers booze (which he was recently arrested for) and giving people rides for chump change. Earlier last year he lost his warehouse job at a natural foods company and never found another one and was soon kicked out of the trailer he was renting.
I have unending sympathy and goodwill towards him so my tendency is to offer him 1,000,000 good ideas, money for school, rides, etc etc. Yet I know from my own experience at his age (22) that I got some sort of sick thrill out of disappointing those that loved me the most.
So how much should I hold his hand? I feel like I should let him sleep on the couch and use my computer (for six months maybe?) but the favors stop there. I don't want to "baby" him so that he can fail yet again and have this validated feeling that he really IS a loser and it's all the economy/mom and dad's fault. I was an alcoholic for the past 7 years or so and just stopped drinking 7 months ago. So I'm riding high on this feeling of accomplishment despite the odds, I want him to feel positively about himself too and stop blaming everyone else but he is really in the thick of it right now and can't see the forest for the trees...
What would you do?



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I searched for him in town a few times, hung out with him and the townies one day and my last day there I found him in the morning, just waking up in his car smoking a bowl. I got in to talk and it really stank, he said he "had no complaints" about his life but knew it couldn't go on forever. He was going for a free breakfast at the library.

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