Epiphany?

Every so often, I look back quickly over older posts. Quickly, because there are things in them that I don't want to be reminded of feeling. Looking at the brief record of how I was feeling last year, it seems miraculous to me how much happier - blissfully happier, in comparison - I am now to how I was, and scary to try and comprehend the feelings I had.

I wonder, always, why I was feeling that way - such strong, terrifying feelings - and what arouse the total 360 change in my temperament. I couldn't pinpoint anything, not even a vague suggestion of anything that happened since then that made my life better - if anything, there should have been more stress, worry and unsureness in my life, which would have dragged me even further down. But it didn't. And for so long, I couldn't figure out why.

Then suddenly, a few days ago, an idea came to me. I don't know how plausible, or likely, it is, I just know that it is, if even just a tiny amount, a possible reason.

(And here's where I bear all.)

My brother, 3 years younger than me, has Asperger's Syndrome (a "high-functioning" autistic spectrum disorder). I suppose, in relative terms, he's quite lucky in that he doesn't suffer as bad as he could - at least, I think so, not knowing very much about it or its severity, save for what I can Google, since nobody ever talked to me about it.
Anyway, last year, he was doing his Junior Cert. in school (like GCSEs in the UK; a large state exam for 15-year-olds). It happened that also last year, he was obsessed with a particular online video game (this one had moderate violence). For whatever combination of reasons, he was very, very negative and angry for a large amount of the year; as his exams got closer this naturally got worse. He would lash out - both physically and verbally - at my whole family; close himself in the computer room (consequently prohibiting anyone else from even walk past the room without 'awaking the monster'); refuse to study (while on the inside terrified about his exams), making my mother more stressed and agitated than anyone should be...
The whole year was a montage of shouting (both childish insults and just plain aggression), slammed doors, and unprovoked punches and kicks (I still have a partially numb, partially unbearably painful patch on my shin from where I was kicked one evening when something went wrong on his computer game and I happened to be the only other one in the house). The house was so full of his anger, it's no wonder it seeped into all the rest of us...

I've always know his condition has greatly affected my life - I've just been accepted onto a University course to become a Speech & Language Therapist, and the other career choice I was considering after that was becoming a psychologist - but I never in my wildest dreams realised it could affect me so drastically and so negatively.
I guess posts like this one (and reading it now makes me feel physically sick; I don't even recognise the person who wrote that, it doesn't seem real), written just after one of the few times I simply broke down after a particularly difficult episode with my brother, should have given me some insight; but my head was too caught up in the depression to think clearly the way I have always thought I have been able to do...

And then after his exams were over, and a few months later after he got his results and everything was forgotten and he started 'Transition Year' in school (a very un-academic year, focused on projects and extra-curricular activities)... He was calmer, occasionally - occasionally - even verging on happy, and I guess my family - I - got some endorphins back into my system. And look at the astounding difference!

Of course, next year... He will be doing his Leaving Cert. (like the UK A-Levels; the final state exams), and the greater stress/pressure of that, coupled with the fact that he will be supposed to be choosing the path for his future, and I know he won't have a clue what he wants to do (coupled with the fact that he now has a laptop of his own and a playstation in his room, and when he's on those he gets even more unreasonable)... Well, it won't be a pretty picture.
I'm staying at home for my first year of college - I tell people it's because it's cheaper, but in reality, the prospect of college is scary enough to me without adding in leaving home for the first time too) - but it's always been my plan to move out starting second year. My reason for this I've been giving as - rightfully so - not wanting to be in the house with him when he's that angry all the time, but I've only recently come to contemplate that that reason might be so much more important that I had ever originally though. I don't want to tell my parents about my frame of mind last year, but a few days ago, chatting idly with my mum about how I planned to move out in second year, I felt myself putting more emotion into that reason, as if willing her to understand it was more than just 'sibling rows'.

But next year is a long time away. And I'm hoping to God the stress of returning to more academic schooling doesn't have as much of an adverse effect as it could, on the whole family. I don't know really how it affected my parents, and I don't want to sound selfish or be complaining all the time, but I know, and I knew last year, that those were not feelings I should have been having; and there are certain times, and certain situations, where you need to look after your own health - be it mental or physical - first.

xxx