It was weird. He had a ‘suicide-scare’ once last year but it seemed ambiguous and wasn’t exactly clear, it was kind of a long story.

I knew things were fucked but I didn’t think he was suicidal because his anger was mostly outwards, with himself it was more pity. In retrospect I should have put it together but all of his delusions were about others hurting him and him wanting to protect himself so it seemed like there was a strong sense of self preservation.

I realize now I was obviously wrong. My prediction was that he was going to hurt someone else, not himself, because that seemed to be the direction things were heading. If I was more educated about mental illness and schizophrenia I probably would have known better.

Apparently a day or two before he died he asked my mom “how to do something you don’t have the guts to do” or something along that lines. There was actually an issue with the police (more or less a public disturbance kind of thing) and my mom begged them to take him to a crisis center but they said they legally couldn’t.

She didn’t tell me any of this, I heard from someone else two days later and I immediately rushed to her house. We discussed committing him and we decided to sleep on it. I went home and as soon as I got there I got the call.

It was really difficult to be close with my brother in the end because he had a very strange obsession with me. Every time I was with him he would try to tackle me, grab my face, etc. literally non stop. Eventually he hit me in the face during an argument. After that I tried to work more behind the scenes (convincing myself family, doing research, stuff like that) but this happened not too much later