Six Word Memoirs on Life Stories

TheUnknownComic says,

Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. Now, your brother's profile pic is fairly weird; I'd lock your door at night just to be safe. If he asks why its locked ask him why he knows.

Your dad's action on the other hand could be a simple answer. He might have left a file that he needed on his laptop and needed the laptop opened so that he could make a remote connection and retrieve the file.

Besides I haven't seen anything on the hidden webcams to indicate anything too strange is happening.

Wench says,

We're in the basement - there are no locks. I'm concerned about my brother because he's starting to act kind of similarly to how he was before when he had his breakdown. My dad specifically asked that his laptop be opened all the way - if he just needed to access a file, he would only have needed it open enough to wake up.

L2L3 says,

Furniture against the door at night.

Wench says,

Neither of those things is an option. I wouldn't be surprised if my dad has a webcam running to keep tabs on my brother - and I'd like to believe that Comic is right and that he was just accessing a file, but if he's been watching my brother, I absolutely feel as though he should have told us.

I can't put furniture against the door, there's no way to manage it with the staircase, and my parents would flip. Yes, my brother has had issues, but they get extremely terse when anyone actually says so.

It's possible that my brother took the photo before we moved in - my parents put up the ceiling a few days before we arrived, so I'm hoping that the photo was taken during that time, but I don't know. We know what triggers his breakdowns and he's been keeping away from it, but he's been drinking a lot of coffee - my parents switched it out for decaf without telling him, but he's still putting a ton of sugar in it, he goes through almost a cup a day. That alone is enough to make him more restless than normal, and there have just been a few other things that have made me feel like we should prepare ourselves for the possibility that things will get bad again.

Wench says,

"Did you take that picture in our room? It really looked like it was taken in our room."
"It was."
"Why were you in our room?"
"Because I was taking a picture."
"... That's our room."
"I wasn't doing anything, I wasn't going through your stuff or anything."
"It doesn't matter, I don't go into your room when you're not there. It made me feel really weird that you did that."

I mean, he could have taken that picture absolutely anywhere, including his own room - it's a very creepy picture and it was deliberately taken over our bed. And my brother has a history of mental illness. I feel like my creeped-outedness is fairly justified...

Wench says,

I feel so trapped right now - I don't know what to say. We need to get out.

TheUnknownComic says,

Is it possible to wedge a piece of re-bar between a wall and the door so as to prevent the door from opening at night? If not (i.e. the door opens outward and not into the stairwell), then put a piece of clear tape across the door and the frame so that if the tape is broken then you know someone opened the door during the night. You can also go to amazon or x10.com and get a motion sensor and alarm that would alert you to that situation.

Wench says,

I don't think he took it while we were sleeping and I don't think that he's much of a violent threat - even when he was at his worst last year, and the year before that, he was not physically violent. But things like this show that his mind isn't working the way it should right now. Before, he didn't sleep at all unless he was medicated. My parents had to lock their door not because they were afraid he'd hurt them but because he kept coming in to start absolutely bizarre debates with them all throughout the night. He texted me upwards of thirty times between midnight and seven am and updated his facebook status on average every three minutes.

Wench says,

One of his thus-far one-man-band songs is entirely about how much he wants to give some girl oral - the name of the song is "I want to eat you." Not my cup of tea, whatever, but he played it for me the other day. And I feel like there's got to be something wrong when you're playing that kind of thing for your sister, like I'm supposed to go "I love it!" and not feel tremendously uncomfortable.

TheUnknownComic says,

I want to eat you - said the big bad wolf. The title alone is a little off, even though I agree with the underlying message per se. Also, odd song choice to play for your sister! I'd give some serious consideration to my previous post!

ShellDeFelice says,

I had seven brothers and to this day if one of them shared lyrics like that with me I would yell, "I'm telling Mom!"

MO_Thoughts2 says,

Wench -- hop on the Mega Bus and you, Nathaniel & Little Man can live in my rental house.

Wench says,

He's on medication, but he's started drinking a lot of coffee recently and it seems to be triggering very similar behavior to what happened before. The same kind of intensity, but not as much of it and a little bit slower-paced than before, when his thoughts were bouncing off of walls constantly.

Fortunately, my parents are seeing this too and are going to take him to see his psychiatrist to adjust his medication, but the bottom line is that my brother still doesn't believe that the things he did before that caused him to be sick were bad. He loved his breakdown. He thinks about it fondly and he would do it again in a heartbeat if he thought he could. Even the fact that he's going back to school is a warning sign - he was in school before when this happened - a sudden burst of creative drive, intense yet erratic. Last week he couldn't stop talking about running and quitting smoking. This week, he hasn't gone running at all, he's back to smoking (and picking up used cigarettes when he doesn't have money to buy them) and he's non-stop about his 'band' - which consists of him.

We are stuck right now, just playing the waiting game. As awful as it is, we really just don't have the money to get out of here. We still have to pay one month's rent at our old place to officially terminate the lease, another month's rent at the storage unit is coming up, phone bill so we can keep the phone active to hear back about jobs, credit card bill because we're trying to build credit and can't let it get behind, and all of this when we have not had any income since October.

We're pretty much at the end.

Something has to give.

Wench says,

On the upside, my dad was, in fact, just accessing a file on his computer and says he has not been keeping an eye on us with the webcam - whew.

L2L3 says,

Furniture against the door at night.