Thanks so much mate for sharing your situation. I relate to it completely. I don't know the answers. Life is very hard and very painful. I also have a lot of mental illness in my family. My mum goes to hospital regularly because of depression/bipolar and my sister was in hospital over 40 times because of eating disorders. I was always the most together one. But it all caught up with me eventually and now I'm the mentally ill one. My sister has mostly recovered thank god, and my mum is much better than she used to be. However it all took a massive toll on me I think and now I am very unwell myself. Also, there's all this pain left over in the family, even though in many ways people are better. Sort of like at the end of the Lord of the Rings when they destroy the one ring, but come back to Hobbiton and find it's been corrupted. A lot of the time we try to help depressed people by telling them things will get better. And they do. Sort of. At the very least things change. But there is always misery and suffering. Even if not in your own family, but in other people's families. I read a lot of Stoic stuff in my early 20s when things were really, really bad in my family, with people turning to drugs and all sorts of stuff. Epictetus is really interesting. He was a slave who became a writer. The first line of his most famous book "The Enchirodon" (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45109/45109-h/45109-h.htm) is
There are things which are within our power, and there are things which are beyond our power. Within our power are opinion, aim, desire, aversion, and, in one word, whatever affairs are our own. Beyond our power are body, property, reputation, office, and, in one word, whatever are not properly our own affairs.
His worldview grows out of that and it's very interesting. It's similar to the Buddhist's in some ways. Oliver Burkeman wrote an interesting book called "The Antidote" which is all about what he calls the "negative path to happiness". He talks about the Stoics like Epictetus, and the Buddhists and a bunch of other stuff. I found it helpful. I think it's ok to confront the reality that life is really, really hard, and the future might be really, really hard. Sometimes life just has to be endured. Eventually things get better. Or at least they change. That's a lot of waffle from me I guess. Keep enduring and thanks again for sharing your situation. 🙂
