Whether or not the LW's brother has Aspergers, it's obviously been difficult for her to deal with. And as a couple of previous posters suggested, the so-called nitpicking about his clothing & water boittle might simply be the overflow from years of dealing with much bigger problems, like his apparent neglect of his parents.

LW, you might read "The Normal One: Life with a Difficult or Damaged Sibling," by Jeanne Safer. And so might some of the nastier posters. Whenever there's a problem child in a family, for whatever reason, the emotional well-being of "the normal one" is often disregarded. After all, what does the LW have to complain about, right? Her life seems on track, so she shouldn't complain at all.

Except that having to live with even minor irritations, day after day after day after day, tends to wear away your sympathy & tolerance. And then you feel guilty about that, and blame yourself for being too sensitive, or even "controlling."

LW, a little counseling might be good for you, too. Just to help you prioritize & learn better ways of coping, especially if your brother can't or won't change. If it's a matter of his being unable to change, the only thing you'll be able to change is how you deal with him. That might be your best bet.

... but precisely because the conservative side knows in its gut that they've lost the culture war, it's bound to get nastier still. When I was a 'tween/teen in the 1960s, the idea of a black man, or a woman of any ethnic background, running for president was an impossible fantasy. So was the idea of openly gay men & women being celebrated by much of the public -- or living together without benefit of marriage -- or multi-racial marriages -- or (fill in cultural change of your choice). All that's changed, and there's no going back.

The conservative side, so terrified of change & the transitory nature of their bedrock truths, will fight all the more to maintain their bunker of (un)reality. And that'll be ugly.

Timbuktom is absolutely right. My own 20s & 30s were awful, and I considered suicide more than once. But I hung on ... and at 55, I'm happily married to a wonderful woman, I've got a wide circle of good friends, I'm creating art, and I'm looking forward to many more years of the same.

I can't guarantee that if you just live long enough, things will automatically become sunshine & lollipops. I've had ups & downs during the past decades, no question about it. But I am so glad that I was alive to experience them.

Listen: the only guarantee, the only one that's 100% certain, is that if you do kill yourself now, you wipe out every future possibility, every chance that's still ahead.

I have an extra motivator for living as well. 6 years ago I survived a heart problem that showed no prior symptoms, one that 17 cardiologists later said should have killed me months before -- just dropped me dead in an instant. It was only by sheer luck that it was discovered under the best of circumstances & corrected. Believe me, at that moment, I knew without any doubt just how precious life is, and how desperately I wanted to go on living, no matter what might come.

LW, life IS worth it. I'm no longer a religious person, with no belief in an afterlife; but as zippythepoet said above, you can still be spiritual without any religious belief. Life IS precious & sacred & a true miracle -- there's something rather than nothing! Don't be in such a hurry to plunge into nothing, please.

A final thought: many people who survive a suicide attempt say that at the moment they tried, and it seemed too late to stop, the thing they wanted most was to reverse time & LIVE.

Live, LW!

I just want to add that I've intervened in more than one case, always with friends some 15-20 years younger than myself, and they've since told me how much they would have missed & lost forever if someone hadn't been there to hear their pain & guide them to help.

Talk to your brother. Talk to friends. Talk to a professional. Talk to SOMEONE. Because they'll want to help. They value your life, even if you can't see its true value yourself right now.

I've also seen what happens to family & friends when someone does succeed in a suicide attempt. To them, it's NOT some quiet slipping away, a blessed fading of memory -- it's a gaping wound that never heals. For them, your dying would never stop. Never.

So find someone to help you. They're out there. They just need to know that you're reaching out to them. Believe me, they'll reach back & they won't let go.

The unending debate over Who Killed More: Religion or Atheism? is taking exactly the wrong approach. Just look at what all these horrors have in common: The True Believer Mentality.

It's the same mindset across the board, from rabid religious extremists of every stripe to ideological zealots. They believe that they & they alone possess the truth, that their worldview is the only valid one, that any other worldview is not only wrong but a vile & deadly threat, one that must be eliminated at all costs. Stalin, Pol Pot, and their ilk are brothers under the same diseased skin with the murderously devout of every faith. "We are pure! The unclean & wrong-thinking must be cleansed from the world!"

The struggle isn't between Religion & Atheism so much as it is between those who are driven by fear so strong it devours rationality, and those who are secure enough to live with the knowledge that their personal experience of the world is not one-size-fits-all. The tragedy is that the reasonable are nowhere as aggressive & savage as the zealots -- fear, paranoia, and a paralyzing dread of looking inward are monstrously powerful motivators.