#ignore that the eye may be on the wrong side. im dyslexic | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

brokenmusicboxwolfe · 7 years

Text

On a post where I talked about my nephew (and the difficulties with my brother)

runningbarefootthroughtheforest said: No ideas, just wanted to say Im glad your nephew has someone like you in his life, even if you are ‘banned’ from him. It sounds like you bring sunshine to his life, and even if thats a rare occurence it may make a world of difference to him <3

Thanks for being so kind.

I wasn’t planning to really reply (thought I REALLY appreciated hearing that), but I was in a mood tonight. I got started writing, and now it’s 2am and I’ve got this endless rambling about my relationship with my brother no one in their right mind wants to hear about. Rather than erase all that typing (and venting) I’m just going to put it safely behind a click to continue....l

Being there for him used to be one of the ways I would make myself go to my brother’s when I knew what was in store for me there. (The other was to help my parents with that construction job building the extension to my brother’s house.) I had my nephew described as “lighting up like a Christmas tree” when I showed up and that he seemed so much more engaged when I was there. I dunno how much I credit that to me, but I did feel like it was worth enduring a heavy dose of verbal abuse.

The thing is, it has been so long since I have been able to see him I expect he has forgotten me now. I got to see him for a minute over a year ago when took Mom half way to spend time recovering from her hospitalization at their house (I’ve mentioned our living conditions...). He didn’t show any signs of recognition anymore. Yesterday Mom called me while my sister-in-law was out (Mom won’t call me when they are around to avoid ranting) and I could hear my nephew talking to himself as he played, his voice like a little bird chirping. I realized that I have never actually heard him speak in person because he was a totally non-verbal then. I’m afraid as far as he is concerned I don’t exist.

I know people wonder why I was banned from my brother’s house. “what did you do?” Saying, well the first time I was told never to come back I played a Wallace and Gromit DVD. It was so baffling how me playing it in a room alone could get him shouting I was “the most selfish bitch alive” for my choice of DVD, but there you go.

A few months later I did start going back, but that time I tried to photograph my parents beside the house extension we were putting in, and my brother thought I wastaking a photo of him andmy nephew. He hates photos being taken and threatened to smash my camera, started with the insults, called me a coward when I went into the house to get away from him rather than fight, then mocked me when I came back out rather than wake my napping sister-in-law. I started crying (trying soooo hard not to) and he lay into me for that. I always told my parents not to defend me since it would reinforce my brother’s peculiar “you love her more” narrative and it would make him more vicious, but it made me feel extra alone as he was attacking me, all in my face and snarling like he would get. I muttered “Sometimes I could just kill you” which was NOT meant as a real threat at all, and he knew that very well. Still he announced I was to leave or he would call the police and he could say I threatened his life.

And that was that. At first My parents and I thought it would blow over. It didn’t. We thought holidays would be an exception. They weren’t. We thought when Pop got sick he would relax about it. Nope. So that’s been that.

The thing is, it shouldn’t be a surprise. For years he’d been saying he loved Mom, loved but also hated Pop, and just hated me. I think partly Pop and are were disappointments to him, like we should be whatever fantasy he had of what we should be and if only he could bully us right we’d change. Pop and I did tend to think alive, where Mom and my brother thought a bit more alike, the basic mental wiring. But it was a way of seeing us, Mom the one who sacrificed (like about getting a PhD) to join Pop here, Pop the person working so many ambitious projects (like the submarine or the journey round the world in the boat) that never actually were finished, and me the smart sister turned utter loser (and college drop out to his multiple degrees). I knew he hated me, and maybe he was right to at least have no respect for such a pathetic creature, but I somehow had managed to believe that down deep he loved me.

You know, when he was a teenager he pointed a loaded gun to my head saying he was going to kill me, and I was totally calm about it. Part of it was the adrenaline, but part of it was a trust that while he was emotionally freaking out and might accidentally kill me, he did not really want me dead. Would I be so fearless now when I no longer trust his love is in there somewhere waiting to be talked down? I dunno.

Now, for the record, my family was NOT physically or emotionally abusive. Heck, my parents never even spanked us. We were never grounded, given time outs or bullied. While my father would break things when really upset, he NEVER, EVER hurt anyone or threatened to hurt anyone. My parents were confused how sibling rivalry and child defiance of a father could become so monsterous. They wondered what they did wrong. The thing is, it really wasn’t entirely some failing in out part.

Amazingly my brother was an incredibly sweet child. He constantly told us he loved us, gave us drawings he made and wrote “I love you” on, hugged us, kissed us, laughed and ... He was exactly the opposite of what he is now.

I can track it, the step by step path that led to this point.

It begins at school. When he entered first grade to be precise.

In first grade my brother got good grades, despite my parents questioning whether he was having difficulty reading. The teacher would reassure them that he was doing just fine....and then he failed first grade. When my parents wanted to know what had happened, the teacher said my brother had seemed so smart she had assumed it would work out. **sigh**

So my parents did what you would expect. They started working with my brother. They had always read to us (and I read as long as can remember) but now they started using work books, flashcards, and anything else that they thought might help. To my brother this was like being punished while I was off doing other things, and how he felt about me began to change.

Now I get this bothering him. I was bothered too. I knew my brother needed help, but I also knew they were spending all this time with him but so little with me. No one helped me with my homework, because I didn’t need it. I was “fine”, I was always “fine”. Where as my brother as a toddler would try to run (and made it once!) across highway 64 with all it’s traffic, laughing as we chased him, toddler me (when I couldn’t find my father and grandfather who were working and supposed to be watching me...the place it big) decided to walk home and famously was spotted by people carefully crossing that crazy busy highway and walking back along the side of the road. I was seen as gaving good judgement, bright, blah, blapg. Stephanie is always “fine”.

The difference is that while I saw the attention my brother got when no one even cared what I did in school, (they even let me sign my own papers because they were busy and knew I was doing fine...I HATE that word fine!) and was unhappy, I didn’t get angry at anyone. I understood, and other than a few bouts of grumpiness at my parents wishing that they would pay atrention to me a bit. But to my brother it was different. He was angry, and most of that anger settled on me because I was “fine”, a sort of feeling he had that I must be loved more since I wasn’t the one suffering.

Then it got worse.

His second grade teacher was horrible to him. She picked on him and bullied him continually. In front of the whole damn class she would called him stupid and mock him. He was NOT stupid! He was dyslexic!

My parents had to work to persuade then to have him tested. This was not even on the radar of out hick town school in the early 1980s. They had to bring someone in to test him, and when it proved the suspicions it proved no help at all. See, the teachers had never heard of such a thing, so to them “dyslexic” meant “stupid”. They considered kids “normal”, “smart”, or “stupid” with no nuisance at all. And that damn teacher kept at it, more intently than ever.

Worse for my relationship to him, the teacher and her aide had another angle of attack. “He’s not smart like his sister!” Do you know how horrible that is, constantly comparing a kid to another kid? In first grade my tracher had started that, telling the class “Why can’t you all be like Stephanie?” “You should try to be smart like Stephanie” Do you know what that does? It does NOT make the kids you want to change change, instead they glare at that kid you are comparing them to with pure hate. And now the little brother that had loved me, was being bludgeoned with me as a weapon.

He didn’t tell us any of this at the time. He was far too scared of her. It slipped out bit by bit over then next few years.

One day he hid to try to avoid going to class. I found him and talked to him, trying to be reassuring and comforting. You see, I was having an awful time in school, being bullied every day. I thought, three years older than him, I understood and I was being encouraging when I was saying if I could do it I knew he could. And then I told Pop where he was.

My brother still brings this up as a huge betrayal. It is one of the worst things I ever did to him, though I did it out of love and ignorance.

So it began. My brother’s resentment and hostility. A bubbling rage began to build. He started seeing as opposite, if something was tough for him he would insist it was easy for me. To this day he insists I was popular and happy in school! It’s nuts. Mom laughs at the thought. In that one year in kindergarden I went from so outgoing I spoke to anyone to so introverted I couldn’t make eye contact or order in a restaurant. I went from normal weight to the fattest kid in the class, for the first time in my life started wetting the bed, began to jump at the sounds like someone with PTSD, and would come home crying, begging my parents to tell me why everyone hated me. I was picked on for everything including my breathing! But he didn’t remember preschool me so he didn’t know I’d changed, and he was so lost in his own pain he couldn’t see mine.

And it went like this. Now I am NOT minimizing what he went through. While I had many teachers that openly delighted whenerever I made a mistake and, bafflingly, saw me as some sort of threat, clearly what he went through with that teacher was worse.

Let me be clear again, my brother was NOT stupid! He was one of the top five students by graduation, in college he studied chemistry where he was the only undergraduate working on a project, one a national prize, and after getting his degree went right back to get a degree in computer programming. He could very well be smarter than me!

But elementary and high school were hell. For both of us, to be honest, we just manifested it differently.

I can only imagine the constant “she’s smart, you’re not” pressure he was under. I know even as an adult his default when upset was to call himself “Stupid!” “Idiot!” Or “Moron!” No matter how often my parents and I tried to tell him otherwise, he never believed us. He was constantly tense and chewed his fingers until they bled. And behind his eyes you could see the pain and rage. He got so he would not want anyone to see him show emotions, even taking his gifts at Christmas into his room to open. He got aggressive and growly, not just in a teen boy way. He would let anyone hug him anymore, not even Mom. We wanted to hug him, we knew he needed a hug, even wanted a hug, but if you tried he’d slug you and leave a bruise.

With me his aggression just got worse. Violent, not just slugging. Not when our parents were around, of course. Then it was just verbal. He was disgusted by me. I’d become withdrawn more, fatter, and, as I used to say, “terminally insecure”. Maybe he couldn’t stand my increasing loser status because if I was supposed to “better” than him according to the teachers, then how terrible must he be? He needed me to be better than Inwas, just as he always blamed our parents a bit for not saving him from that teacher, despite the fact they hadn’t known at the time what was going on.

One quick point: what happened to my brother inspired Pop to run for school board right after that. He thought it was the best way to help both my brother and others like him. I think the last straw was seeing that abusive teacher won “teacher of the year” the next year. When Pop asked why they said it was because they were all sorry for her because just before the vote she has a baby that was born with a serious birth defect. Sympathy is one thing, but “teacher of the year” for a woman that tormented my brother and changed him so completely? In one year he went from loving me to hating me, smiling to scowling, not questioning his own intelligence to never believing in it! So Pop went to the school board, became chairman, and what to you know, the way they treated my brother turned around over night (though how he felt didn’t)! But what about other kids without elected parents?

Anyway, the school years were not happy. Add my brother’s tendency to hold grudges and to lash out when hurt to the target painted on my back by the big mouthed teachers and I became his verbal, and sometimes physical, punching bag. Our parents would be working and he would go into jerk mode. Locking himself in my room to trash it. Calling me the most hurtful things he could. There are still holes in my door from a sword. (Yes, sword. We have a few...) When he would start getting rough I’d pin him, because though we did eventually end up the same height, I was bigger than him. He was skinny and I was just plain stronger. But once restrained, then what? In his rages he would snarl he would hit me when I let go, and eventually I’d have to. My dilemma was I was the big sister, the one that had always tried to protect him and never wanted to hurt him. When I was about 8 I got a blood vessel in my eye busted fighting a bully that was picking on him. I couldn’t hurt him, but when I’d let go he’d keep his promise. As my parents and I would say, he would never pull a punch.

Now my parents would try to get him to stop being such a jerk to me, but it only ever made him meaner. If they were defending me, he semed to think, that must prove they loved me more. They were working and we were on our own, but together out here on the farm, much of the time. Oddly being unsupervised had worked out great when we were little, but as we got older and the relationship got worse it was not great at all.

It’s so weird, looking at old photos. All those happy ones when were little. There isn’t a photo of me NOT smiling until I started school, and there isn’t one where he isn’t smiling and usually hugging me until that year with the teacher. Like OMG! He honestly seemed a different person. By our teenage years there are almost no photos of me smiling, and the few that show my brother smiling are rather threatening.

We did have one powerful bonding moment one day. We just started talking, just spilling out all the horrible things and bullying we went through at school, that hell hole. We ended up sobbing and just holding each other. It was so intense I actually believed it was a breakthrough, a turning point out of the darkness. Nope. I made that mistake many times over the years.

And yeah, the gun incident happened. I survived, and between that and another incident when he nearly shot trespassers (that had permission we didn’t know about) when scared, I let my folks know I didn’t think he should be around them anymore. It was atypical for the family so it was startling, but his judgement worried me.

But then came what was the worst turning point for many years. I dropped out of college. It would take a while to explain, but it would make me the sole non-college in the family and the source of shame. It was unforgivable sin. While my brother had given up physical violence (and never hit me again) the verbal abuse got ....unrelenting. How bad did it get? When he would drive home I would hear the car and feel a full on hyperventilate “run away!” panic attack. He’d come home from college and I’d shake at the sound of his voice. I won’t list all the things he said, but it boiled down to my worthlessness.

That said, he still would seem to love and want my company. He asked me to go on trips, like to Germany and Montreal, and despite the fact I would always swear never to travel with him again afterwards. He gave gifts that showed thought, cards, and moments of sweetness would slip out.

Still, I began to notice something else. When things were good, he was wonderful, but when things were stressful he’d get mean.

Believe it or not, there were a few years I got my hopes up that hehad outgrown it, or worked past it or let go of that childhood rage or...something. He was great, no longer tormenting me. The only teasing was affectionate, without the cruelty. He did little kindnesses, joked, showed concern, and smiled. It was like having the little brother that had been so close to me back. Even at his wedding the two of us kept giggling uncontrollably every time we looked at each other.

It didn’t last. It took a few years, but it started building up all over again. I expect it was the stress he was feeling with a new marriage to someone with rather set ways ,interpersonal conflict on the job, a new house he’d bought, eventually fatherhood, and the initial denial anything was wrong with the nephew followed by the difficult reality. Then there was the fact that had set in that I was no longer the fattest in the family, but he was...something else to hold against me.

So the point is, by the time he had a lot of things eating at him. He was having health problems I worried were stress related, that certainly didn’t help his mood. And there I was, unmarried, no kid, only working with Pop not a “real” job as far as he was concerned (HA!), none of the things weighing on him. Clearly, he would assume, my life must be better. That ignores my lived reality, but he always has ignored my point of view. As far as he was concerned I’d somehow cheated. And if my parents let me get away with it, well then, they must love me more.

So he promises to make my newborn nephew hate me. He picks on my continually. When I have a breathing attack and my heart goes nuts, he says to film it if I’m dying so he can watch it over and over laughing. He refuses to help us more than five minutes on the house extension, shouting “I can’t work with you people!!” And on and on. So why did I not see this final break coming?

He isn’t happy. Even hearing about him through Mom I can tell that. I wish I could help him, but I never could.

What’s strange is the fact I didn’t feel relieved by the break. Not seeing him meant sparing myself the weekly emotional rollar coaster, the walking on eggshells waiting for the moment he’s have a go at me. Instead I fell apart. I used to never cry, but I started then. I’d have meltdowns over it, thinking my life had hit the lowest it could get...the loss of my brother and nephew.

Of course, Pop started getting sick almost exactly then, and six months later he was diagnosed. It’s all been down hill from there! So I guess when you think you’ve hit rock bottom it might just be a bounce along the rock face as you keep plummeting.

My brother is still furious at me, and honestly I would apologize whether I feel I did anything wrong or not if I thought it would do any good. But I know him. If I apologize he would take it as proof he was right. He doesn’t do forgiveness, more like gloating and justification for further jerk behavior. I’m not even exactly sure what he would want me to apologize for.

I’ve tried asking Mom for advice, but he baffles her and she says there is nothing I can do. Pop couldn’t help when he was alive either, not only because he didn’t understand it but he was enduring his own continual insults from my brother. I watched Pop sit there sobbing after a phone call with my brother, while Pop was sick but not diagnosed. That makes me angrier than any of the things my brother ever did to me. Apparently, to this day my brother is angry at Pop for not finishing the extension. Well he died damn it!

The point is, all these experts that lecture how you must go to any length to have a good relationship with your siblings, tell me how the hell I can fix this. All those years of putting up with it, trying to make peace, trying to talk, reflexively saying I was sorry, occasionally arguing back intently and generally enduring sure didn’t help........

#comments #family #my family #sibling relationships #my brother

4 notes · View notes