I felt betrayed. Not because this was the single most deepest conversation I’d ever had with him; but because of all of the years I spent living in denial that I could ever win his approval. – My diary entry from September 7th, 2015 (Beginning of my second year at Uni).
My brother Max was the coolest guy I knew growing up. He had neat gadgets and video games, and awesome clothes. I wanted to be like him, and I remember I always tried to impress him with my knowledge of geeky things like video games and superheros and stuff. A lot of the time, he was like a father figure to me as well. My mom used to call him when I misbehaved, because he would always get through to me. He did so by questioning me with the obvious ‘why would you do that??’ sort of thing.
He got me into World of Warcraft as well. I watched him play and raid, and he’d have me go do chores and get him food from the kitchen. He even let me play on his account a couple of times when he had to go to work. I made my first WoW character and named the troll hunter some variation of Van Helsing.
He was my idol and I followed him around like a puppy.
As I got older, I heard him berating me more often than being anything more than general neutrality. I don’t mean to sound like I expected him to always be nice to me. It was just that I so rarely saw his goofy side and when I did, it was usually at my own expense.
My mom and him argued a lot as well. Their relationship was strained, particularly because of her episodes of schizophrenia and from some pile of growing discontent I might never know about. He shunned her, and by extension, me when she was having her second episode. He learned his lesson from her first episode because we lived with them for a couple of weeks. They fought a lot, and him and his girlfriend at the time fought a lot because of it as well (they would later be married).
When I was put into foster care, I thought something changed. He fought for me. I would later find out that my cousins urged him to do so. I can’t attest to how much he fought for me because he cared, but I can say that he has thrown that “good deed” in my face before. It was in a fit of rage at the time, but I can’t help but sense some truth to that statement. (I might go into that situation in another post)
I had 2 options. My cousins couldn’t take me in because they lived out of state. My aunt was under investigation for bringing me to see my mom when she was still recovering (my mom threatened to call the police if my aunt didn’t give me to my mom, so the court didn’t think she would be able to make the right decisions for me). I had never met my dad. So, really, I only had one. Max. I was excited at the prospect of living with my brother. A sort of custody battle ensued, and Max was named my foster father. He had to buy a house with enough space to give me my own room and it needed to be deemed safe enough for living. I would be visited once a month by a social worker, which wasn’t bad; I didn’t mind my social worker.
But when I moved in with him and his wife, Lucy (We’ll just call her Lucy), I found out very quickly he wasn’t going to be the relaxed big brother I wanted to live with.
That’s not to say I didn’t have a taste of what he was like going into it. I was fine doing chores, any reasonable teen would have chores. I had no issue with babysitting my nieces because I loved my nieces. Though, at the same time, I felt like a full-time nanny. And I pretty much was. They would all leave the house once every other week or so for a few hours and I would spend half of my Saturday cleaning the house. Lucy didn’t want the little tikes to breathe in the chemicals, which I totally understand. I did my own laundry, cleaned my own bathroom, and my own room. I took out the trash, vacuumed the whole house (except my brother’s room), wiped all of the windows down, picked up the toddler toys, and would sing with headphones in because those were my favorite Saturdays. Where I could be myself without feeling like my brother was judging me.
If I slept past 11AM, he would wake me up and get on me about sleeping through half the day. I lived with him for about 3 years and in all that time, I was seriously depraved. Not physically; I had a roof over my head, and I had food in my belly (though 90% of it was some type of TV dinner), and a room without having to share it.
Socially, I had no social life outside of my time in between classes. I lived 20 minutes away from school in the “wealthier” part of the city, so no one wanted to come to my house and I never wanted them to. I wouldn’t want my sister-in-law to judge their cleanliness, or my brother to judge my choice in friends. But I spent almost every weekend surrounded by toddlers. I had almost no privacy, despite having my own room. The door didn’t lock, which was alright, except I’d be sleeping in on a Saturday morning and be woken up by my brother’s teasing about me being lazy.
Have I mentioned that I graduated high school with honors? That was miserable for me. I woke up at 5:50 every morning to walk 20 minutes through peoples’ backyards and hilly roads to the bus and wouldn’t get home until 4:30 when my brother would leave for work. When he would call out sick or the days he’d have off, my heart would sink because that meant my brother would be around. Even with him working, I’d come home and have to babysit for sometimes hours before I could go to my room to relax. When I was in my room, I usually had so much homework, that even if I wanted a social life, it would have been impossible because all I ever wanted to do was be alone or sleep.
I’d fall asleep at 5PM from a long day at school, passed out sitting in my chair and then I’d hear my brother call me out to look after the kids while he played video games.
I’m sorry this is turning into a rant about living with him in general. It just sucked. I understand he worked nights, and I don’t fault him for wanting to relax himself. Lucy has lupus, so she slept during the day at times as well. Again, I’m not tugging at them for what they couldn’t control. I’m just saying it was too much for me too. I’d fall asleep while babysitting my nieces, and I always tried so hard not to because the youngest at the time wasn’t even 1 year old. I tried, and did my best, but like I said, those three years were so draining on me.
With my brother, I started fearing. I avoided him. I was so sensitive to criticism in high school, a simple ‘why didn’t you take out the trash?’ would make me shut down and go into tears. I would shake, and sometimes I felt completely petrified. My mind would blank, and I’d stand there crying like a deer caught in headlights. That would only make things worse, because then he would point it out by saying things like ‘why are you crying right now?’ or ‘stop crying and just listen’. Lucy caught on quickly and had tried to intervene on several occasions. Sometimes they would get into an argument about it because she would defend me when I couldn’t.
He’d get annoyed and dismiss me with a ‘go then, if you’re gonna cry’, and I’d go to my room like a breath of fresh air. He misunderstood me a lot because I hardly ever voiced any opinions with him. They would always, always, end with me regretting the decision to open up to him. If I said I did good on a test, he’d tell me ‘that’s what grade you should be getting’. If I told him I wanted another hair cut, I would get a 20 minute lecture on his feelings about why I should grow my hair out.
Wearing boy clothes wasn’t what I should be wearing. I need to let my hair grow out. I need to get a job. I need to stop letting people call me ‘a boy’ in public. I need to get my permit. I need to know how to balance a budget. I need to know that the real world isn’t like I grew up with and that it’s harsh and it’ll chew me up and spit me out because I’m too sensitive. I need to stop being who I am because who I am is weak.
Yay, go Hannah! you graduated high school! As you should. You graduated with honors! As you should. You were accepted to a university! As you should. And what does this fucker say when I visit him during a summer holiday in between semesters?
He won’t be proud of me until I get a degree. Until I get a career. Who is he to tell me that is what I need to strive for? I shouldn’t go to college because my brother thinks it’s the only way to be accomplished. He tells me that it’s important to get a degree, and then admits in the same sentence that he never went for more than a couple of weeks. I understand that he probably wants what’s best for me, I guess… I’ve been told he does, but he just doesn’t show that he cares. I’ve been told my whole life that I’m loved by people, yet they have beaten me, neglected me, and emotionally tortured me; all the while saying they love me. I don’t need to be told I’m loved. I need to be shown it.
I second-guess everything nice he does for me because I’ve seen who he is when he needs to be told to call his grandmother on her birthday. I’ve heard him groan at being reminded to go out of his way for anyone. I paid for my plane and train tickets every visit I made to his house in my three years at UC, Merced. I paid for his gas to pick me up on several occasions. I bought him groceries, dinner, entertainment, and gifts I thought he would like. My mistake was believing that money and food and gifts would make him nicer to me. It made him smile, sure, and he’d thank me, but then he’d go right back to picking on me like a school bully in the same sentence.
He was paid 800 bucks a month to care for me for the 3 years I lived with him, and I didn’t mind that I never saw any of that money. He never put any of it aside to help me on my way to school, or give me quality-of-life when I lived with him. That’s fine, I never asked for anything from him, it was easier for me to go without than it was to inconvenience him with things like replacing shoes or buying me the cheapest art paper available.
But when I moved out to college, the game changed for the worse. I was expected to disclose my grades as if I needed a reminder that he used to “crack the whip” on my academic success. As if his oversight was why I did well in school. I visited, and helped. With every visit, I did more cleaning than the last.
Again, that’s fine, I don’t mind cleaning. I’m not upset at him about not keeping up with things at times. I get that life can make things like that difficult.
My issue, is how much hypocrisy he embodies. He only shows that he cares when it benefits him. He’s conditioned to expect that I’ll give in to his pleading to pay for things. I’ll admit, I enabled him, many times. That was my mistake, and I take responsibility for feeding the birds. But that’s not to say he hasn’t extended my instinct for self-preservation in needing to please others to encompass other aspects of his life.
Financially, I’ve ‘loaned’ him money. It was agreed upon at the time that I would be paid back, and I never was. That’s whatever, I’m smart enough to know now that I’ll never see that money back. I know that if I give anyone money ever again, that it will be a gift and not a loan because it’s too much hassle to deal with. Money isn’t everything, and I’m not going to hound him for teaching me that lesson. But on a grander scale, he’s asking me for money. Me, the full-time college student with no job and starting at a disadvantage in support. He’s 13 years older than me, with a career and higher standard of living. I’m not salty, I’m just sitting here like, “You kidding me, right now? This is the best punchline for a joke.” It’s such an odd phrase to say that I’ve saved Max’s butt when I was in college with no job. Anyways, I’m going on a tangent.
I’m always expecting to be criticized, just as he’s always expecting me to bow down to him in service. And for him to say he’s not proud of me or my accomplishments so far? It baffles me. I was so desperate for approval from him that even if he said it but didn’t mean it, I would have been happy. I’ve almost died, twice, because people were at their worst. And being able to keep any sense of hope that human decency still exists is an accomplishment.
No wonder I cut myself in high school, and cried myself to sleep several times a month. I was suffocating from my own brother’s lack of human decency. Having the courage to move half the state of California to a city I had never been in, had no friends going to, and no support system to help me was an accomplishment. My brother taught me shitty lessons about life, and over the years, I’ve realized how much of a child he really is himself. He’s selfish, and proud, and judgmental, and those are the things I’ve come to realize I can’t stand in people.
He grew up poor, I grew up poor. His dad and my dad weren’t in the picture, we’ve both stumbled, been ridiculed for things, and have both experienced what it’s like to not have to worry where your next meal will come from. The difference between us is that I’m not going to judge someone because of their culture, heritage, income, style, or temperament. I’m not going to refuse food because “I ate that yesterday and I can’t eat the same meal twice in one week”. I’m not going to stand on my family’s shoulders just to make myself feel better, and I sure as hell am not going to belittle someone else’s achievements. There’s being stern, or hard on someone, and then there’s a level of dickishness that holds no grounds whatsoever.
He could have said any word of encouragement, anything, and I would have been fine with it. But to tell me that getting into a college is nothing special, or having the gonads to tell me I should be getting straight A’s in college when he himself quit after 2 weeks because it was ‘too difficult’? I can’t stand that kind of hypocrisy. It’s immature to wave that amount of arrogance around and call it advice.
My time watching him judge people, myself included… It’s too long, and he has no intention of humbling himself, or admitting that he has any semblance of compassion. I spent too many years digging Max out of financial ruin, and now I’m suffering the consequences of my compassion. I did it for my nieces, not him.
So, to Max, I say thank you for the lessons you taught me, but your kids are the only reason why I’m involved with your life. I love them unconditionally, and would rather enable you than to jeopardize their childhood for my disappointment in you.
Hannah-radical 