I sent him the following:
“I apologize for even flirting with the idea that we should have tried spending time in the same space. I don't like or trust you and I know literally everything you do or offer is in bad faith or looking for leverage or you feel put upon. I never wished to rely on you for anything, and were dad not part of this equation you never would have heard from me. I won't fuck that up again. Next time, just tell me to go fuck myself. It's some bitch shit to say ‘that's north and we're going south’ lol.”
I was not “lol”-ing. I also sent him $100 for the inconvenience of having to exist around me for 3 days, detailing what I ate or drank, and any gas he burned carting my dad and me to our activities. I’ve discussed my brother a handful of times in the past, mostly after he’s been considerably more explicit in the show of his true nature. I started initially thinking he had a “piddling sincerity” that kept him more honest to our upbringing. I’m no longer entertaining that idea. He’s now working to solidify and protect his judgmental and pretentious posture. It’s the identity he thinks best hides his inner shivering child at the prospect of addressing his deeper issues.
That would be some pretty crazy and baseless speculation if I knew nothing about him. If I didn’t know the years he spent playing the battered-wife in service to our abusive mom. If I didn’t know how he reacted to the last things I wrote about him calling out his proud expression of pathological bravado. If I didn’t just live through 3 days of the fakest high-strung performance to piece together “respectable adult” verses “running screaming blind through the darkness.”
My brother is starting to remind me of my uncle George. If something is just a little off or inconvenient or not in their wheelhouse, a switch flips and “fuck it” is engaged, and everyone around them is to blame. My uncle used to snap at my grandmother about it while she was serving him food or otherwise taking care of him or the house she allowed him to live in indefinitely. My brother, say, when he can’t figure out how to use his GPS in order to pick us up after a concert, will spend an hour attempting to make it sound reasonable that we should walk 5 miles to meet him wherever he’s decided to stop and tantrum or burn out. He’s 33.
I feel like we need to say a few things about hospitality. In theory, when someone let’s you stay with them, cooks for you, let’s you drink a beer or otherwise plug into their space, they’re being hospitable. Unfortunately, for people like my brother, he’s so in his own world, you can feel every ounce of his resentment that you’re there. He’ll carry on in that extra way like “we’re all friends here” or you can “help yourself to whatever’s in the kitchen,” but it’s also daring you ignore the looks, commentary, and subtext.
I feel a little bit like the tortured protagonist in a horror scenario who has like a dozen real things happen to her, but she can’t explain it, and given her own stress or situation she sounds crazier and crazier when all she wants is to be seen and believed by her loved ones. I promise you, it’s not just because I’m so full of hate or really wish for you to feel one way or another about him. I was extremely unwise in allowing myself to be around him and have walked away lesser from it.
It feels like such an own-goal. This trip has been in the works for a literal year. What happens? We get to the main event late and miss the first band. Am I able to maintain perspective and appreciate all the other bands I saw that day and the awesome time I had with my dad? Absolutely. Did we get Joshed like the Bears got Grosssmaned? Absolutely. It was preventable. I knew I wanted nothing to do with his perception of time or severe inability to prioritize or consider anything beyond himself. I was in the car anyway.
I almost feel like with my text it’s punching down. It was in retaliation for his incredibly disingenuous statement to be sure. You’re about to hop on the road for 5 hours for a mini California vacation. You just have to get there and eat. You have the extra 20 minutes to save me $25. I was clearly open to paying you for being so put out. God knows the entire fucking year we’ve had to prepare for this time together we couldn’t have planned this any better.
My Uber driver was from Nicaragua. I asked him if he got along with his siblings. He just got back from an extended vacation with one of his brothers and regaled me with all of the excellent times he’s had with his gigantic family that all travel and spend time together. He and his wife lost a child 15 years ago, and it sparked in him a desire to refute the joke that is life and dive into as many experiences as he could get with the rest of his kids and wife.
In a world that made sense, I’d still be at my brother’s right now, perhaps watching his cats, instead of him paying to have them boarded up while they’re gone. But, you know, because I’m “lesser” or “not to be trusted” or whatever boogeyman I’ve morphed into for him over the years, it’s ridiculous and laughable that the idea would even be entertained. I’m fundamentally not worthy of whatever he feels he’s created for himself with his codependent extremely high anxiety wife, “ridiculous number” paying job, and future world travel plans.
He has the picture of what he thinks everyone should want or need, but he has no perspective and he’s not real. I didn’t need the “better couple’s communication” book left out on the coffee table to start predicting the nature of their impending cracks when they can’t nerd their way through buried resentments that will build over time. I told my dad to not let Josh get away with downplaying things when he inevitably goes to him in confidence.
I don’t know what the best way to talk about that thick sticks-in-your-throat layer of things left unsaid that just carries into all of the interactions. If he asks you something, it’s because he’s already prepared to say whatever he wanted to on the topic. If, and this has gotten worse, I’m talking, he’ll just interject in a loud way whatever he wanted to say that doesn’t even acknowledge what I was talking about or was talking at all. He’s like attempting to erase me from his psyche in increasingly obvious and awkward ways.
I’ve been attempting to erase him too. I think the only way we managed to get along on the last layover in Vegas was because his wife was out of town, he literally had nothing to do, wished to drink, and I had already started drinking and was open to do more. We then proceeded to talk to other people the entire time at the bar and only had perhaps 10 minutes of fluff on the ride back to the airport. That’s about all we’re good for, and probably after this last round, even less than that.
It’s easier to believe that at least things are “kinda even” or “okay” when you’re not forced to engage with them. Everything that’s ever annoyed the fuck out of me about him or that I’ve alluded to, but hadn’t reached boiling points yet, came as a flood with each bump in the day. He’s literally still the instrument my mom engineered to torture me, and he’s completely unaware and disregarding of that fact. So much so that I can literally do and say nothing but “please” and “thank you” and he can’t hear me, or if I ask for a ride, I’m asking for a dam to break.
“You know Nicholas, I’ve been going out of my way for you this whole weekend!”
I’ll never unhear how he said that to me years ago. So much condescending vitriol like I was slime and he was deigning to carry me along. Like I asked him for anything. Like I needed a fucking thing from him. You know, as the “good son” for some empty semblance of “family” or in service to our father. This cunt. I’d bet money that the same tone and sentiment has been ringing in his head like a nagging bell the whole time I was around. Who does he think I am? He doesn’t think I’m anyone. I’m an incredibly cool, smart, and hardworking person. It’s not a secret how I learned to perceive how deep me being me can really cut someone. I can consciously be silent or polite and people like him will go out of their way to ensure I know I’m a burden and out of my place. Fucking Colorado trip comes to mind, “Nick must be miserable walking up this mountain…” yada yada. Great mind-read to set an unnecessary and incorrect tone. Thanks!
I don’t wish to get locked into some pathetic sibling squabble. I’ve been comfortable since as long as I’ve been cutting out shitty people from my life to continue doing so. I wanted to write about this today so I can digest the muck I’ve been swallowing and carry on the next few days focused on the things I planned to continue enjoying. The thing he’s severely lacking I dish to him like a sledge hammer to the head. What he could provide or trade on in more civil ways he doesn’t have the self-respect or awareness to mine. We’re on two different planets, and I look way too salty and spiteful, as though he’s not just another addict offering me an opportunity to over do it on rage-a-hol.
I feel like my family is cursed. We have intellectual assets, money, a certain degree of ambition and potential, but for the love of everything holy can’t figure out how to sit in the here and now and just fucking enjoy it. That’s my biggest sin in all of this. I’ve literally been enjoying myself nonstop for almost the entire year, and instead of just veering past the predictable unfixable problem, I stepped right in. Stupid, Nick. just like with Byron’s kid. You can’t fix these people, nor do you have a desire to. They don’t wish to get better, and you will always be the considerably bigger problem to them if they even conceive of a shared dynamic or responsibility. Cut them off harder, faster, and run as though you’re fleeing a cult.
I made myself small. I haven’t done that so aggressively before. With the Byron’s kid situation that was some overlap of many things breaking down over years. With this, I just don’t interact with Josh. I don’t visit him. I don’t call or text out of the blue. He wished me happy birthday 4 days late this last year. Like, fuck that guy. He’s a fucking asshole. I’m a fucking asshole too, but I won’t pretend to play nice and at least I’ll tell you why I hate you or that I think you’re a bitch.
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