Who Visited You?

One of the things that I am working on in therapy is not suppressing things and not running from anything. I’m learning to confront things & to address things and to also have no expectations for how it will be received. I’m learning to just be ok with however things turn out & to learn how to operate around it. First, it is totally new for me to address anything at all. I usually suppress it, close my mouth, & just keep it moving. The first time I ever found the courage to do the opposite of that was just a couple of weeks ago at work and now I did it yesterday. This is such hard work. It is a lot. So here’s the thing. I’ve always been treated differently in my family. My older siblings followed how my parents treated me. I was always shunned & off to the side. They never defended me against things my father would say. My oldest brother actually repeated some of the vitriol my father would tell them to my husband to show what was wrong with me & why I didn’t measure up. He seems to have forgotten that he had these discussions with my husband. I know that I was always a topic of conversation because my husband’s now wife came to me & said she knew that what she heard about me couldn’t be true just based on what she saw. I was a young parent, raising my son with my husband, had a job, & was level headed so she had to come talk to me on her own to see for herself & she saw that what was said about me wasn’t true. She was actually instrumental in why my relationship with my oldest brother changed & why he started seeing me in a different light. It’s also why she and I are so close now. She saw me for who I really am not for the caricature they made me out to be. But here’s the thing, it shouldn’t have taken an outside party for my brother to see that what they were told by my parents & how I was seen wasn’t true. Flash forward to the pandemic, my oldest brother and I talk regularly almost every day. He always checks in on me. I’m truly appreciative. He also has always looked out for my son. He’s the only one of my oldest siblings who does this. I’m appreciative. Now as I’m going through therapy and addressing my suppressed traumas & the harm that has been done, one thing that has boiled up since then has been a level of resentment that I feel towards my oldest brother & I found myself avoiding his calls & not wanting to talk to him as much. So I first bring this up to my husband & how with me now learning to be someone who speaks up and addresses things rather than being who I was which is a person who stayed silent & kept it moving that I need to address this so that I can deal with it & move on. What I’m learning in this process if that although you may suppress things & act like it doesn’t exist, that isn’t a cure. That issue still remains & forms that cloud over you. You become a prisoner to it. So now I’m about addressing things. My husband suggests that I talk to my sister-in-law first so that she can explain to my brother and be kind of like a mediator & I could get the response I am looking for. I bring this topic up in my therapy session & my therapist says that this isn’t the best route to go & that I also can’t avoid this discussion. While our relationship is better, it isn’t a real one & it is manufactured because I’m holding back what I feel instead of addressing it. He also says that going through my sister in law is again manufacturing the result that I want & I should talk directly to my brother & I have to be ok with how it goes & know how to operate moving forward & then I can have a separate conversation with my sister-in-law. To be honest, I told my therapist that I was afraid of how it would turn out but I was more afraid that he would take it out on my son & cut him off because of what I say. My therapist told me I need to confront this which again is something I am learning to do. And that’s what I did. I spoke to him and said that I like where we are right now. I like how our relationship has changed. I don’t want him to be mad at me and cut me off & I also don’t want him to change how he is with his nephew. But I want him to know what has come up for me as a result of my therapy. And that is how he wasn’t always the way he is now to me & how he let what my dad said about me influence how he treated me & how he excluded me & how he was different towards me then. That it hurt & did me harm. The response was actually what I expected. One of my brother’s characteristics is he tries to be a mirror image of my dad. He appears to be humble & nerdy but he has this level of arrogance just like my dad. I knew what I was up against going in to this discussion. So he responded by saying he doesn’t know what I was talking about. His tone & words made it seem like I made no sense & was making stuff up. And he said he treats all siblings equally & he loves all of us & families go through good & bad times & he buys us all gifts like how he bought us funko pops last year & he never treated me differently & he never said anything demeaning. There was absolutely no acknowledgement. None. And then when I said my dad still does what he did to me when I was younger & that he even does it to my son, that was questioned. I gave the most recent example of how my dad asked if my son can do what my nephew, my sister’s son, does with electronics & how my nephew can do this, this, this & what can my son do. The response to that was oh that’s just dad, he loves everyone. And then he talked about how he carries the burden of keeping our family together. And I said it was always he & I who carried that burden on our shoulders up until recently. That was dismissed with a no it was him. And then he came out of his face & brought up October 1999. He said remember when you did your thing back then? Who visited you? Would I have done that if I treated you differently? And that stung a bit because he was actually talking about my suicide attempt something I have literally never discussed or brought up with him in conversation since 1999. And he made it seem like that was just something I did just to do kind of like how we just take a shit or go get ice cream. That’s what he legit reduced my suicide attempt to. Just a thing. And then he made it seem like he was an angel for visiting me when I was in the mental hospital afterwards. So again shades of my dad from 1999 who I will never forget upon his first visit to me in that same hospital said I would not be there if I had just listened, obeyed, followed orders. That was actually the same exact words my brother had used in conversation with my husband back in 2003 where in discussing me he told my husband, see her problem is she doesn’t listen, obey, & follow orders. If she would just do what my dad says, everything would be ok. This was the same exact person I was now on the phone doing a video chat with in February 2022. Knowing that I am currently in therapy, he found it acceptable to bring up my suicide attempt & him visiting me in the hospital in 1999 as being an example of how he was merciful & this perfect being. It was like talking to & staring at my dad. And I wasn’t surprised by it. I’m ok with it because I finally spoke up about what the treatment I received did. Although it was dismissed & not acknowledged, I can move forward because I put that bug in his ear & it is out there & now these feelings aren’t just in my head. And also now he is going to have that it his head, because he can’t escape what he was like. They can act like these things didn’t happen & like I’m making things up but I am not. And I’ve been crying so much because like it has always been for me in every aspect of my life, I’m going to have to do this all on my own without their support. I know I will never get what I need from them & it is hard to finally fully come to terms with this fact. They are at the root of my issues. All that I’ve been through in life came from them. But I have to heal and move forward in life. I can’t be tied down by it anymore. I need to free myself. I don’t need their acknowledgment or apologies. I just need to heal little by little. It’s okay. We left our conversation on good terms. I’ve already forgiven how my siblings including him have treated me. I know how to operate moving forward & to keep our relationship where it is but to never get too close. That’s just the way it has to be. That’s our authentic relationship & I’m ok with that. I look forward to confronting the next obstacle in this journey to becoming the best & whole version of me.