“I don’t want to be tough
and I don’t want to be proud
I don’t need to be fixed and I certainly don’t need to be found
I’m not lost…”
-Kelly Clarkson
The other day my father called and it evolved into (as it nearly always does) a twenty minute lecture about my brother and the things I don’t understand and the things my brother can’t help and without necessarily saying it (this time) the many ways I could be a better sister than I am.
For the duration of the call, I was annoyed. I hung up and felt a bit like shit.
It’s odd sometimes when it seems that my relationship with my dad doesn’t really stand on its own feet. It revolves around talk of my children (the one thing we completely agree on is the utter fabulosity of my girls - and they are wicked cool) or my brother. We no longer tread into discussing my stepson, as the last time my dad dared go there, it morphed into all the things I’m doing wrong and then my throwing back at him that perhaps he was a poor choice of people to dare talk to me about how to be a good parent. It wasn’t pretty.
My brother, as I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, has this plethora of health concerns including a recent discovery that apparently was caught on an MRI years ago, but the docs never told my parents (”Hey folks, your son just ain’t right. FYI.”). This latest discovery has my dad and his wife on a Google frenzy trying to find out all they can regarding people with this type of ailment - which is the reason why I’m being deliberately vague. Of course, all the literature they are finding thus far deems that all the things that are wrong or annoying about my brother are all completely out of his control. He can’t help it. None of it is his fault, and damn you for not being more tolerant.
I’m not sure how to respond to that.
I mean, you grow up a certain way forming relationships with people and it’s hard to change on a dime because all of the sudden someone tells you, “Well, that’s not their fault. They can’t help but to be that way.” When I think of my brother and my childhood, I remember his constant hospital stays, I remember him chasing me and a friend into the bathroom with a knife when I was nine, I see the scar on my leg from when he stabbed me with a ball point pen because he was pissed at me, I see other kids laughing at him in the hallways for being different, I see him throwing gum in my hair because he was trying to impress the kid who lived next door, I see him clasping his hands together and then slamming them on the top of my head because I dared disagree. I see him tattling on me. And even as recently as last year, I see him tell me that I’m a cold bitch who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about him or anyone else in my family.
My brother has a temper. He flies off the handle for no apparent reason and will swear on a stack of bibles that he’s been wronged - and he believes it. He’s never had many friends. He can’t read social cues. Right now, he’s on a medication that has made him gain an absurd amount of weight - he’s barely even recognizable as the same person. He thinks Doritos are a food group (which doesn’t help that medication related weight gain). He lies about anything and everything. He is desperate to please people - but not family. Us, well, screw us. It’s the people who don’t have to like him that he wants to impress.
And the thing is, I just don’t like him.
My dad and his wife tell me often, they don’t think he’ll live twenty more years. He’s had so many close calls - blood clots, and weird random medication imbalances that could have gone way wrong but were caught in time.
And I still just can’t bring myself to like him.
And he’s going to die someday, and I know that I won’t be able to fix it or change it. And it really makes you think. Yet, I still can’t get myself to be a better sister. I don’t know how. Knowing all of this is wrong with him doesn’t make it any easier to be around him. I’m not sure how to deal with that.
