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Dec. 1st, 2010 09:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cblj_backupLast night I had a dream that I was back in grad school, but instead of studying theatre I was on some kind of bizarre polar expedition involving studying ice cores, which I only know about because of Eureka and The X-Files. I was working with my brother, and at one point we could see a storm rising on the horizon. There was a science station nearby, conveniently, so we ran inside to take shelter. We were in a room with glass windows -- I know, I know -- and when we saw the storm blowing in towards us, someone yelled "drop!"
We all huddled up against the wall so that when the windows blew in -- as they indeed did -- we wouldn't get covered in snow and showered in glass. The storm didn't last for very long, but when it lifted my brother wasn't in the room. I started searching the complex for him, because Mum would be pissed if I lost him, but nobody would page him and the complex was huge, and odds were good he was out in the snow somewhere, snowed to death by the storm.
Thanks, subconscious. Because what I needed on top of an asshole for a brother was guilt that I couldn't kick some sense through his head and turn him into someone who's not an asshole.
My brother is significantly younger than I am, and as the eldest child of a single parent a lot of his upbringing fell to me; this was complicated by his Asperger's Syndrome, which went undiagnosed until 2002 or thereabouts. We knew he was developmentally delayed from a young age, but we didn't understand the social implications of his condition for a long time, and he has always refused to learn about it or learn coping strategies to deal with it. Which is great, for him; he does exactly what he wants and doesn't care about the consequences for himself or others. (Let me be clear: people with AS aren't jerks by default. My brother is a jerk who happens to have AS, which makes a good excuse.)
We will be estranged three years this Christmas (yeah, that was a fun Christmas). He fell in love with a woman even less mentally stable than he is, and decided to move to another country to be with her, despite not having legal immigration status, job experience, or the ability to get his medication. He also converted to the Jehovah's Witnesses, and normally I wouldn't count that against him except that a) they have this thing about blood transfusions, which he has needed in the past for his chronic medical condition, and b) he is such a dick about it. I've had a few communications with him; a couple were asking for money, though the most recent ones usually just tell me I'm going to hell -- for refusing to give him money, one assumes. He also defaulted on his student loans, leaving my mother (who cosigned for him) to pay them. Very Christian of him.
We had the whole big trauma, three years ago: an intervention that lasted two days, tears, fake cheer over Christmas, family fights both verbal and at one point physical; the only good thing about any of it was that my teenage sister wasn't there. My relationship with my brother ended the minute he threw me into a wall because he wanted to search my room for something I supposedly stole from him. That was game over, for me. I spent the next six months watching my mother have a nervous breakdown over him (she got over it) and telling her no, you know what, this was the one thing on which I could not play therapist for her, and I didn't want to hear about him, and she was just going to have to live with that.
It's not super dramatic. He's not 'dead to me' or anything. He's perfectly alive and aside from being a shiftless asshole apparently doing fine; he still comes first in Mum's eyes, but I've been living with that for twenty-three years, so I'm used to it. I don't talk to him, because he's a terrible human being, and I don't want to hear about him, because it hurts. Maybe that's repression, but it beats the alternative. And yeah, sometimes I dream about him, but at least now I dream about losing him and not about having violent fistfights with him like I used to. That's probably good, right? Anger to grief.
Anyway. I don't need reassurance or comfort -- I know who I am and what I feel, and I know that his leaving wasn't my fault, so this guilt is misplaced. And I know it's because Christmas is coming and I'm going home to Texas for it, which is where it all went down. But it's one of those things you work through, and in a week I'll have forgotten about the dream.
So in short: I had a dream, I wrote about it, I worked through it, I'm good now. Aren't you lucky I share this with all of you? :P
We all huddled up against the wall so that when the windows blew in -- as they indeed did -- we wouldn't get covered in snow and showered in glass. The storm didn't last for very long, but when it lifted my brother wasn't in the room. I started searching the complex for him, because Mum would be pissed if I lost him, but nobody would page him and the complex was huge, and odds were good he was out in the snow somewhere, snowed to death by the storm.
Thanks, subconscious. Because what I needed on top of an asshole for a brother was guilt that I couldn't kick some sense through his head and turn him into someone who's not an asshole.
My brother is significantly younger than I am, and as the eldest child of a single parent a lot of his upbringing fell to me; this was complicated by his Asperger's Syndrome, which went undiagnosed until 2002 or thereabouts. We knew he was developmentally delayed from a young age, but we didn't understand the social implications of his condition for a long time, and he has always refused to learn about it or learn coping strategies to deal with it. Which is great, for him; he does exactly what he wants and doesn't care about the consequences for himself or others. (Let me be clear: people with AS aren't jerks by default. My brother is a jerk who happens to have AS, which makes a good excuse.)
We will be estranged three years this Christmas (yeah, that was a fun Christmas). He fell in love with a woman even less mentally stable than he is, and decided to move to another country to be with her, despite not having legal immigration status, job experience, or the ability to get his medication. He also converted to the Jehovah's Witnesses, and normally I wouldn't count that against him except that a) they have this thing about blood transfusions, which he has needed in the past for his chronic medical condition, and b) he is such a dick about it. I've had a few communications with him; a couple were asking for money, though the most recent ones usually just tell me I'm going to hell -- for refusing to give him money, one assumes. He also defaulted on his student loans, leaving my mother (who cosigned for him) to pay them. Very Christian of him.
We had the whole big trauma, three years ago: an intervention that lasted two days, tears, fake cheer over Christmas, family fights both verbal and at one point physical; the only good thing about any of it was that my teenage sister wasn't there. My relationship with my brother ended the minute he threw me into a wall because he wanted to search my room for something I supposedly stole from him. That was game over, for me. I spent the next six months watching my mother have a nervous breakdown over him (she got over it) and telling her no, you know what, this was the one thing on which I could not play therapist for her, and I didn't want to hear about him, and she was just going to have to live with that.
It's not super dramatic. He's not 'dead to me' or anything. He's perfectly alive and aside from being a shiftless asshole apparently doing fine; he still comes first in Mum's eyes, but I've been living with that for twenty-three years, so I'm used to it. I don't talk to him, because he's a terrible human being, and I don't want to hear about him, because it hurts. Maybe that's repression, but it beats the alternative. And yeah, sometimes I dream about him, but at least now I dream about losing him and not about having violent fistfights with him like I used to. That's probably good, right? Anger to grief.
Anyway. I don't need reassurance or comfort -- I know who I am and what I feel, and I know that his leaving wasn't my fault, so this guilt is misplaced. And I know it's because Christmas is coming and I'm going home to Texas for it, which is where it all went down. But it's one of those things you work through, and in a week I'll have forgotten about the dream.
So in short: I had a dream, I wrote about it, I worked through it, I'm good now. Aren't you lucky I share this with all of you? :P
