Chapter 19

When we were small children, my brothers and I all got along fairly well.  We never deliberately fought and could enjoy activities together on a frequent basis.  It was of paramount importance to Mother that her children all be friends, and she glowingly praised our friendships whenever she could, even when it was no longer true.  At the time, I believed my brothers and I were all friends.  Now, looking back on it, I am not sure if we were friends, or if we just did not outright hate each other and it looked like friendship compared to bullying and the abusive manipulation so pervasive in other areas of our lives.

When we were particularly young, my brothers were closer to each other than I was with either of them.  One factor was the gendered division of toys.  Younger Brother had a habit of harassing me away from the Legos whenever I attempted to play with them, usually by taking them away so he could “show me how to do it right”.  It was something he learned by watching Father, and it both stroked his ego and allowed him to avoid sharing.  Since the Legos were technically his and Older Brother’s, his selfishness was parentally sanctioned.

We would play video games together, but most of the games were single player.  Mother and Father decided that if more than one of us wanted to play at the same time, it would be most fair if the controller was handed off when all lives were gone and it was game over. This was in the days before game saves of any sort, let alone autosaves and games that were intended to take upwards of forty hours to complete. You either won the game in a single run, or failed somewhere along the way and had to start over.

Younger Brother was the most naturally skilled at video games, so when it was his turn, he would play for a significant amount of time before handing off the controller.  It takes me time and practice to get good at a game, so I would die significantly faster and have to hand over the controller before I could get the hang of it.  As he got more practice and I got less, the difference in play time became greater and greater, until I finally walked away, sick of waiting interminably to have a frustratingly short amount of time playing the game.  When I objected based on the difference in play time, I was told to not be selfish, and to hand over the controller because my turn was over.

When we were all fast heading into puberty, the dynamic between my brothers and I changed.  Older Brother and I found we had a great many interests in common, and we started becoming close friends.  It happened very naturally and effortlessly.

Younger Brother threw a fit, declaring passionately that I had stolen Older Brother away from him.  They had been friends first, and I had obviously stepped in and deliberately plotted to end their friendship so I could be friends with Older Brother instead.

To say I was absolutely baffled by the idea that someone cannot be friends with two people at the same time would be an understatement.  I was also confused and hurt that he thought I was capable of plotting against him in such a horrible manner.  Still, no matter what me, Older Brother, or our parents said, Younger Brother was absolutely certain, and absolutely inconsolable for months.  Older Brother could not possibly have decided on his own that he wanted to do different things that Younger Brother was not interested in.  It was the result of an evil plot carried out by their sister.

As Younger Brother isolated himself from us in his self-inflicted victimhood, Older Brother and I became very close.  We had a great deal in common, ranging from an interest in metaphysics, to science fiction, science, space exploration, hiking, camping, role-playing games, and much more.  Most of our friends were friends in common, and we spent a great deal of our free time together.  Throughout our teen years, by all appearances that friendship grew and strengthened.

When Older Brother started dating Diana, he introduced me to her as his best friend.  I thought he was my best friend as well, but now I know better.  As a young adult Older Brother claimed to see the same problems in our parents that I did.  I thought he understood, and wanted to have a different kind of life, one based on honesty and trust instead of selfishness and manipulation.  Apparently, he was simply better than our parents at telling me what I wanted to hear.

When I moved out of my parent’s home, I thought Older Brother was a rock.  I thought he was the person I could count on to watch my back while I watched his.  Instead, as the friendship between Diana and I strengthened, his friendship with me completely unraveled.  Despite that, he never gave me any indication of how he felt.  In the end I was completely blindsided by exactly how wrong I was about the nature of our relationship.  He maintained the illusion of friendship while engaging in the same sort of passive-aggressive, manipulative, and deceitful behaviors he had learned from Father, but with one major difference.  He was smart enough to maintain consistent lies and deceptions.

There were innumerable signs of Older Brother’s growing resentment, and innumerable occasions when his actions accurately reflected selfish and manipulative motivations, but both Diana and I believed he was better than that.  We believed his apologies and excuses, and his declarations that he was trying, that he was working to do better.  We believed he wanted to improve himself and learn to be the honest and kind person he said he wanted to be.  We believed those things because we loved and trusted him, and there were no obvious contradictions in his lies and deceptions to throw up red flags.  That meant his deceptions went unnoticed until he decided he was done with us.  With the clarity of hindsight, it is easy to look back and recognize his deceptions.  It is easy to see that the more Diana and I pressured him to be honest and straightforward, to grow and learn along with us, the harder he had to work to maintain the deceptions, and the more he resented us both.  It is easy to see in retrospect, but when in the middle of it, it was anything but obvious.

In order to have a healthy relationship, all people involved need to have a desire for a healthy relationship, free of manipulation and abuse.  They must all be honest, straightforward, and willing to do the work involved in changing problematic behavior and cultivating genuine respect and companionship.  Diana and I wanted that, but Older Brother did not want that.

Up until Older Brother left, I was fully invested in our friendship.  I used the coping mechanisms I had learned growing up and did my best to ignore everything he did that was problematic, from his drinking, to his sometimes violent outbursts, to his growing inability to be anything but a killjoy when Diana and I attempted to include him in what should have been fun group outings.  I did not realize, did not want to see, that Older Brother had embraced the problematic habits we had been taught by our parents.  I trusted him, and I believed he was honest.  I believed we were friends.

I could not have been more mistaken.

As the friendship between Diana and I grew, Older Brother became less and less inclined to do anything fun with us, and more and more often went out of his way to ruin things if we did talk him into joining us.  Diana and I mistakenly believed this was due to depression, anxiety, and irritability, so we were more forgiving of his behavior than he ever deserved.

The first year all three of us were living together, Older Brother decided he wanted to learn to play the guitar.  Diana sang in a band before meeting us, and I had always wanted to learn how to play the drums, so at his instigation the three of us bought instruments and plotted the potential of having a band together.  I do not know if he ever practiced his guitar, but he immediately grumbled and complained about the drum set in the livingroom, and was unbearably sour whenever I attempted to practice.  He went out of his way to make sure the band would never actually happen, and that the money spent on the instruments was a waste.

I did not know it at the time, but Older Brother also started complaining to Diana about my status as a roommate.  As she and I became friends, he decided I should not be there, but he wanted Diana to be the one to kick me out.  Following in Father’s footsteps, he was practicing subtle emotional manipulation in an attempt to get what he wanted.  He did not want to damage his ability to manipulate me by damaging our relationship, so he attempted to manipulate someone else into kicking me out for him.  As an added bonus, if Diana had kicked me out, it probably would have ruined Diana’s and my relationship, an important step in isolating both her and me for future abuse.  Thankfully, Diana’s sense of justice meant that if he wanted me out of the apartment, he needed to be honest and tell me himself.  She was not going to do his dirty work for him.

As Older Brother degenerated into a walking sour attitude with a general unwillingness to communicate or be friendly, Diana and I began doing things without him.  Even when he did tag along from time to time, we usually ended up ignoring his presence because he did not add anything good by being there.  He was inevitably grumpy and complained constantly about whatever he could think of to make the experience as miserable as possible for everyone involved.

Still, I was accustomed to such patterns set by Father, who did exactly that on the rare occasions the family went on outings he had not personally chosen.  That made it easy to ignore, as I had with Father.  Diana was invested in their relationship, and thought they were in love.  There were so, so many times both of us should have noticed, should have realized, that his presence was toxic for both of us, but the ability of the human mind to excuse things is astounding.

Diana and I started a business together, selling beaded jewelry that we made.  Older Brother mimicked support when we first started.  When Diana sat down with him and asked if he thought this was worth investing in, he gave it his enthusiastic approval.  I suspect he expected us to immediately fail, because a short time later he proceeded to grumble about everything we had to do to make the business work, just like he had with the band idea.  About a year in, when we were fully invested, both financially and emotionally, Older Brother finally directly admitted to Diana that he did not want her doing the business, especially with me, and told her that she should shut it down.

At that time, Diana and I were seeing a great deal of return on our efforts and expected to be able to afford a storefront in the next few years.  A lot of money was invested, we had events lined up, and Diana and I were having a wonderful time doing all of it.  He was bouncing from temp job to temp job, when he was employed at all, so he could not be consistently relied upon for paying many bills.  It would have been crazy for us to close the business at that point.  Diana told him that since he was not honest about how he felt up front, he could live with the consequences now.  We were not going to stop when things were going well, just because he was drowning in negativity and wanted us to fail.

After that, Older Brother no longer gave the pretense of support.  When we expected him to contribute or help in any way, even if it was just to pass a pair of jewelry pliers across the livingroom, he made it clear he felt put out and was extremely unhappy about it.  He started actively avoiding us, and frequently attended parties a couple hour drive away, parties where he had access to drugs and alcohol without the inconvenience of our disapproval at his inebriated behavior.

One day when I was home, Older Brother sat down with Diana in the kitchen nook to have a serious conversation about the nature of their relationship.  He asked if she minded if their relationship was an open one, because he had been hooking up with a girl at those parties.

While Diana is no stranger to the concept of polyamorous relationships, or open relationships, those things need to be discussed when entering a relationship, not two years after getting married, and especially not after cheating has already occurred.  All relationships require a foundation of honesty to be healthy, but for poly relationships complete honesty is essential for them to work at all.  It is poly if all people involved know exactly what is happening, up front, and consent to it.  It is cheating if one or more people involved are doing things behind someone else’s back or despite lack of consent in the relationship.

Older Brother was visibly affronted when Diana said no.  Their relationship was based on monogamy, and he did not get her consent about changing the nature of their relationship before hooking up with another person, so his indiscretions qualified as cheating.  She had no interest in changing the basis of their relationship to open, so any further extra-marital relations he had lacked her consent and were also cheating. If he wanted their relationship to be based on polyamory, best practice would have been to say so from the start.  The second-best time would have been before they married.  At the very least, he should have talked to her about it before stepping out.  Asking for approval after the fact was just insult to injury.

It was obvious that Older Brother expected Diana to fully accept this new arrangement with no argument and no complaints.  He started into gaslighting, declared that she was being unenlightened and prudish by insisting on monogamy, and completely obfuscated the issues of honesty and integrity.  Diana did not budge, and finally he gave a grudging apology for cheating on her.  She was angry and asked if he wanted to break up.  He insisted he still wanted to be married to her, and they agreed to try and make the relationship work.

Diana and I took care of most of the bills for the apartment, but the power bill was on Older Brother to pay.  He was so unreliable that aside from his variable rent contribution, the power bill had become the sole responsibility and contribution Diana demanded of him in our mutual household.  Somewhere during his extra-marital dalliances, Older Brother stopped paying the power bill and intercepted the notices of nonpayment so we would not find out.

Diana and I had pet fancy goldfish which we had gotten the first year we lived together.  In the apartment we had at the time, they had a tank by the window which needed regular maintenance.  It needed cleaning every couple weeks, the fish needed constant aeration, and since goldfish prefer cold water, during the heat of summer they had ice blocks deposited in their tank almost daily.

Older Brother was completely aware of this.  We had never expected him to help with the tank other than drop ice in it or give them a little food when we were away for the weekend, but he knew the routine.  I had no reason to think that he would lie about his willingness to do those two small tasks on occasion.

The power company finally shut off the power during a particularly bad heat wave while Diana and I were away for four days vending our jewelry at an event in Las Angeles.  Instead of paying the very overdue bill, Older Brother left the apartment and stayed with Mother and Father for the weekend.  Diana and I came home to a sweltering apartment, devoid of lights or power of any kind.  The fish tank was extremely warm, no longer aerated, and contained goldfish who died from a combination of heat stroke, lack of oxygen, and lack of food.  Only one survived the ordeal, and he was never healthy again.

I will never forgive Older Brother for murdering our goldfish.  He may not have taken direct action to kill them, but he did kill them through a callous disregard for their welfare and status as living beings in our care.  He killed them through his deceit about taking care of them for us, and his deceit about paying his one bill.  He was so callous and dismissive of their deaths that I cannot help but suspect he never fed or iced them when we were gone, despite agreeing to do so and saying he had done so.  He deliberately prevented Diana and I from knowing we were at risk of having the power turned off, and he did not care when that ended the lives of our goldfish.  When we confronted him about the bill, and about the goldfish, he shrugged his shoulders and was obviously irritated we dared to be angry with him about either detail.

Shockingly, Older Brother still insisted he wanted to salvage his relationship with Diana.  We should not have believed him, but neither of us could imagine a reason he would be so insistent unless he was sincere.  Still, Diana expected him to take tangible action to prove it.  Words alone were no longer going to be enough to smooth things over.  He needed to be fully accountable and prove it.  At a bare minimum he needed to put in effort to be helpful, stop being deceitful and disrespectful, stop driving to far off parties, stop drinking, and take responsibility for his actions without being misleading about them.

For the following couple weeks, Older Brother technically met Diana’s requirements, while at every possible opportunity acting out in ways that were reminiscent of an obstinate toddler.  One such action resulted in him slicing through an extension cord when he was required to help with yard work at Diana’s parent’s (they helped pay the electric bill he had neglected).  When Diana and I were vending at the local Farmer’s Market the following Wednesday, Diana required him to come help unload the truck, and then gave him cash to go buy her parents a new extension cord to replace the one he ruined.

He was obviously distracted, anxious, and did not want to be there, but when questioned said he had nowhere else specific to be.  We figured he was just continuing to act out like a petulant child and decided to ignore it.

Diana and I expected Older Brother to show back up to our booth to hand over the extension cord, and hopefully help with breakdown.  Setup and breakdown from our events was not something we had ever expected him to help with before or expected him to do indefinitely, but he had proving to do.

He never showed.

We called him on his cell phone, but he did not answer.

We were vending at an event.  We could not leave until it was over.  To say we were distracted was an understatement.

Well after sunset, we finally packed up the booth and headed home, honestly a little worried he might have decided to commit suicide.  We found the new extension cord in the truck, but no other evidence of Older Brother.  I tried to remain calm, because when he was particularly upset as a teen he had on more than one occasion ridden off on his bike without a word and failed to check in or return until the next day.  A resurgence of that habit would have fit in with his recent childish behavior.

We got home to find our apartment ransacked.

We later found out that Older Brother had made arrangements with Mother and Father and some of his friends, so he had the help he needed to quickly remove everything he wanted from the apartment while Diana and I were busy vending at the farmer’s market for the evening.  They took everything that looked interesting, and anything he wanted, no matter who it belonged to.  He took Diana’s antique book collection, any of her music CD’s he wanted, a good chunk of her jewelry, and every sword in the house even though only one belonged to him.  He raided my room for my bedding, some of my clothes, CDs, and my sword.  We wore the same size men’s jeans, and Older Brother had always been passive-aggressively disapproving about the fact that I preferred men’s jeans to women’s jeans, so he took all of them.

Diana and I did not find out until later exactly where Older Brother had gone.  He still was not answering his phone, choosing lying, avoidance, and thievery over direct confrontation and even a semblance of honesty.  Looking back, I am positive he lied about wanting to mend his marriage and played along with Diana’s requirements just so he would have the time he needed to arrange an efficient ransacking of our apartment.

My parents did not like Diana from very early on when she proved to be an honest person and challenged their web of lies.  Their dislike of her had deepened over the years as she had helped me to find myself, recognize problems in my relationship with my parents, and set boundaries against their abuses.  They never approved of the marriage between her and Older Brother, and in general preferred underhanded solutions to honesty, so Mother and Father were more than happy to help Older Brother “escape” that horrible marriage where he was expected to be honest and contribute to the household like a reasonable and able adult.

At the time, my parents admitted to helping him move out, clearly not expecting me to take their actions as poorly as I did.  Later, they swore they had nothing to do with it other than giving him a safe place to go, and insisted they knew nothing in advance.  I am certain the discrepancy entirely amounts to gaslighting, a blatant attempt to make me question the original version of events and absolve themselves of all wrongdoing.

I went to my parent’s house when I figured Older Brother would be at work.  I raided my old bedroom, now his room, for what stolen belongings of Diana’s and mine I could find.  He obviously was willing to claim them as his own, so I did not want to deal with any arguments about what belonged to who, and I knew my parents were too nonconfrontational to question me about removing anything.  To my surprise, I found very few of the items which had been taken.  I did not see the swords, any of Diana’s books or jewelry, and found only a few of the CD’s and one of my blankets.

My parents did make a point to tell me that I, too, was welcome to move back in with them until I got back on my feet.  They insisted they were neutral about the breakup, and had just been there to help Older Brother when he asked for it.  Mother and Father had always verbally insisted that they were available to help all three of us, at any time, and under any circumstances.  They made sure to inform me that helping Older Brother was proof of their ongoing sincerity and status as Good Parents, which I knew was anything but true, as they had let me down at almost every opportunity in my entire adult life, including present events.  I honestly do not remember if I even answered them.  It may not have been their faults that Older Brother chose to do what he did, but they had a hand in enabling how he did it, and they were clearly delighted by the outcome.

The only reason to keep the departure secret was so Older Brother could steal everything he wanted without question.  By claiming “neutrality” and keeping the secret about Older Brother’s impending departure, Mother and Father helped him steal from me, causing not just emotional harm, but tangible physical harm.  If my parents had sincerely wanted to “be there for me”, they would have warned me of the impending theft, not manipulated the situation to try and isolate me from Diana and force me to abandon the good things I had going on in my life.  I also knew better than to trust them and was not going to ignore the multitude of times throughout my life when they had blatantly and unforgivably failed me, proving through action that any assertion of “always being there” was a blatant lie.  The fact that moving in with them would mean I was still living with Older Brother was barely a footnote in all the reasons why that idea was terrible.  I decided I would rather live in my car or on the street than live with them ever again, for any reason.

I stood with Diana, and she stood with me, but there was no way Diana and I could pay for that apartment without the third income.  We talked to the landlords and thankfully they let us out of the lease with no penalty.  When we were in the final stages of clearing out items we could not keep, Older Brother showed up to make use of the apartment dumpster, dropping box after box of books he had stolen from our apartment.

Diana and I combed through the books and retrieved what she wanted from the lot.  Many of them were his own no longer wanted books.  Very few of her antique books were there, and none that would have had monetary value.  Some time later, I believe when they met to discuss the divorce, Older Brother gave Diana a discount card to the local used bookstore where he had fenced her book collection.  He presented it as “an apology”, but all it did was prove that taking the books was more about hurting her than the money they were worth.

The icing on the cake was when the divorce was finalized, and Diana found out Older Brother had secretly taken out multiple loans and credit cards in both their names.  Since he never could hold down a job for more than a few months, she ended up having to pay off all his hidden personal debt without a single penny contributed by him.

By the time I was an adult, I expected lies and betrayal from Mother and Father.  That expectation made it harder for them to manipulate me and reduced the severity of their manipulations, even during the times when I was still yearning for a meaningful relationship with them.  With Older Brother, I expected honesty, support, and genuine friendship, which made it easier for him to manipulate me until his patience ran out and he showed his true colors.

Out of all the things he did, all the individual betrayals of trust, there are countless things that still hurt.  But all those little hurts add up to one truly monumental hurt that can never be erased.  Older Brother understood exactly how important honesty was to me.  He took advantage of my trust and belief that he was an honest person, and he used that expectation as cover for incessant lies and deceptions.  He betrayed me by perpetuating exactly the same behaviors we both condemned in our parents, and by secretly inflicting those behaviors on me over the course of years when he knew I was working to heal from the abuses of our parents.

No matter what I once believed about the nature of our relationship, Older Brother was never truly my best friend.  That is the most painful betrayal of all.