My estranged brother has just contacted some of my family members to find out how to contact me. They have given him my number, although I had asked them not to. I'm not angry with them but it does mean I have to make a decision about what to do when he phones me tomorrow. I would appreciate some perspective from outside the family.
My brother is six years older than me and has a history of mental health problems, probably going back to childhood. I don't rememebr ever being anything but scared of him, although maybe we did when we were tiny. He had a much closer relationship with my other brother who is four years older than me but this broke down in their teens. He is currently also estranged from that brother.
From early teenage years he was extremely violent and anti-social inside the family, perhaps the reverse outside the family. You might well like him if you met him. My parents were divorced and we lived with our mother who suffered from deep depression and was frequently suicidal. She was violent to both my brothers when small. My eldest brother was extremely violent towards her. My other brother protected my mother s soon as he was big enough.
When he left home, I had nothing to do with him until my mid 30s, except for fraught family Christmasses. No phone calls, no birthday cards, nothing although i discussed him frequently with my father. In my mid 30s, his mental condition, never good, and fuelled by alcohol, degenerated. My dad felt he had to look after him and he spent months or years living in and out of my father's (who remarried) house. This caused alot of tension between my father and his wife. When I married, my fatehr felt we wouldbe a good influence on him, and at his request and to relieve the pressure on my father and stepmother, we took him in - he lived iwth us a for a few periods of a couple of weeks, once a for a month when he broke his foot. During this period he barely spoke to me, though chatted in a friendly and open manner on the phone to his friends in front of me. As soon as he was able to walk, he went out and got drunk. After this, and after he had punched my other brother, my husband and I decided he could not be round our baby any more.
My mother died in this period, and my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. My eldest brother's mental health and alcohol abuse, worsened. his behaviour to my father was terrible and extremely distressing to all. My husband, to help my Dad, repeatedly travelled to help my brother when he was in hospital through alcohol abuse, to try and make his flat habitable, set him up and ultimately to negotiate his dismissal from work. This put considerable strain on my husband, and our finances.
As my father was dying, not only as his behaviour towards my father appalling (phoning him 20 times a day and screaming at him to fuck off etc), it was also apparent to me that he was lining me up as his next caregiver. I decided I could not have that for four reasons: I was so distressed by his behaviour to my Dad I felt I would not be able to be friendly to him; I did not want his drunken and abusive behaviour round my children (I had anothe baby in the middle of this); also because he had no insight into his behaviour, felt we had done nothing for him; mostly because I felt that none of the help he had received from family and considerable help from friends had in fact helped him one little bit, quite the reverse. I felt that having someone to depend on was like chocolate to a child: he couldn't resist taking more and more.
This seems to have been the case as from what I know of how he has been in the last two years, shows him taking on a responsible role, and taking sensible steps to provode for himself financially. His attitude to his own behaviour is that he cannot be held responsible for his actions because he is mentally ill (he has been diagnosed variously as having clinical depression, psychosis and not having psychosis).
This may be true. However, and I feel terribly guilty about this, no part of me wants to have anything to do with him. The idea of him phoning me is not only not welcome for the reasons I have described but also just that he plain terrifies me. I also don't like his conversation and attitudes expressed when he is in his gregarious sociable mode.
Am I terrible for wanting to tell him I want nothing to do with him? and more than that, what the bloody hell do I say to him. He IS going to call. Please give me some perspective.
Thanks for reading.