I ended up taking a nap earlier today, so now I probably won't sleep tonight. Bah! My sleep schedule is so messed up; I'd always go to bed by 12 on weekends and wake up at 8--ever since I started Middle School--but now I'm so nocturnal. Oh well...

And thanks, Bill3, for responding so quickly.

I'll just hurry up and post this, because I'll just have to say it sooner or later.

I'm the youngest of 3 kids. I was 10 when the abuse started, and my oldest brother was 14 (and our middle brother was 12). This happened for about 2 months, and I told my parents right away (my older friends were just going through sex-ed, I remember going to their house and they would excitedly talk about everything they learned, including some stuff on different types of sexual abuse). These initial incidents I don't question, because when I was 10 I didn't have this crippling sense of shame that I do now, so I told my parents what happened to the exact detail and they seemed quite horrified. They sternly warned my brother and told him they'd take him to Juvenile Hall if he pulled that again.

So that stopped for a while. But my brother had--I don't know, an addiction I guess--to violent porn (gang-bang, rape, and child porn/incest). And he would download it off our computer all the time and, of course, I was always the one to find it. He would print off pictures and hide them in my room--literally stuffed them in my mattress. For a long time, I was very confused why he would hide his porn in my room--until I was informed by my "middle" brother (I'll call him J. for now) that he was going through my clothes and sheets to masturbate. I later found out that he would read through my diary and stuff I wrote and try to blackmail me with it. I don't know, it was just really weird and messed up. So, again, J. and I confronted our dad about it. (because this porn thing had been going on for a couple years by now). My dad's solution to this problem was to install locks on my bedroom door and on the door to the office. But my oldest brother was in charge of installing the locks! I've always thought it was strange that my dad expected him to lock himself out, but whatever.

So anyway, my brother's escapades into my room pretty much lasted for 6 years, and so did the child porn. I can't even count the number of arguments between my dad and I about the porn. Maybe I'm just off my rocker, but I honestly think my brother's porn screwed me up just as badly as anything else he did. I remember listening to the radio one day when I was about 14 or 15, and there was this news story about a man who had downloaded child porn onto a computer at a hotel--the next person to stay found the images and contacted the police, who eventually arrested the perpetrator. And I just remember sitting there, and being so angry at my parents for not informing me that this was a crime, that there were laws about this, that it's wrong and he should be punished for his actions. After this, I really threatened to go to the police to turn him in, but my parents got so upset--they said they'd go to jail because the computer was registered to them.

Finally, one day during my sophomore year in high school, my brother (lord knows why) decided to send me a text message about how he fantasized raping me. It was... uh, pretty explicit. When I came home that day, I yelled at my mom and showed her the message. Of course, she showed it to dad, they had a "talk" and, long story short, my brother ended up deleting the message from my phone but was otherwise unfazed. I was so pissed, I even bought software to retrieve the message but he had erased it from my SIM card. I had wanted to use that message as evidence in case I ever had to go to the police if my parents decided to pussyfoot around the issue (because they never really taken responsibility for what happened). My mom always told me how she was sexually abused by her mom's boyfriend, but I always wondered why she was so complacent about her own son who abused J. and me for 6 years (my brothers would fight and cut each other with kitchen knives, and J. informed me recently that he was also molested by our oldest brother, but there was only a single incident. However, J. has largely forgiven our brother, and I haven't).

They tried moving him out (after I threatened to live with a friend if this garbage didn't stop) but he wouldn't work or pay his bills--my parents completely supported him financially, and he practically lived at home anyways. We could hardly afford our own mortgage, but my parents still bought him groceries, paid his rent, car payment, etc. I told them to break off financial ties because he's 20 years old and can take care of himself, but they didn't listen. When my dad had his stroke in July of '08, my mom actually moved him back into the house (despite my protests) so he could "help us financially." My brother put on this stupid act, as if he has some minute amount of human compassion, and my mom bought it. So he lived with us for a few months--didn't work, of course, and spent all his money on automotive parts for his car (I found receipts, and he literally spent $2,000 at the store, but he never could pay his $400 rent). He also acted like he was really getting his life together, and I almost believed it. However, it was also about this time that he began molesting me again (before and after my dad's stroke), but this time I didn't even bother to tell my parents about it. It'd only happened a handful of times in the 6 years between, excluding when I was 10 and 16 when there were more concentrated occurrences. I also began to find more porn cropping up on our computer--which my mom promised she'd kick him out if we found anything. But she didn't. What made him finally move out for good was that we lost our house--a blessing in disguise--and we had to move out of the area into a tiny, cheap apartment. He didn't want to leave the area, so he moved out and lived with his best friend, while we moved to a town 30 miles away... and that's the end of that.

That's pretty much the story... and... it's weird, but I wonder if it really merits an "abuse" label. A lot of it was just threats and talk... Although my "friends" didn't seem to care so much that he was doing this to me, and when they wanted to be friends with him I broke it off... stopped all communication with them... but the sad thing is that I still haven't recovered from that, from losing my friends I'd been born and raised with... I let them walk all over me for years, but when they wanted to be friends with my brother, well--! I had this over-inflated self-esteem after losing weight, and I figured I'd make new friends... but I was wrong, and I learned that I deserve being trampled on...!