My brother still has not been home since the night that he came home drunk, and I locked myself in my bedroom to get away from it. Since that night, I feel as though my home is not my home. Well, it is my home, but I don't feel comfortable here at all. I am on edge constantly, almost paranoid..wondering when he will walk in. I feel like I want to run away, go to the Smoky Mountains and rent a cabin and stay there for about a month. (I love the smoky mountains, they are the most peaceful place on earth to me).

No matter what I do now, I find myself wondering if/when my brother will walk in, and whether or not he will be sober (most likely not). Even writing about this is a risk for me, because we have the computer in the living room, and if he walks in the front door, he'll come over here and hover over me to see what I am doing. Everytime he comes in and I am on the computer he does that to me. He comes right over my shoulder and stares at the screen trying to see what I am doing. As soon as he opens the door to the house, just to be safe, I usually close the window, because there are things that I do on my computer, such as visit MEC, that he does not have any right to see.

I am terrified that he will walk into the house and read what I write in my notebooks or overhear me talking on the phone, and flip out. (By "flip out" I mean yelling at me). He has done this before when he overheard me talking on the phone and thought I was talking about him, even though I wasn't. I was talking about something completely different, and he would not let me leave the living room and kept yelling at me saying "No, we're going to talk about this now! If you have something to say about me, I want to hear it now!" even after I explained that I was not talking about him. It took me a half hour to get him calmed down. My nerves cannot take anymore of that.

Every noise makes me jump now. I am constantly aware that at any time he could walk through the door (most likely drunk) and start demanding things of me or yelling at me, or even just walking through the house drunk, knocking things over. If I refuse to do something that he asks of me when he is drunk, he just gets louder and louder, and I'm not 100% sure that he wouldn't hit me. (Although I don't think he would). I wish I could stop him from getting in, but he has a key.

My husband is going to tell him that he needs to find another place to live, but we have to wait until he comes home before he can do that. He hasn't been home since that night, and my husband works nights, so if my brother comes in during the day when my hubby is asleep he cannot tell him.

Sorry for all of the rambling, this has just been bothering me for almost a week now, and I am really on edge about it tonight. I'm scared, and I hate feeling like I don't belong in my own home. This used to be my sanctuary, my safe place. I used to feel safe and cozy here, and now I feel like an outsider, like an intruder. I hate feeling like this!