Dear Open Eyes

Thank you for taking time to respond and for your advice and support. The therapy I have received so far has been standard bereavement therapy however it has unearthed so much pain that at the end of the last session I attended I was so upset I was unable to leave the room. I don't think this has been the right therapy for me. I probably need to find a therapist who will deal with childhood emotional abuse and as you say helping me grieve through all my mother's issues.

As for my brother, I am alarmed and frightened by his behaviour. He clearly is very disturbed and has all sorts of very strange ideas in his head about me. Since mum died he just seems to have become worse. I always knew he was 'odd' but with no firm diagnosis to go on it has been impossible for me to understand him - his total lack of communication with me, inability to even look me in the eye and apparent resentment of me. Now his resentment seems to have turned into hatred of me. Mum left him everything and in doing so gave him power over me in terms of family money, heirlooms, photographs and childhood memories. His refusal to even give me original childhood photographs that are of myself alone is totally bizarre, disturbing and plain evil. When I asked him whether mum's decision was "right" he was silent and when pushed to respond all he could say was he "didn't have an opinion". I am scared of him and afraid of the lies he clearly tells others in an attempt to justify his behaviour and his greed and arrogance with no care or concern for me. I can't understand why he has no opinion to express of his own. He executes the final requests of my mum to the letter, unbending and with no apparent thought of his own. Her wishes are in contrast to those of my father and it makes it all the more hurtful for me. Maybe it is just all too convenient for my brother to do otherwise. I wonder if eventually all this will catch up on him and he will feel guilty in time. I have lost hope in him though. He is my only blood relative and I would have thought some sense of family values would be in him somewhere. When I last tried to talk to him on the phone he said "I never expected to have to hear from you again" and he put the phone down on me. I am aghast and in shock. What on earth has been going on? Has my mum totally poisoned him against me? I do think she was very depressed most of her life and spent the last 10 or so years before her death being as horrible to me as she possibly could. At the end she twisted the knife and I am sure now those final actions were carefully planned over many years as she sat stewing at home not living a healthy, fulfilling life. She had no friends at her funeral, only some acquaintances and to me that speaks volumes.

I think my upbringing has affected my outlook on life and probably is why I never wanted children. Some days I wish I had never been born. To try to cope with bereavement, my mum's issues, her abuse of me and my brother's mental health problems is overwhelming. I have tried to be a kind and caring person throughout my adult years. I deliberately try to be the opposite of my mum and have some lovely friends around me. It all feels a struggle though and it is all dawning on me now how dysfunctional my family was. Over the years spending any time with my mum and my brother left me feeling very down and as if all the positivity and enthusiasm for life had been drained from me.