Okay, so I'm going to ramble around here for a bit to get the whole story out...sorry if it's not chronological.

Growing up my brother was my tormentor and one of my abusers (I also received abuse from my father and mother). He tried to molest me once. And then, when he start high school, he got into drugs, became addicted, and regularly threatened me with physical violence and death threats, in addition to the actual physical violence. I don't actually remember him hitting me in the face, but I remember him grabbing me by my shirt and lifting me up with one hand while sticking his curled up fist in my face, threatening to kill me (over wanting to sit shotgun). This kind of abuse and violence from him was regular. When we went to high school together, he regularly would hit my head if I walked by him in the halls. He was a bully and an abuser.

Needless to say, we have never been close. A few years ago, I met a very nice girlfriend of his who asked why we were never close. And his answer was he had no idea. I just remained silent. I knew exactly why. This is the person in my life who frequently showed me hate and threatened to kill me all those times. He wasn't like a brother to me, he was like some demon I shared a house with. I have another older brother too, and our relationship is nothing like that with this brother.

My mother likes to paint this brother in a saintly light. For example, she has a step son now, and she's very hard on him. When I try to remind her, don't you remember all the trouble B got in when he was in high school? All the drugs? The violence? And she claims she doesn't remember any of it. I don't know why but this really hurts me that she doesn't remember that. My mother is not elderly, she's only 61, she works full-time, she's very active.

My brother mooched off my dad for a while until he finally went to a technical school. Not only did my dad force me to go to my brother's technical school graduation, he never required the same of my brother to go to my HS or undergrad or graduate school graduation. My dad didn't even show up for my grad school graduation. My successes never mattered. But for some reason I'm supposed to celebrate my brother's minor successes while my major accomplishments go mostly unnoticed by my family. My dad has never even said he's proud of me. If I show him something I've done, all he does is find fault with it. Anyways.

So about 18 months ago, my brother got into a serious motorcycle accident and almost lost his leg. He's had like 20 some odd surgeries to save his leg. He's been on disability ever since. He's not in any kind of financial straits or anything because the other driver's insurance is paying for everything.

My mother and father and other brother ran to his side. I understand this, he was in the hospital, it was necessary. He needed their help. The following Thanksgiving, my mother posted on Facebook how she was especially grateful that B was alive and had survived the accident.

Now, maybe I'm being petty, but the same year that B had his accident, I was hospitalized something like 7 times for depression and PTSD. And they weren't short stays. I spent a month in a residential treatment facility trying to find the will to live. I went through an intense partial hospitalization program. In short, I came very close to dying that year. In large part, because of the abuse of my brother. And my mother has never said one word about how thankful she is that I'm recovering from my illness.

My illness doesn't matter.

When my B was recovering at one point, I was driving through town and wanted to stop in for a visit, on my way to a job interview in another city. He refused to see me, because of my service dog. Also, my father and I had another falling out (I have continually tried to mend the relationship with my father even though he doesn't deserve it and continually abandons me). I know that my father probably has told lies to B about what happened, and so B is siding with my father and not having contact with me. I do owe my father some money for helping with my medical treatment from when I was hospitalized all those times, but we agreed that I would start paying him back when I could. He knew it wouldn't be right away, and even though I can't start yet, I'm trying to get through 18 months being back to work then going to start making payments towards paying him back and getting rid of that debt. So my asshole brother doesn't want contact with me. This doesn't necessarily bother me except it does sting a little that I've tried to be the bigger person by wanting to come by and see him during his recovery and then this asshole has the nerve to treat ME like I'VE done something wrong? Whatever happened between my father and me happened between my father and me. It's not his business. Of course, I assume he believes, like my father, that I don't really have depression or PTSD, and that I was just self-harming and trying to commit suicide to get attention.

At this point I have cut him out of my life. My mother doesn't understand that I don't have contact with him nor do I want to know anything about him. To put it bluntly, I don't care. I don't care about his leg, I don't care about his accident. Sure, I'm glad he's alive, but I'd say that about anyone who survived an accident. Life is always better than death.

My point is, I've been holding onto the hurt I've felt about that Thanksgiving post for a year now. It really hurt me that I had nearly died many times in that year, and yet she could only post about how she was grateful about B.

I made it through an extremely dark time in my life with basically no family support, and then my family can't even be glad I'm alive?!

I don't want to cut my mother off, she's the only one in my family that I'm not estranged from. I no longer speak to my father or either of my brothers, because of the family trauma and rampant untreated mental illness in my family. In fact, I just started having contact with her again some months before my brother's accident. I had stopped having contact with her because she was excessively abusive one holiday when I came to visit her and refused to acknowledge the things she said or did, and I told her that I wouldn't have contact with her unless I knew she was receiving treatment for her problems. Time passed, she sought help, I kept my end of the bargain. But I wouldn't be around her any longer and allow her to abuse me.

To be honest, I'm realizing right now that the healthiest times of my life have been when I had no contact with most of my family.

So what do I do about this pain that I feel about how my mother has responded to B's situation and mine? I sort of want to confront her about it. I kind of want to say, do you remember when you posted this? It really hurt my feelings that that was the only thing you were especially grateful for when I just spent a year being hospitalized 7 times and put all these scars on my body.

Thoughts?

Seesaw