Quote:
Originally Posted by amco
Open Eyes...I hear what you are saying, but the message that comes from what you say is that what my brother went through had more of an impact on him than what I went through. You are trying to help me understand him and all of those things you've said I already understand about him. Therefore what I understand from what you've said is that my experiences don't matter and I should focus on understanding my brother.
This is the core issue. I would like him to understand my experiences and understand me.
My brother was mostly protected from the truama of our mother's illness and he had two other parents in his life (who both had alcohol problems).
I was exposed to the truama of our mother's illness from age 1.
Everything you say is about trying to understand him when I would like him to understand me.
The message I get from your words is leave him alone, the poor boy has been through a lot.
Thus...I feel invalidated.
I've been through a lot too and it's always me who helps our mother. He gives me no support. So who am I to him?
Siblings have parents as a common bond. He doesn't talk to his dad and considers his mother not to be his mother. So i guess I'm trying to figure out what I mean to him or what he means to me???
But in a nutshell I think it's too hard to understand anothers pain when they refuse to understand or acknowledge yours.
He thinks i was the chosen one, but i was abandoned on a doorstep at age 1. I was in a kids home at ages 6,7 and 14. I lived with neighbours at age 4 for 6 months. In between those times, i either lived with my mother or my father and from age 10 to 13 lived with them both which was a horrendous time.
My brother had the stability of the same people throughout his life.
And there is the root of the problem again.
I think I resent him for having it better than me and still not being able to understand his parents.
So i resent him for not understanding me or validating what i went through and showing no interest in my life, for judging our parents harshly in front of me, for being abusive because I speak to our father. And for not being able to move on and forgive them or understand them. How on earth can we possibly have a relationship with all that going on????
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What you just shared here amco is important, not so much for me but for yourself. It was important to let YOUR feelings out in this challenge you are experiencing. As for me, I did not have all that you shared in this post I am now replying to. It was not my intention to invalidate you at all. And I am not really telling you to help your brother either. I am not invalidating your own challenges either, until you shared what you did here I did not know your story. You are a fairly new member so I genuinely do not know you.
Maybe you are jealous of him due to what he did not see or experience the way you did. Maybe it's not so much jealousy but resentment in perhaps he had more safety than you did. You BOTH faced huge challenges from what you share here. Early childhood abandonment is very traumatic for a child. It can definitely have an affect on someone the rest of their lives.
It just sounds to me that his resentment has more to do with how you are able to handle things more than he can. Sometimes people say things that don't mean what you think. When someone states "you were the favorite" it can definitely have more than one reason. It really depends on the entire picture and individuals involved. It's possible that what he means is that you can handle your mother's mental illness better than he can. You can manage where he cannot. Also, interesting in how he said that "you" are the chosen one. Often that comes from a childhood feeling of how you got to live with your parents, perhaps even your father when he was just left with those other people. He carries that feeling deeply even still. Feelings are not always facts even though they feel like facts.