More readers join the thread:
I guess you could say I “divorced” my sister. My dad was a sociopath. Rage was his default emotion, and it was terrifying. There wasn’t a week from age 2 through 15 when I wasn’t threatened. He was a drunk. He’d beat me, my mom, and my brother occasionally. Real violence was less frequent, but the threat was constant. I grew up being called lazy, stupid, effeminate, abnormal, and dishonest. He was convinced I was lying and hiding things. One afternoon while reading in bed in my first-floor bedroom, I looked up to see him staring at me through the window.
His personality estranged him from friends and relatives, and caused him to lose jobs frequently. As a result we moved a lot and I went to many schools. He finally set up a business in trucking, operating on the margins of legality. He kept a gun at the office, and pulled it out more than once during disagreements. As I got older, the abuse became more subtle – snide, underhanded sleights, mocking, and so forth. That continued until he died.
As a young man, my father had fought and put people in the hospital. He and his friends used to attack gay men. As you can imagine, he wasn’t thrilled to learn I was gay. He threatened to kill me, and I was kicked out of the house.
My older sister was his biggest supporter. She was always there to tell him things were my fault, run interference, provide alibis and negative gossip, shift blame, and question me as to why I didn’t like dad. Once he was almost ready to quit drinking after another drunken car wreck. I took him to his first AA meeting. She intervened, encouraging him to drink and providing a running commentary on why he had no problem.
After he died, I disowned her.
I have misgivings. She didn’t actively abuse me, my brother, or my mom. But she took sides and facilitated a horribly painful situation. Did I do the right thing? I think so. But I wonder. My reservations are mainly cognitive. From an emotional standpoint my decision feels right. I am happy to be done with her machinations. But there are times when I wonder if I was heartless to cut her off so completely.
Another reader:
For about 13 years, when I was 25 to about 38, my brother went into a serious depression and essentially disappeared from our lives. I spent those years working very hard to maintain any kind of contact with him and to support my parents in their pain. It was exhausting. And then, suddenly, my brother decided he was cured and ready to be back in our lives. I never understood the sudden change and was always leery to let him back in too much. I felt like he would just leave at any second again.
But he didn’t leave this time. I did. From his life, anyway.
Why? Once my brother got married and had a baby, all of his memories of childhood trauma returned to him and he started treating my parents and me terribly. After 13 years of trying so hard to make sure he knew he had a sister who loved him and cared about him no matter what, I just no longer have the energy to keep running after him.
Am I sad about that? Definitely. He’s my only sibling. I have no kids myself. My family was already small and now it’s two people smaller – the brother I no longer have and the nephew I’ll never know and who will never know me. Two years since the “divorce,” I still cry frequently about it.
But I’ll also never forget the incredible relief I felt when I decided I wouldn’t be calling him back after the last phone call of abuse. To know I was no longer going to run after him, reassuring him of my love and our bond as siblings who’d suffered through a tough childhood together was like dropping the weight of a dead body I’d been carrying on my shoulders for decades. That’s really what it was. An illusion of a life and a connection and a bond that was only alive in my imagination.
Another story has a much happier ending:
You’ve probably had too many of these already, but I had to throw in my two cents. One of your readers spoke of our society’s fixation with “blood,” as in blood relations. My father left us on Christmas morning when I was seven years old and never had much to do with us after that. Worse, he believed that he was owed visits from his children because he believed that’s what children were supposed to do (never mind that he couldn’t care less about us). The following years were torturous – living with an abusive, manic and damaged mother and watching each of my siblings drift into their own protective cocoons. In short, home life with my immediate family was a disaster.
Somewhere along the line I was unofficially adopted by the family of my best friend in high school. I spent more time there than I can remember and have long considered them my “real” family. Later, I married my friend’s sister and took on her three-year-old daughter as my own. I don’t think I’ve ever loved another human being more than my girl (she’s 16 now!).
I don’t know why I was destined to become a parent in this way. Perhaps I needed to close the loop and undo the damage my father did all those years ago. In any case, the discussion of blood resonated greatly with me. Blood is nothing. Love is everything.
The Dish 