cross-posted from: https://startrek.website/post/14308062
Dear Lemmy,
I have a dilemma on what to do about my brother. He’s now in jail for the 2nd time in his life for yet another violent felony. I’m not sure how to proceed. I’m going to have to provide back story to get you all up to speed. I’ll try to keep as short as possible otherwise I’d be writing a book.
My brother and I are half brothers (different dads). I never knew my dad growing up. My mom married my brother’s dad when I was about 4 or 5 and they had my brother when I was about 7.
My brother’s dad was a religious asshole who made us go to church every week even though we had no interest. He got into shouting matches with my mom almost on the daily. I specifically remember one time him getting violent and throwing a broken lock at my mom and I locked my brother and I in the bathroom trying to protect him just in case. He never laid hands on me that I can remember but I remember he would force me to eat food I didn’t like to the point where I’d throw up and if I couldn’t keep it down I would be in trouble. Just mentally abusive shit like that.
They divorced when my brother was around 5 or 6 I think putting me around 12 or 13. My mom then did the single mom thing and tried to provide for us, but she’d go to work all day then get home and go to the bar until late at night. Sometimes she’d get home around 11 sometimes 2am. She’d bring random guys home and sleep with them and I’d never see them again. Eventually she was found unfit by the court to care for my brother and his dad got custody of him around age 7 or 8.
I would still see him every other weekend or so. We weren’t very close since he no longer lived with us and we were 7 years apart. When he was visiting we’d sometime play games or watch anime. But mostly I think I was out hanging out with friends. He had his own friends too so it’s not like he was just stuck at the house by himself. I’d pick on him like brothers tend to do here and there. Never physically harmed him or anything, just poke fun. My mom kept up the work by day drink at night thing pretty much until I moved out.
My brother must have had a rough time at his dad’s house though because I knew the guy was an asshole and I remember my brother reminding me of that, I don’t remember specifics. I do remember that my brother was very overweight at a young age and he got picked on at school a lot. I know one time he took a knife or multiple knives to school and threatened people. He ended up getting suspended and things only spiraled from there.
I moved out to my own place, got married, went to college for a bit, worked, then joined the military in my early 20s and while I was stationed in another state. My brother finished high school and had a girlfriend. Just after his 18th birthday I got a call from my mom that my brother was arrested. I found out that he had a falling out with his gf and she was breaking up with him. He refused to let that happen, went to her place of work, forced her outside and into his car and tried get her to stay with him. She was able to get out of the car and as she was going back into her work he hit her over the head with something heavy causing a concussion. He got charged with aggregated assault and kidnapping. My mom and his dad posted his bail and he went home with his dad. A few weeks later he violated a protection order that he wasn’t supposed to be on school property when he attended a homecoming game. The judge locked him up and he served like 3-5 years.
During his time in prison we wrote to each other and I talked to him on the phone a few times. I wrote him during my deployment and after I got home. We talked about how we’d hang out when he got out. I genuinely wanted to try and reform him and be a role model for him to help guide him when he got out. When I asked him why he did what he did he would always just say he didn’t remember it and that he blacked out. He would also say that the story I had heard was different than how it actually went and he never meant to hurt anyone.
Fast forward to him getting out of prison, I moved to a different state on orders, close enough to drive home. He comes to visit for a day. We talked about his time in prison, our mom, his dad. He asked if I forgave my mom for being a shitty mom and I said no. I barely talk to my mom to this day. We might talk on the phone once every few months and only for like 10 minutes. I mainly just talk to her because I feel obligated and I don’t want to be a shitty person. Anyway, my brother and I both agreed we had a shitty upbringing, but then he said that I had also abused him. Which confused me, because while I remember picking on him in what I thought a lot of siblings do, he remembers something different. He said that I had physically hurt him and beat him up to the point he was bruised and battered. I have no memory of this and if this were true I would think that someone somewhere would have noticed and said something like school teachers or police would have been involved. Anyway, we brushed it aside, talked more, I gave him a used laptop since he didn’t have a computer. I even reluctantly lent him money for a present for his girlfriend (he paid me back).
Fast forward again, my brother is enjoying his freedom, has a job, and his new gf. He’s going to EDM festivals a lot, like constantly (this will be important later). We both liked EDM and there was a concert near me that we both wanted to go to, so he brought his gf and we went to the concert and they stayed the night. A little while after this event, things went south between us. I found out from my mom that he was constantly asking her for money for gas or new car tires. He apparently called her in the middle of the night one time because he had ran out of gas and needed $20 after she had just given him money. I thought it was weird that he had no money but was going to all of these EDM festivals. He had posted 2 tickets to one he had planned to go to on FB and the tickets were like $200 a pop. So I passive aggressively said that maybe instead of buying those tickets he could have bought gas or tires for his car. He LOST it on me. Went off, bringing up how shitty of a brother I was and how his childhood was shit and just generally played the victim. Words were said, we never talked again for like the last 8 or so years.
My mom said she had met up with him last year around his birthday to try and reconnect. When they met she said he told her that she was dead to him, his dad was dead to him, and I was dead to him. He made the claims that she was a shitty mom (which she was). He claimed that I had broke his arm once when I beat him up as kids. My mom and his dad have no idea what he’s talking about because he never had a broken arm. He apparently asked if my wife was dead yet, I have no idea why he’d ask that. It was just a genuinely weird experience my mom said. She said she left scared.
A few months ago I get an email from some inmate notification system with my brother’s name in it. I thought it was weird spam or something from back when he was in so I just ignored it. Few days later something told me I should try looking him up in the system. Sure enough he was arrested for strangulation, making threats, and harassment. So he’s been locked up since waiting out the court process. He couldn’t make bail, didn’t reach out to anyone as far as I was aware. A friend of mine from back home found a FB profile of a girl where they were in the picture together and said she was in a relationship. Then a few days later he wasn’t in the picture anymore and her relationship status was removed. We believe he strangled his girlfriend, but no one has any details because no one talked to him.
My mom just got a letter from him this past week. In the letter he talks about how he was diagnosed with BPD, PTSD, and depression due to his upbringing, which I have no doubt. He also says that anything we hear about what happened is a lie and all untrue. He blames her among unnamed others, and the system for the situation he is in. He also signed his name with an arrow pointing it it and a note saying no one that loves him calls him by that name. But no one has come to bail him out, so I guess I’m confused as to who he’s talking about. We haven’t heard anything else from anyone.
I’m worried that my brother is unstable and I’m worried that if I do anything that could set him off that he could come after my family when he gets out. At the same time I feel bad for him because we both dealt with the same parents but probably had very different households after he went to live with his dad. I live somewhat of a normal life and have a good job, I do see a psychiatrist for mental health issues from my childhood and my time in the military. So I always thought that I came out of it somewhat OK, why couldn’t he? I thought he’s just not accepting responsibility for his own actions and blames everyone else. So I guess I’m wondering do you guys think I should reach out and try to reconnect or just let bygones be bygones?
Sorry for the long story, just sitting here late in bed not knowing what I should do.
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Whew. I’m kinda glad I read/listened to the whole thing. I don’t usually, since there’s a limit to how much I can process at once via tts when my brain is having trouble reading (dyslexia). I only mention that in case I get something wrong in this. But this is one of the rare times when the full story is relevant.
First, anything said here is assuming that you’re speaking full truth to the best of your knowledge; and that your version of truth is the entire story. Second, that this is actually a good faith post (so that anyone else coming along doesn’t waste my time or theirs with "nuh-uh, fake story).
With all of that in mind, there’s two questions you ask beyond the title of the post.
The first is why couldn’t he come out “okay”. There’s two ways to look at it. The easiest is to say that he did. He could have come out way worse. So far, he’s limited his choices of crimes, and is exhibiting the kind of choices you might see in someone wanting an escape from their trauma, but is having trouble doing so. A cry for help isn’t always directed towards self destruction without collateral damage. This may be his version of okay.
The other way to look at it is that not everyone responds to the same traumas in the same way. We aren’t all the same in the way our brains and endocrine systems respond to stress, and trauma is an extreme form of stress. From there, it’s pretty rare for even twins to get the exact same set of events when there’s family based trauma. So even when brains and bodies are as close to the same as possible, there’s still variances that can shape their experiences.
Tangential to that, most people that are dealing with trauma from childhood need a period where they blame the source of the trauma. That’s because it is 100% legitimate to say that the now adult never had the tools and opportunities to gain proper adult coping mechanisms, self inhibition, and general behavior.
Think of it like obesity. If someone reaches 18 while weighing 300 pounds, how much of that is on them? Did they have control over groceries? Did they have control over cooking? And, most important, were they actually taught current beat practices? Since those three things are the biggest contributions to childhood obesity, why would the be expected to magically know how to change? If they had the knowledge, but weren’t allowed to implement it, how long do they get to fix it?
Trauma is very similar in that regard. You reach 18, and you’re supposed to magically suppress the unhealthy things you learned instead of the healthy ones, and magically learn the healthy ones. It just isn’t realistic.
The history you described, he never, ever got taught how to adult. By the time he was one, he fucked up bad, and was shoved in jail. Not exactly a learning environment, you dig?
Of course he blames his parents and the life he had forced on him. It was their fault. Even the best parents aren’t 100% responsible for their children’s successes, nor the worst ones for their kid’s bad acts. But the of blame that’s on bad parents is a shit ton higher.
Assuming the story is perfectly complete and true, your brother never had a chance to be better. His story went: abuse/neglect - jail - freedom with no chance to learn - back to jail.
Now, he is definitely the one that chose his path. But he didn’t have as many to choose from, and likely couldn’t see some of those.
So, yeah, he blames everyone else. And he’ll keep doing so until he gets help with that trauma and anger so he can move past it. Hopefully, that will include some learning about how to do better as well. But there a reason recidivism is a thing. Prison doesn’t do shit to help a prisoner. It just kicks the can down the road and hopes they’ll fix themselves.
Seriously, I’ve done my time in therapy. And group therapy for PTSD in general, and cPTSD in specific, you see so much effort spent on reaching the point where you can let go of blame, so that you can focus on the self and heal. And that’s people that are seeking help on their own mostly, not the ones that fucked up before they could get to where they could seek help like that (assuming the health care system didn’t interfere in that part and make it take even longer).
He’s right, it is his parent’s fault in large part, and he needs other people to believe him when he says it. It absolutely does not matter what someone else managed to do, how they avoided going down that path, or whatever. For him, in his life, he never had a realistic chance to be any other way.
None of which answers the specific question, or the title question about what you do now.
Nothing. You’re not obligated to do a damn thing. Just because he got screwed, doesn’t mean you have to be involved. You can, if you want to. But it is vital that if you make that choice that you make it fully aware that it isn’t mandatory. If you feel obligated at all, don’t do anything until you internalize that it is a choice.
You aren’t going to save him, you aren’t going to change him, you aren’t going to prevent him going to jail and still needing more therapy when he gets out.
If you want to support him. If you’re willing to do so without expectations of how he uses that support, do it. It may well help him, and it might help you too. But it might not. You can’t build up the idea of reaching out and it going according to some ideal. It will be two humans with scars doing the best they can with what they have. There will probably be blame pointed at you. And it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not because that’s what’s in his head.
If he’s having false memories, memories of things that didn’t happen, you ain’t fixing that. If you maintain contact, you’re accepting that he has those memories, or has convinced himself of them, or something. If you keep in contact and try and argue him out of it, or convince him of it, the whole thing is pointless, it becomes about that, and neither of you will ever move past it.
All you can do is stay firm that you have no recollection of it, that you have no reason to believe that you did it and don’t remember, and make dropping the matter a part of being in contact, if he brings it up again. Consult your therapist about how to do all of that in a healthy way. They’ll be better able to get into the nitty-gritty of things than some rando like me, no matter how well intentioned I am.
But, my dude, it has to be your choice. You can’t do it for duty to family, for what others think, or anything else. You’ll be engaging with someone that has a massive disconnection from reality (based on your telling), and that’s not going to be something you sustain because you “should” do it. It has to be because you want to do it for you, and let anything that’s for him be a side benefit.
Me? I tend to be the sort that will put the effort in because I want to maintain connections with loved ones. I have limits for damn sure, but if I was in your exact situation, I would work out my boundaries for what is and isn’t acceptable, then plan for how to handle those boundaries being broken. After that, I’d reach out and start from a place of love, and see how things go. I want those I love to be healthy and happy. I hope I can be a part of that. But I always go into this kind of thing knowing that it isn’t a sure thing, and with the awareness that I have to have an exit plan.
Take that as you will, since I didn’t actually say which of the two options you asked about that you should do. I think it’s too delicate for that kind of simple advice.
Ignore him and move on with your life. If you are afraid he may try to attack your family, then you should just cut him off completely. BPD is no fucking joke and a lot of meds won’t do jack shit for people with it unless they are very very heavily medicated. Your brothers issues are not yours to deal with. You need to focus on what is best for yourself, your wife, and your kids.
Why isnt he shitting on his father too? Why is it only you and your mom even though he moved out since age of 7?
Oh he has, but he’s focusing on everyone individually it seems. I’m waiting for my letter in the mail. He’s talked shit about his dad to me in the past, it’s been so long I don’t remember specifics, but I believe him because I lived with him for years too.
Damn. I don’t know what you even can do. It’s like watching an accident happen in slow motion. I have nothing to say except good luck.
