5th therapy session: my brother

I am very glad K made me write out my timeline because my thoughts went all over the place.

I tried to start off with my mother’s single parenthood — timeline unclear, as I’ve never specifically asked her what it was like. But from casual, offhanded comments, I’ve managed to connect a loose picture that for a number of years, she was a single mom to my brother:

“You think you’re tired from commuting to work on a bus? When I was your age, I only had your brother. Your dad wasn’t in the picture yet; I had to take two buses just to put food on the table.”

My response was to think “I cannot imagine what it must be like to be a single parent, and have to take a bus transfer just to put food on the table. But it made me think ‘How can I talk to you about my work day if you’re just going to invalidate me? Why can’t both things be valid? I can be young and tired from commuting to work, just as I can’t imagine how stressful it must have been to be a single parent to my brother.”

K seemed to understand that. That it seemed like my mom didn’t know how to process her own emotions, most notably, stress, and used that as “leverage” against me, when I was trying to express my own fatigue from a work day.

It was difficult to figure out how to start, mostly because I didn’t want to get into details of my mom’s abusive teenage relationship, the unhappy circumstances when S was born and of course, my mom’s own story about her parents arguing/being abusive towards each other.

My mom did not have a happy childhood, to say the least, and some of those anxieties were projected onto me. I know bits and pieces about her childhood, mostly in off-handed remarks. They’re the type of thing *she* should have gone to therapy for.

“So you have a brother.”

“Yes.”

“His name is Shane.”

“Yeah. He’s… 11 years older than I am. We don’t talk.”

pause

“How to get into this…”

These anxieties may have been projected onto S; that part is unclear, and I stated as such. By all accounts, until the age of 10, S was a “polite, well-mannered boy. Very likeable, has friends, does well in school.” I wasn’t even born at this time. But apparently life was different back then. My dad was in the picture, but I’m not certain as to when exactly he met my mom. I do know that mom spent a few years being a single parent. They met at some point during S’s childhood, went to Singapore, adopted me, then came back to Canada. There was four of us.

I also noted that our initial move to Toronto happened when I was only a toddler. This was before the age of 5. I have no memory of it, but I am told I was deeply unhappy. My mom, upon further prodding, could not tell me why, either.

And S became a teenager. I was about… three years old.

It was hard to talk about my brother.

“His life became a shitstorm even before we moved. I wasn’t happy in our first neighbourhood, and I don’t know if that was because of S, or because of my ASD, or both. I can only go by what my mom told me, and that’s not much. I obviously don’t have access to his files, and he didn’t grow up with me. He… oh god, how do I phrase this. I say he was evicted, they used the term kicked out. He was fourteen, I couldn’t have been older than 3.”

And I burst into tears.

K’s reaction was kind of… a compassionate silence. It was like I could just imagine the gears spinning in her head.

She said, your older brother gets kicked out by your parents. So on top of you being unhappy (due to your ASD, feeling like the odd kid) and feeling racially alienated because you were adopted, your parents kick their other kid out. How did it feel to hear about this?

I was in my mid twenties when I learned this.

When my mom told me, she said “You don’t remember this, but you were petrified when we kicked Shane out. You refused to leave the house, you didn’t want us to go anywhere, because you were afraid we’d leave you. Do you remember what you said?”

“No, I don’t. How did I react?”

“I’m gonna be a good girl. Please don’t send me away. I’ll be a good girl.”

“Yep, that’s me,” I said in therapy. “That’s me all the way. I’m the golden child. I won’t ever make mistakes, I won’t screw up, because… I *can’t* make mistakes.”

I can just picture it now, she said. You’re so little, and you’re adopted. You’re three years old, and you watch your older brother just… not come home anymore.

I didn’t idolize him. It’s not like we were attached or friends or anything. But seeing that he wasn’t around anymore must have affected my anxiety levels. I recomposed myself, or rather, tried to. And I asked my mom “So, what happened?”

She said “We had to take you to a psychiatrist. You would not calm down.”

K nodded. “That makes sense. You were so little, and you were adopted, so that tends to cause abandonment issues for adopted people. You were three years old: Your parents got rid of their son, what’s to stop them from doing that to you? So you feel like you should never mess up, or make mistakes. You don’t want to end up like that.”

I told her “I don’t think I have abandonment issues. I didn’t test anyone in my relationships. I didn’t think my friends were going to leave me. But as a tiny child, growing up, I wonder, if S can be kicked out, what would happen to me? I have to be the good kid. I can’t mess up, make mistakes.”

I don’t know how my mom’s parenting style changed by the time she met dad, if at all. And I certainly don’t know if it differed before S became a teenager.

But it does remain clear, that after S’s teenager onset of behavioural patterns, that her anxieties and trauma were passed onto me, and shaped the root of her overbearing nature. The thing with a sibling is that just because they were kicked out doesn’t mean they disappear off the planet.

They come back. And they cause stress when they come back.

You know deep down, that your parents aren’t really going to ditch you. But at the same time, you see the stress your sibling is causing. You internalize it. You see fights, and arguments, and yelling and WW3. And you think, it’s not safe. And if your parents reached their limit with your sibling, you think, what if you make mistakes? Is this mistake going to set them off?

“Every child becomes a hormonal asshole upon becoming a teenager. Even me. S went into it: drugs, drinking, stealing, you name it. I was never that bad. While I didn’t do those things exactly, I did things like, hiding a permission slip because I didn’t want to go on a field trip with my band, and I thought I could hide it. When my mom found out, all hell broke loose and I was grounded for about a month. After she calmed down, we came to an understanding: I didn’t want to go, the trip was mandatory, and the more I waited on it… the more I thought I could avoid it. I didn’t know my band teacher was going to call home and tell her about the trip.”

S still came around to visit: mostly resulting in tense arguments, fights, the strain of him trying to get along with Mom, the air of civility. He probably visited more than once, I just don’t remember it because I was in my own little world. Maybe he visited more frequently, and I just don’t remember because of my ASD and I was doing my own thing. Or maybe I don’t remember because I’ve blocked it out. That’s also possible.

It’s also important to note that while my brother probably had a couple of friends, Mom & Dad felt obligated to help him move. You can’t leave a little kid home on her own, so I accompanied them. It wasn’t fun.

Their help in moving tended to result in the same tension — being argumentative, trying to be civil. I don’t remember anything specific, just in general feeling uneasy, and eventually just going into my own little world. My ASD helped with this as it was really easy to just get stuck inside my own head and daydream about my hobbies.

But I couldn’t escape.

This would set the ground for my resulting anxiety in the years to come, particularly as a teenager.

When you’re a kid, you can’t escape. There is no escape. So you watch it unfold. You watch the arguments, the stress, the strain of voices when your parents and older sibling are clashing. They set the role models for you to internalize, and you become used to the pattern of stress/escape.