Lost

I just spent an hour trying to create some context of my relationship with my brother. We were close as children. We grew apart somewhat in college, and then since my mother died, it's been more and more difficult.

*****

For two days, I've been trying to write a post asking "why did I even give him the chance?" the chance to read my blog (I accidentally left a link in the word document) despite my request that he leave it alone. And he lied about reading it. And, as the fabulous and thorough JK discovered, he also linked over to C's blog and read his.

I sent him the document to give him the opportunity to try to understand what I've been going through the last year. The document was only about the first 2 weeks, but a traumatizing two weeks. Two weeks I doubt will be challenged as the worst two weeks of my life, including the loss of my mother.

I wanted him to see what I was trying to deal with, so if I was distant or if the only thing I could share with him was good news for my oldest friend, he might be able to understand. He might get the vision of me lying totally vulnerable in a dark room a a doctor I don't know tries to rip out the remains of my dead son's placenta. He might begin to understand what we went through trying to figure out how to decide what to do, how to give my son what he needed.

In P's email, he wrote a few sentences about how he was glad that I had a place to put all this "toxic" stuff and that I had found some community.

He just could not get past his own lifetime of shit to consider what those two weeks were like for me. And what it might take for me to recover from it. He thought only of his insecurity, about how no one appreciates him and what he does for the family. And that's what he wrote about in his email to me. That was the focus of his response. But all he could read was a few offhand negative comments about his behavior. And that would be if he read only the document I sent. C wrote more, I wrote some. So I guess this is my fault.

I asked for it, I guess. And I'm sure he would say that the blogs just confirm what he's known all along. If he could ever be honest about reading them.

*****

I have no relationship with my sibs right now. I don't feel like I can talk to A about this yet. I don't know when or how P and I will clear this up. Certainly I'm not going to lay this on my dad. Not yet, anyway.

I had been feeling better. C and I had a terrific fight and cleared up some issues that had been lingering. But I'm so down now.

It sounds so corny to say: I just feel so sad. Like I've lost my little brother. And once my sister has her child the distance will grow. It has already begun to.

Maybe I'm being dramatic. Maybe this post is too long and I'm getting maudlin.