it comes in pints?

A Pre-Friday Sibling Fuck Off Rant

Because I'm at the end of my wits and I need to get it out.

It's long, personal, and filled with f-bombs.

My younger brother is what we are politely expected to call "special" these days. He's not full-blown Special Olympics "special," but he's incredibly immature and cluelessly selfish for his age. The kid has driven me nuts forever, but now I am seriously at the end of my patience with him. He has exhausted every ounce of good will I can spare and spent any and all sense of obligation I have towards him as family.

Listen to me. Calling him "kid." He's 32 fucking years old.

I know things have been rough for him. My mother drank a lot when she was pregnant. He was born with one of the worst types of cleft palates a baby can have. He spent his entire childhood undergoing a series of surgeries to help correct it, many of them painful. One of them required he have his jaw wired shut for weeks and left him unable to walk, since he had bone removed from his hip to be put in the roof of his mouth to cover a gaping hole. He had to live through all of this, like the rest of us, while enduring horrific abuse from both my mother and step-mother. My step-mother was particularly cruel to both him and me. She didn't like us. She didn't like kids. She didn't want us and pretty much blamed us for everything she couldn't have in life, being an exceptionally materialistic and class-concious snob (she once told my step-sister when we moved to Germany and went to school on an American army base that she should try to only hang out with the kids of officers because they were "better." Whatever. At least she's mellowed with age).

But you know what? I had to live through most of that shit, too. I have been beaten - beaten so badly I have fucking EPILEPSY from the head trauma - smacked around, neglected, locked in a dark closet when drinking was more important to mommy than child-rearing, and left starving when she forgot to feed us after the bottle was emptied. My poor, dear half-sister used to raid mommy's purse after she passed out just to get money so she could go to Dunkin' Doughnuts to get us something to eat so we wouldn't starve to death (what did she know about nutrition? She was eleven years old. All she knew was that she and her kid siblings had groaning bellies and something needed to be done). She did this knowing god damn well that mommy was going to beat the shit out of her when she came out of her stupor for taking her money. But it was all she could do.

But I have NEVER EVER used any of this as an excuse to misbehave or not take responsibility for myself or my actions and their consequences. I have always worked for what I have, sometimes to the point of a near-breakdown from exhaustion and I'm sick to fucking death of this "kid" thinking he shouldn't have to do the same goddamm thing.

He's basically spent his entire adult life (and I use the word "adult" loosely in his case) living off the good and kind graces of other people until his complete and utter selfish rudeness ailienates someone enough to burn bridges. He doesn't have a job, and never has outside of rare construction work. He lives off of benefits from the state. He's lazy and demanding and irresponsible. He's covered in tattoos, which he apparently has money for, but shows up at my house expecting me to feed him, wash his clothes, and give him a place to crash when he's got nowhere else to go.

A few weekends ago, he came over and his clothes smelled so bad, I had to sit on the opposite side of the room just to keep from getting sick and eventually had to ask him to leave. I had to wash the slip cover on my couch after he did because his stench had permeated into it. When I asked him why he didn't change his clothes before coming over, he explained to me that it was because the ones he had on were the only things he owned. He didn't have a place to keep his clothes since he's crashing under the dining room table of somebody he knows in San Pedro.

Yet he always has money for pot, for beer, for fun, for tattoos.

A family friend of ours that owns a bunch of apartment complexes once rented him a place. He and his friends trashed it so bad that con-fucking-struction was required to make it habitable again after he was finally kicked out. We're talking gaping holes in walls, torn up carpets, things like that. He had no respect for the fact that this was a kind, longtime family friend that he did this to. He gave no regard to her helpfully charging him less so he could afford to live there. He just junked her property, moved on to the next person foolish enough to offer him help and will even get upset and defensive if you bring the subject up.

And he's stupid. But he's the worst kind of stupid - he's that know-it-all teenager stupid. The awful part about it is that he's so stupid, he thinks he can lay a bunch of bullshit lies on everyone else and that they're so stupid, they'll believe him. And then he'll get mad at you when you don't. He once tried to defraud an ATM - I can't remember what he did exactly, but he was dumb enough to think he could get away with it. I get a call from some guy he knows one morning telling me J. is in jail. When he got out, the boloney story he tried to feed me about his proclaimed innocence was such a ridiculously unbelievable lie, if I hadn't heard him tell it over the phone, I would have decked him were he standing in front of me.

Here's a little example: one night, when my parents still lived in L.A., I had the family over for dinner. After they left, J. hung around and we had a few drinks together. I let him stay the night because he didn't have anywhere in the near area he could go to otherwise. I was tired, so I went to bed early and left him in the living room to drink and watch TV. When I woke up in the morning, there was an enormous pile of vomit in my kitchen sink. I told him to clean it up. You know what he says?

"I didn't do it. I'm not cleaning it up."

I ask him who else possibly could have. There were only the two of us there last night, and I was relatively sober - certainly nowhere near vomit-and-black-out-drunk - when I went to bed, so I know it wasn't me.

"I didn't do it," he keeps insisting. He shouldn't have to clean it up. It's not his mess. He outright refused.

"So, J., what you're telling me is that last night, while we were sleeping, somebody broke into my apartment without rousing either one of us, puked up in my sink what suspiciously looks like a slightly chewed up version of exactly the same thing I fed you for dinner last night and left without taking anything of value?"

Pause.

"Yes."

It wasn't until I told him that he was no longer welcome in my home because of this that he admitted that he did it, but do you know what? He expected me to be grateful that he at least barfed in the sink and not all over the couch. He expected me to thank him for this.

He's a compulsive liar and thief. So compulsive, in fact, that when we were growing up, if he stole money from me, I would be the one who was punished because I left money laying around where J. could find it and I knew damn well he was going to steal it if I did something like that.

He's unbelievably selfish and gets upset when you call him on it. We have a longtime family friend that often had us as guests at holiday gatherings. She makes this awesome cheese and cauliflower dish that's a favorite of everybody's. Pass it to J., he'll basically wop the entire bowl onto his plate without any thought to the fact that other people might want to eat some too. He'll constantly take the last of something without offering or asking anyone else if they'd like some before he does. Sharing and the needs and wishes of others is not something that he has ever taken the time to compute. It's all about HIM. What HE wants. And at the exact moment his desire so urges.

He was once hanging out at my house one Saturday afternoon. I had to leave to run an errand. When I came back, he had popped my copy of Attack of the Clones in the DVD player. I told him I didn't like that movie - HATED it, infact - and could we please maybe pick another movie that the both of us might enjoy. He went apeshit. "Well, I haven't seen this movie in a long time." As if that made him fucking entitiled to force me to watch something in my own home that I didn't like or something. The last time he came over, I was watching a baseball game and he just grabbed the remote and changed the channel because HE doesn't like baseball. Well, fuck you, kid. I do. And it's my goddamm house. No respect. No consideration what-so-fucking-ever.

When he was three years old, he stabbed me in the chest with a pair of scissors on my sixth birthday because I was playing with a set of markers that I had received as a gift and I refused to let him just grab away my new toys until I'd had the chance to at least take them out of the box and write my fucking name with one of them. HE wanted them and that is all that mattered, so I think I'll stab my sister for not handing over HER birthday present the very second I want it. He was three fucking years old when he did this.

When he was a teen-ager, he burned down the kindergarten portion of the elementary school across the street from our house. It's not like he ever went to school there, that he harbored bad memories or ill will against the place. He just felt like burning something down. He was never formally punished for it because there wasn't any proof it was him, but it's one of those things where that doesn't matter. Like O.J. Simpson, you just knew that he did it. You didn't need proof.

After he finished school - two years too late, after getting kicked out of regular high school and being sent to whatever the modern, touchy-feewy-let's-not-dare-huwt-dere-self-estweem word for fucking reform school is - he loafed around my parents' house, didn't get a job, didn't help with any chores or otherwise earn his keep in thanks for being allowed to stay after his expiration date when parents should be resonably allowed to expect their fledglings to fly the coop so they can have their lives back for themselves. During that time, my father helped him open a checking account so he could learn to be responsible with money. He bounced checks in every store in town that took them, no matter how many shouting matches my father would have with him trying to explain that if you don't have money in your account, you cannot write a fucking check.

He eventually wore out my father's patience. One night, after another fight about Lord-knows-what J. did this time, he was kicked out of the house for good. Don't come back. Not to live, and not to visit, at least until the anger wears off. My father did this knowing damn well he was putting his only son - the son he'd cared for as a sickly baby an inch from death, the son he carried up the stairs when he couldn't walk after surgery, the son he fed through a tube when he couldn't chew or open his mouth - out on the street with nowhere to go. That is how infuriating he can be. That is what he can drive a person to do. I know it broke my father's heart. It was one of the hardest things he's ever done, and we're talking about a veteran of a goddamm war here.

My parents still have him come out a couple of times a year to their ranch in Colorado to stay for a few weeks. He used to be really good at helping out. It's a ranch. There's a lot of work to be done and I know I always feel obliged to do my share when they are kind enough to have me as a guest, especially considering they've usually footed the bill for my plane ticket. Well, not anymore. Now, when he visits, he claims he can't help out because his back hurts. He just wants to sleep and sit around and drink beer and watch TV. And what does J. think when, to his surprise, they aren't really eager to have him visit as often anymore? That it's unfair and our parents are being cruel.

That's kind of what brought this rant on. He was expecting them to fly him out to Colorado last weekend. Well, they've only got one pair of free tickets left to them and with big sister preparing to give birth here in L.A. in the next couple of weeks, they decided to save them for coming to see the new grandkid. How selfish of them, eh?

Anyway, as he was planning on freeloading off of my parents for the rest of July, last Saturday, he shows up at my kindly but impoverished aunt's house - completely unnanounced and uninvited - and tells her that he spent the rent money he would have given whoever his latest victim is, since he was expecting to be in Colorado and now he has nowhere to stay. When she called and told me this, I was furious and outright refused to take him myself. No fucking way. He smells bad, I can't afford to feed him, I can't tolerate his selfish, obnoxious ways. No. He can go to a fucking homeless shelter for all I care. I'm done trying to help. Finished. NO MORE. Auntie is simply just too generous and caring a person to turn him away. She would rather inconvenience herself than leave him to the streets. He knew this. It's why he turned up at her house and not mine.

Bastard. Selfish fucking bastard.

So, after I calmed down a bit, courtesy of Coronas and limes, I called back Auntie and told her if she took him for the first half of the week, I'll take him for the rest. I just couldn't make her take the responsibility all on her own. It's not fair to her. She barely has enough money to support herself, let alone a free-loading, lazy jackass. I don't either, so the kid's going to get some fucking rules when he arrives tomorrow night and he's going to be put to work. There's no goddamm way he's staying without doing his part. I'm through putting up with it. DONE. Not only that, I'm kicking him out during the day while I'm at work. If I didn't, I know I would come back to find half of my belongings irreparably broken or outright destroyed, my phone bill run up in the hundreds of dollars and probably an eviction notice taped to my door. And if I got angry about any of it, he'd get defensive and think I was being unreasonable.

I'm sick of the excuses. Sick of his lying. His stealing. His expecting the world on a platter in thanks for sitting on his lazy ass and getting drunk. The world doesn't owe him a living and you know what? Neither do I. The kid's got until Sunday morning and then he's gone. I know this sounds mean. I know he's my brother. I know families are supposed to help each other, but this kid has spent thirty years wearing me out. I don't care where he goes after that. I just plain don't care, as long as it's not anywhere near me.

That really makes me sad. This is my little brother I'm talking about, the kid that lived through the worst moments of my life with me. But I'm all out of compassion and tolerance. I just can't spare it anymore, if only for my own sanity.

Posted by Emily at July 17, 2007 11:35 AM | TrackBack (0) |