I've been emailing with my brother over the last couple months. Not very good emails either.
You see, I've been 'estranged' from my family for over 5 years now, not that I ever had a very good relationship with them, I'm just not like them.
This latest round started when i realized last July that I hadn't given my brother my new cell phone number, mostly because I hadn't heard from him in over a year I think. So I emailed it to him, and said that I'd gone to his oldest daughter's graduation, but he didn't see me, and I wasn't sitting with my family because when I drove in, my father walked 5 feet from my car, looked right into my eyes, scowled, turned his head and kept walking, so I didn't feel welcome to sit with them.
Typical of the way my family is, my brother took it upon himself to go to my parents, ask my father about this incident, and give my father the opportunity to lie about it (as he has about many things he said and did in the past that I witnessed). My parents then told him that if I wanted to go to their house, they would sit and listen to whatever I had to say to them. Sounds nice, right? Well, you've never tried to do something like that with my family. So now, I'm in the position that either I have to go and 'have it out' with my parents, something I had absolutely NO desire to do, or look even more like a dick to them because they were willing and I wasn't, further cementing in the entire family's mind that this whole thing is all my fault and mine alone. And all I wanted to do was give him my phone number.
When I brought up to him in a subsequent email the effects of his uninvited actions, his response was that I was being selfish and childish, that I should get over myself, and that he would mediate if I wanted. Yeah, right! I'd want that because he had listened to me so well all my life, counted my opinions and feelings as important, and was a fair judge of situations between myself and my parents, just as he'd shown yet again in his email response, right?
There have been several melee's through email since then, and I have been very unkind in some of them. Years of ridicule from and being ignored by him, and living in his shadow are splattered across those pages. It seems that every awful hurtful thing I've ever wanted to say to him, I'm saying in those emails, and it doesn't make me feel very good about myself.
Yes, part of me wishes I could have a family, be part of mine. Most of me knows that they will NEVER treat me any differently than they ever have, like the bastard step-child. I try to see past the years and years of betrayal, pain, horrible situations they've put me in without my consent or knowledge until i'm embroyaled because supposedly they saw 'the big picture' and I didn't, but I just can't seem to.
Sure, I'd like to be 'adult' about this, I'd like to be 'the bigger person', and try to put some kind of relationship back together with my family, but at this point, I just don't know how.
Any suggestions?
