Brothers

 Hello, Enlightened Witness. It has only recently occurred to me that my brother may not have experienced our mother the way that I did. I think that's why he venerates her while I work at digging out from the pile of shit she dumped onto me my whole life.

I think this may have happened because she was never alone with him the way that she was alone with me. I was always there watching and witnessing. That alone may have stilled her harmful impulses, but I also think that she chose to own me in a way she never did to him.

I was her first child. I was the first child of a woman whose parents had made no secret of the fact that they'd had her for the express purpose of being taken care of when they were old. I was the first "thing" she'd had in her life that she could call her own. This was the early 60s, which for all intents and purposes, was still an extension of the 50s, especially in the small town where my parents grew up. Women were not their own. Only their children were truly theirs.

My mother always had a histrionic streak. It exists within me now, thanks to her. I remember her becoming overwhelmed and freaking the fuck out sometimes. These freakouts were often focused on me. I caused them by not being or doing what she needed at the precise moment she needed me to be or do it. I can't even imagine what her freakouts were when she was left alone with tiny, crying me. Did she slap me then? Did she want to run away? I don't know.

I have zero memories before the age of five. That's the same year my brother was born. Coincidence? Probably not. I suspect I buried those memories to protect myself in those fragile developmental years, I guess they're gone forever, except within my body. Niow, I'm trying to release them. If not to let them become actual memories, to let them leave my body by allowing baby me to be heard in some way.

I struggle with understanding how to release this pain and recover myself. I know I'm in there, smothered in the parent-pleasing blanket of I-need-to-be-loved. Just typing that made me start weeping, so I must be on the right track, but I like Ikea instructions. 1 then 2 then 3. This nebulous lack of structure is off putting to me but I'm still trying. I think if I can just keep pushing into this subject, I'll find my way. I hope so.