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babyspacebatclone · 3 months

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I made a comment yesterday about Catra from SPoP having a lot of the same traumas as my brother.

It reminded me of something.

I babble, so the story is below the cut.

But it exactly describes why I, personally, am unsatisfied with the “closure” shown in canon in regards to Catra having a healthy relationship with Adora - any kind of relationship - with the state of self-awareness she ends the series on.

TL;DR:

If my brother interprets something innocent I say as an “attack” on him, there is no winning for me to try and change his mind.

Having a third party attempt to change his mind is most likely to just add to his trauma of me being the “golden child” growing up, which I’ll discuss at the end of the post below.

And my brother interpreting statements from other people, not just me, as a personal attack is not an unexpected occurrence.

Link to a different example that expands on the kinds of things he’ll get into this state over….

I’ll start that my younger brother’s and my history of emotional abuse from a parent figure (our biodad) is many order of magnitudes below Catra’s and Adora’s. And this is not an “obvious” statement if you don’t know me, because sadly there are examples of child abuse out there to be found that surpass Shadow Weaver….

Nevertheless, we very much developed very similar trauma responses and issues: I was the “golden child,” someone who tends to be submissive and helpful as a temperament, lucky enough to find things like school easy; my brother struggled more with his anger, school, and in general just about everything I seemed to be good at.

Even as a teenager (around 16), I could clearly see a dynamic of “I get more positive attention, he gets more attention.”

I don’t know if it’s personality or trauma based on his part, but I also used to have a “joke” about our belongings: “What’s mine is ours and what’s his I don’t touch.”

Both sides of that were dictated by him.

Nevertheless, I always viewed my responsibility as both the oldest child and “one who had it easier” (like, 10 out of 100 is higher than 5 out of 100….) to take care of and protect him, and it wasn’t until we were about 14 and 16 respectively I started to resent that.

I’d resent how he treated me, sure, but I’d always recognized a lot of his behavior problems were my father’s fault.

Speaking of my father, there’s definitely cycles of abuse here; I never wanted nor could have handled the details, but him being raised by first generation German immigrants and then entering the Canadian Air Force gives me things to suspect.

I also cut ties with him at 24; my brother when he was kicked out of the house by him at 17.

(very very long story; we were living with him after the divorce until Mom could get on her feet)

Anyway…..

We’re now both 40+. In many ways, our relationship has improved - we’re the only ones we’re comfortable with discussing we’re Queer within the family, for example - and he definitely wishes we were closer friends.

In the past few years, I’m slowly losing the guilt over me not feeling the same way.

This is the perfect example why.

It was 2019, my brother was early into a new romantic relationship , and Episode 9 of Star Wars was coming out.

My brother was really excited that me and his then-girlfriend were bonding over both being geeks, and he excitedly invited me to go to an advanced showing of The Rise of Starwalker that was happening in a nearby town.

I had very little interest in actually seeing the movie, and am an Autistic Introvert to his Autistic Extrovert, so none of this really sounded like “fun” to me.

But he was excited, and as sibling outings go didn’t sound painful.

So I put on my big-girl big-sister pants on and agreed.

Something with my family is that the person in charge of an outing drives - which is 100% a control thing, and functionally means if you can’t justify driving yourself my mom or my brother (depending on if she’s involved) is picking you up.

(despite not meeting him until I was 22, my step-father and I are exceptionally similar and neither of us rock the boat there)

Once I finally got a driver’s license at 35, I started to hate this system, but again it’s rarely actually painful and thus not worth making a deal over.

Anyway, on the day my brother comes to pick me up. I technically knew he was picking me up first and then we were going to his girlfriend’s new place, but I hadn’t quite processed that this was a short visit and not just her jumping into the car.

So I got into the back seat so she could ride shotgun when we got to her.

My brother found this hilarious (or maybe was pretending to? idk with him…) and teased me for not getting up front with him.

I work as a daycare teacher, and at that time it probably had been only a month since a lead teacher hd come back from maternity leave, and trying to cover her duties for several months had almost - and I am serious here - broken me.

I remember it taking almost 30 seconds for me to understand what the problem was, and when I did I did not want to have to deal with him laughing at me over something so stupid.

So I said something along the lines of “Opps, sorry, braindead, tired from work.”

I need to emphasize:

All I said was that I was tired and blamed my work.

In response, my brother gave me a cptsd flashback.

I was being shouted at, being told I don’t appreciate how tired he is after his - and he’s right here - physically intensive job, do I appreciate anything….

When confronted with something that reminds me of one of my biological father’s outbursts, I immediately drop into “freeze” out of “fight, flight, freeze, fawn.”

I did not understand why he had taken my statement as a direct attack on him, but he had, this was happening, and there was nothing I would be able to do to stop it.

I sat there, silently crying, waiting to be ordered out of his car because I physically could not move until I was given that.

To my complete shock he got silent…

And started the car.

I felt like I was in a parallel universe.

The raw rage was still radiating off my brother, but somehow he had chosen to drive to his then-girlfriend’s place as planned.

I don’t think I was able to give her the full story, but once I basically said I’d upset him she ripped into him for making me cry.

Kinda wish she hadn’t been such a flake in just about every other regard; a girl needs a strong backbone to survive my brother.

After he’d been calmed down, we were back in his car and driving to the movie theatre half an hour away.

By the time we got there my brother was back to his happy excited persona, very very proud that he had thought of such a cool thing for his two geeky girls to do, and the fact it ended up with us seeing Rise of Starwalker didn’t dampen it.

(I shall say I was not impressed with directions taken in the movie, and my overall impressions are shared by specific segments of Star Wars fans)

However…

I never stopped being upset by the entire thing - specifically, that while my brother had apologized for shouting at me, he never apologized for why he had shouted at me.

And as I said at the top of this post, there is no winning if I were the one to try and bring up how hurtful that had been.

I’d either set him off on the entire “you don’t appreciate me!” thing and, ya know?

No, I didn’t appreciate much about this entire endeavor, I was doing it entirely as a favor to you so you could have a fun night out with me on your terms.

Just because you spend a lot of energy doing something you think someone else is going to enjoy, doesn’t automatically force them into actually liking what you are doing.

Sometimes, you have to do a bit of calculus, and figure out mental energy put in versus mental drain during activity versus outcome, and pick things that have a low net loss in order to be a nice decent human being.

Doesn’t mean it’s still not a net loss.

Having a third party explain to my brother he completely flipped over nothing and not every statement about my life being hard means his suffering is invalidated is thin ice too.

Because that’s exactly what had happened.

The only way my brother can feel secure that his needs will be met is if his suffering is acknowledged as the worse, and therefore will be prioritized.

Just like my biological father’s suffering always had to be prioritized.

Just like I learned somewhere early in elementary school that I had to hide my suffering, because entering into the arena of “who needs attention more?” would only end with more trauma for me.

Just like I learned I had to be satisfied with the positive attention people gave me for doing things they thought were worthy, but also not being a “show off” and actually seek out attention because that made me a bad person.

Because I got the most positive attention.

And my brother got the most attention.

And I understand my brother’s traumas.

And the fact he tried to fix things for me by not canceling our event, does show that he does try and improve things, he does know he’s hurting me.

But I can’t think of how explaining “punishing your sister for you mistaking neutral statements for personal attacks” to him is going to be helpful

unless it’s done by a professional.

And I can’t be involved in it in any way, or else it just quite naturally is going to just add to the existing resentment that neither of us could prevent happening when we were children.

Because, yeah, it’s shitty to realize you’re hurting someone you love because of your mistakes.

It’s not something people want to have to admit.

But both our work schedules got super packed due to COVID.

And I haven’t had a “brother led” activity since.

And I don’t fucking ever want to again.

And I still feel guilty about that.

But a fuck ton less than I did in 2021.

#family dynamics #family dysfunction #sibling trauma #sibling rivalry #sibling relationship #tw emotional abuse

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