family drama.

I try not to write too much about my family on this space, but some shit just happened (well, last week) that I've been struggling to deal with but haven't so I figure I should write about it. On Halloween night, I got a text from my mom at 1am Eastern. Needless to say, I was super concerned because my parents go to bed at like 7pm. I knew no one was dead or anything (I think death warrants a phone call), but I wanted to check in with her. I call my mom and what she tells me makes me literally sick to my stomach.

She tells me that my middle brother was in a car accident. Don't worry, he's totally fine, but when he got home, my parents wanted to talk to him about his driving habits. The car is going to have to be totaled and their insurance is going to go up like whoa (my other brother had a car accident like a year ago so that was another insurance ding). They sit down with him and tell him that he can't drive recklessly and needs to give himself enough time to get to where he's going. Instead of being a normal human being about it, he blows up. He starts cursing at my parents, calling them all kinds of names. He then proceeds to tell them that they are AWFUL parents and have never ever supported him throughout his whole life. After he goes through all of that, he physically attacks my father - starts hitting and punching him - and then they get into a huge fistfight. My mother kept trying to pull my brother off my dad, and even had to get my oldest brother to step in to help pull him off. She pulled a muscle in her chest while doing so and it took so long to break it up that she thought she was going to have to call the police. After that, my brother pretty much told them 'fuck you' and packed up all of his stuff and called a friend. His friend came and my brother left to stay with him.

I'm still floored by this whole thing. I didn't grow up in a family where you cursed your parents out and then physically assaulted one of them. That's not how my parents taught me to behave and that kind of behavior was never modeled for us. I guess I always thought that shit happened to other people, not my family, where I have two loving parents who've been married for 33 years and where we went to summer camp and had every luxury we ever wanted.

I'm disgusted with my brother. I haven't talked to him and I have no desire to. Even writing about it now makes me want to cry. My mom offered to let him back into the house and I don't agree with her. Violence is never okay. Especially not towards the two people who raised you. What if he's crazy and next time he has a knife or a weapon? What if he attacks someone else? He beat up my youngest brother a little while back. I just don't trust him at all. I kind of hate him a little bit.

I guess I have a really strong attachment to my parents because I'm adopted (the brother in question is not adopted). I know that so many children, including myself, are born to unfit parents. He had the luck to have amazing birth parents who gave him anything he could ever want and he just spits in their face. I just don't condone that at all. It's not acceptable. I only really have two words for my brother right now (I'm sure you can guess what they are), so I'm just not going to say anything and compartmentalize all this in my brain so I don't have to think about it. Because I'm not ready to really think about what all this means.