Wounded Soul

My Dear Anon and I were talking today about the wear and tear that can be inflicted on our souls. Coincidentally, right after I got off the phone with her from that conversation - my soul got a major tear in it in the form of a call from my brother.

My brother and I get along pretty well. To the point where we even are willing to spend time together voluntarily. Once I hit the ripe old age of 18, suddenly the 12 year age difference between us became less- as at that point (and possibly beforehand) I became more mature than him anyways.

Our mother had a spending habit. I remember a childhood filled with her buying marble tables, and fur jackets for herself and her lavishing little diamond and opal and emerald rings on me. I'm not married, but I already have two sets of china and an antique china cabinet to store it all in. My father had taken on a second job, and our bills were essentially paid by him- leaving her to spend her money freely. I imagine things got much easier financially when she passed away.

My brother inherited some of this. But what makes it worse, is that you can't even see the tangible evidence of what he spends his money on. I don't see fur jackets and marble coffee tables. What I see is a 3 bedroom condo with two empty rooms. A kitchen that is only half finished because he ran out of money prior to completion.

My father sold the house I grew up in to my brother. He was left with a house with a small mortgage, a finished basement, and many of my mother's antiques and dishes. By the time he sold that house, the basement was gutted, the antiques were sold or simply gone somehow.

And now? I get calls. And lies. Lies that are so transparent to me, it's like they come across the phone line in bright lights and flashing colours. Screaming at me. Blinding me. Bruising me.

So when he tells me that he has to borrow my computer because his is acting funny? I know that means that his TV/internet has been cut off. When he starts asking me to call his cell all the time? His phone is cut off too.

Sometimes he admits it to me. He told me recently about how his wages are being garnisheed because of owing money for taxes. He can only use limited hydro because, while it's not legal to cut him off completely, they can minimize his usage.

When he's not lying to me, he's demanding that I don't tell our father about any of this. He frequently borrows money from our father, and while my Dad doesn't like to talk about it - I always know when it happens because I end up with a gift at the same time. (My Father is determined to be fair).

But it hurts. Somewhere in the area of my heart I feel a tightness. I struggle to hold back the tears when I think about my brother. I think about the fact that he's alone and living in a half renovated condo. The fact that this must be humiliating for him. The fact that he can't seem to pull himself out of it.

And I get angry. I want to shake him and demand to know why it has to be this way. You don't get utilities cut off for being a month late. It takes time, and warnings for it to get that far. I don't make any more money than him- yet I've never missed a bill payment. Why can't he do the same?

And then my heart hurts more. At the thought of the futility of that lecture. That it wouldn't change anything. At the fact that I want so much to be kept in the dark like my father. I don't want to hear about this. But how can I deny him the ability to unburden himself onto me? I'm the only person that he can share with. That's the difference between friends and family.

But the tightness and weight won't go away. As much as I try to shut it out, it's constantly a shadow looming over me. The fact that he is the beneficiary on my meagre insurance policy. The fact that when asked what I would do if I won the lottery, my internal response is that it would go to him. All of it if necessary. Followed by doubts that anything I do would ever be enough - or that it would only be a temporary fix.

How do you turn away the pain of your own flesh and blood? The tiny remnants of my family that remains? I want to protect my father from the knowledge, and make it alright for my brother.

But it hurts so much. It's crushing and debilitating to have this information. To have this love for a person whose attitudes and behaviours are so completely alien to my own. I don't understand...anything. Why he can't seem to catch up. What his priorities are. Why he seems to always be in a position that in his mind forces him to lie.

Are the lies his version of protecting us from pain? Or to save his own pride?

My soul? Is torn. And aching right now.