Reality Check // Week 14

I still have our trip to the UK on my mind - mostly because I feel so affected by the times that I am able to share space with my brother. Am I sad? Yes. But it's more than that. I'm not an inconsolable pile of weeping mess on the floor (I have been before- don't put it past me. Goodbyes are super hard for me even if I chant to myself it's only temporary it's only temporary) but I definitely have a distinct separation anxiety from my brother and his family.

We weren't always that way. My brother and I were close growing up. Even though I am 4 years older than him, we always did everything together. Lego cities built all over the house, riding bikes and building forts outside, forcing him to taste the delicious "mud pie" I made out of the dirt and grass from our yard, and figuring out Zelda and racing Mario Kart on nintendo. I think because I was a tomboy and wasn't that into girlie games and dolls, and he was willing to put up with my big sisterly abuse for the attention and to have a consistent play mate, it just worked.

But, from the time that I left home to go to Virginia Tech, and he entered high school, we drifted apart. Naturally. We are both out of sight, out of mind, and I went head first into another life on campus at school, and he was left to figure out his own identity as a teenager in high school as Kevin, not Kim's little brother. We were also both terrible at communication, and struggle with that still today as adults. So, the distance not only made us forget about each other a bit, but also we had no mechanism to connect to each other except for when I came home for breaks. Texting wasn't a thing back then, and neither of us had phones anyways. And, emails weren't new but not that big of a thing either. Lord I feel old now.

And since then, we have been totally OK with this new way. He got out of school, joined the Air Force, was stationed in England where he met his current wife, they came back here to be stationed in Oklahoma City and then Spokane, WA -- and after many years away from her family, Jenni's desire to be back home was strong enough to pull them both back over the pond to establish their family in England. So, we've never been together ever since.

Within the span of the last 5 years, the security that we felt as brother and sister in this family (our nuclear family that we shared with our mom and dad) has been completely obliterated. It started with me, of course. My divorce, and subsequent relationship with a woman. My parents really had a hard time getting over the divorce part (and never really did to be honest) and were trying halfheartedly to see G and I as friends who live together. They did not acknowledge my divorce with the rest of my family, and in fact, my mother asked me to end communication with and unfriend family members on social media so that no one would find out.

I should have told them to go to hell a lot earlier.

The final straw was my phone call to them to give them the good news that G and I were engaged and getting married. It was too much for them that my friendship with my female roommate was going to be publicly celebrated as love, and in their eyes, a same-sex sexual relationship. Come on. I seriously doubt they ever thought about the sexuality of my previous relationship with a man. Gross. Why are they thinking about it now?? No one wants to think about their kids (or their parents) in that context. So just don't! It's completely unnecessary. I digress...

This whole time, my parents were trying to hold together a compartmentalized relationship with my brother and his wife and kids. They acknowledged that we were still talking and visiting with each other, and knew that Kevin supported me in my new life, but I feel all along that they were trying, for various reasons, to sabotage either my relationship with him, or their own relationship with him so that they could be completely separated from the humiliation of my situation. My brother and sister-in-law were very adamant that neither myself nor G were a taboo subject, that we should be included in parties for the kids (via skype, even when they were there visiting), that we were talked about with our niece and nephew openly, we were both referenced as Aunties, and regularly asked my parents whether they had spoken to us at all.

I'm sure all of this rebellious activity enraged my mother. She would have been happy to have just forgotten that I lived altogether. But at every turn, she could not escape my name, references to me and to my wife, or a general feeling of something missing. Even if she did not herself miss me, I know that my dad did, and by the way my brother and sister-in-law acted with them, she knew that they did as well.

She did eventually find a way to sabotage her relationship with my brother, and she did it through and argument they had in part about me, which I believe very strongly her intention was to not only destroy their relationship, but ours as well. What a fucking tyrant. She did not succeed in ruining, or even wavering for one second, my relationship with my brother, but she did instill a very deep sense of abandonment in us both. And I find that now, unlike in our younger years, the times that I have to say goodbye until next time are so gut wrenching and feel so impossible, it's hard to equate it to anything short of separation anxiety.

I have gotten better with it, over time. It helps to talk about it - the past situation with our parents - to G and to him. It helps for me to acknowledge my sadness, allow myself to feel it, cry if I need to, and allow some time to pass. It helps to plan the next skype call or visit. It helps that my sister-in-law is awesome at writing emails and messages to us, sending us cards, and posting pictures of them and the kids on facebook.

But more than anything, it helps that we still have each other. And I have nothing to be anxious about. He will never not be my brother. He will always stand up for me. He will always unconditionally love me. And I make sure every time I can to reassure him that I will do the same for him.

#Reflect #RandomThoughts #Flashback