Sunday, October 17, 2004

Procaine

I was thinking about something the principal of Towner Gardens School told us when we went there two Fridays ago. She said that if an intellectually disabled child hits his or her normal sibling, the parents should never tell the sibling to quietly tolerate being hit, because it is wrong, and the parents should teach the ID child that it is wrong to hit his or her sibling. The sibling should not be forced to care for his or her ID sibling, but allowed to naturally develop a sense of protection for the ID child.

It struck me very strongly, because on looking back this has been the case with my brother and me. Let me elaborate.

I was 6 when my younger brother was born. When he was a toddler, I hated him a lot. I resented him for taking away my parents' affection for me, for even though my parents still cared for me, it was now less than what I had before. And he was a terror as an infant. He tore up any of my beloved books he could get his hands on, and he smashed a lot of my toys. Naturally this made me very angry (you can't expect saintly forgiveness in a 7-8 year-old child for goodness' sakes) but all my parents did was to tell me to put up with it, to give way to my brother because this was what an older brother was supposed to do. The more they instructed me to give way to my brother, the more I felt disinclined to do anything of that sort, and I grew to really hate my brother, instead of following my parents' good intentions, because in that phase of life one naturally does the opposite of what one is forced to do.

It was always "Why can't you give way to your brother?", "Look at how protective your cousin is of his younger brother, why can't you be more like him? Why do you always bully your brother?", "You must clean up when your brother makes a mess, that's what older brothers are supposed to do.", and "Why do you hate your brother so much? There's only the two of you." I resented all of this with a fury that I didn't realise, and I grew up never learning to love my brother the way other people love their siblings and can get along so naturally with them. It never helped that my brother was nothing like me. He hated to read when he was young, which accounted for a lot of my books being ripped to shreds rather than pored lovingly over, and he would just keep annoying me when I was doing my work. Any little secret I told him, he would delight in telling my parents in front of my face, and I never trusted him since, not even today. In the end it ended up in such a state that for everytime he did something to irritate him he would do something in return and I would do something in return, so it never ended, this exchange of animosity.

Naturally I feel very sad that things have to turn out this way, because I would so love, like other people, to have a sibling that I can talk to and enjoy the company of. Why would I not want someone I would be happy to be with, instead of a brother that frustrates me to no end and makes me want to stick a knife in his chest when he lies sleeping? But it has gone far beyond that point. I have suffered for 14 years and I wish to suffer no more. I don't even acknowledge his existence anymore, because I just don't care. Why is it I was screamed at for forgetting the clothes hangers in the toilet when I was young, such that I eventually built up good habits of cleaning up after myself, while my mother lets him dump his stuff all over the place as he likes, and when I complain about it, tells me that he's "just like that, leave him alone"? Does the unfairness of it all not strike you as it does me?

Rationally, yes, I admit this is only a one-sided story you're hearing, and maybe it's all skewed by my insane jealousy of my younger brother, and basically here I am presenting a story that was made to justify my hate for him. Well I don't need any justification for wishing things turned out differently. And I agree that some of it is naturally my fault, for being petty and narrow-minded and a complete jerk. What else can I say though? That everything will turn out ok in the end? I have no idea.

I know this is a very controversial post, and you have probably never heard such an extreme account of a person hating his sibling so much, but it has been aching to be let out for quite a while, and I don't know, maybe writing this can quieten some demons in my heart. I know I should not harbour so much negative feelings towards a brother, but there's a huge gap between what I know and what I can do. Knowledge-practice gap.

Just so you know, when you have children of your own, try not to force your child to take care of his or her sibling. It can backfire on you quite badly. And I apologise for a badly written post. I am still feeling the ill-effects of the past week, which has been terrible for most people anyway, so who am I to complain.

Avaris / 10/17/2004 10:20:00 PM

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