Friday, 14 August 2015

Without Next Of Kin, 7

My brother and I were fairly close till I was eight and he was eleven.  He was approaching puberty, was immensely popular and came to see me as a liability and began to studiously avoid me.  At home he began to beat me up regularly.  Puberty transformed him into a violent monster and soon I was making every effort to avoid him.

We experienced a brief rapprochement when we both were living at my father's.  He seemed to respect me as a peer (we were respectively seventeen and twenty then) and even enjoyed drinking sherry together before dinner and watching late movies.  This respite lasted little more than a month and my father kicked me out so my brother could live more comfortably in his house.

After this he didn't want to know me.  I eventually wearied of reaching out to him.  Later in life I became more fully aware of the extent to which his abusive treatment traumatized me.  I have since distanced myself completely from this person.  I am in my late fifties, he in his early sixties.  We will likely never see each other again.  I have stopped caring.

Good riddance.

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