fed up with deceit and lies

[TR101]

so this is the first time i've visited this site (and really participated) in..... quite a while. i just wish it was under better circumstances (and i apologize in advance for the long whine-y post).

for those of you who don't know/need updated, i'm 19, living at home with my parents and working full time. i was abused by my brother around age 9, and in a complicated series of events 2-ish years ago, i disclosed what had happened to almost everyone close to me(which... is still a giant stinking pile of emotional baggage). but, time can hide wounds, and slowly stuff calmed down about the time that i stopped posting on male survivor, and i reverted to my default "run from your emotions" routine and haven't really emotionally changed since then.

since disclosing the abuse, i have interacted very little with my brother (and not at all about the abuse). this has been my choice, and i have made my preference clear to several people, but my parents especially.
i would LOVE to have absolutely zero interaction at all with him, and have tired to communicate this to my parents many times. however, the exception that "i" have "allowed" has been family events (because i don't really have the option not to attend them, and neither my brother nor my parents will honor my wishes for him not to be at them).
my brother has been at all of the family's events for months now, and it's always the same; i do my best to avoid him without arousing suspicion, he seeks to converse, and i begrudgingly reply or make small talk to avoid making a scene. because of this, the wrong impression everyone observing seems to get is that i'm comfortable with him and hanging out with him (you guys probably know better than anyone how and why we hide emotions)
all that has been the norm, and it had gotten to a point where it was, at least more often than not, bearable for me.

but all of that has just erupted.
this last weekend, my brother was celebrating his recent engagement with a party. my parents, for once, actually asked if i wanted to attend this event. i was on the fence for a while, so i declined to answer. time passed and i wound up double booked, and shortly after that i decided that(regardless of the schedule conflict), i simply did not want to attend.

i did not simply state my decision, fearing that i really had no choice at all and saying "no" would only bring contention (spoilers; i was 300000% right). However, the morning of the party, my mother once again asks if i am going, and i reply "no", but she did not hear me (and she assumes "yes").
an hour before the party, i spring the news of the second obligation and how i wasn't going to go. and exactly as i was afraid, she had no intention of respecting my choice, and fights with me for five minutes before i manage to slip out the door for my other obligation.
i did not attend the party, and kind-of felt awful for trying to stand up for myself


the next evening, my mom asked me to join her for dinner, never saying anything about wanting to talk. i found this odd, because she didn't invite my dad or sister, so i immediately suspected she wanted to interrogate me about my feelings. i was growing uneasy about her intent, and so i simply told her i didn't want to talk about the previous day. her reaction made her intent clear. i was infuriated that she was resorting to cloak and dagger tricks to get me to sit down practically captive while we waited for food and then the bill at a sit-down restaurant. a restaurant is probably the worst place to me emotionally honest im my mind. why couldn't she have tried to talk to me at home? at home i could be honest; i could scream at her (and i wanted to) about how selfish she is; how she doesn't care about my feelings or wishes until it affects what she wants!

my mother and i finally had a conversation that night, in which, i said nothing of what i wanted to, and she placed an ultimatum on me; to "make a plan on how to get over these issues by tomorrow evening" (not recover, but decide if i wanted to talk to a therapist or something). obviously, it was incredibly naive of her to think that i could conjure up some recipe for a cure in 24 hours (especially when i have no idea how i'll ever "heal" after a decade to deal with the abuse). and that aside, the bigger problem i had with this is how it is obviously based on my mother's selfish desire for a happy family to parade around at extended family events, and has nothing to do with my desires!

furthermore, as if all of that wasn't enough, when i got home from work this evening (the deadline of the ultimatum), my brother's vehicle, as well as his fiancee's are parked outside. i was ready to tell my mother how i felt about her stupid ultimatum, but them being there shocked me. i drove around the block and decided to occupy myself elsewhere for a while to avoid them, figuring they'd be gone in an hour, tops.
so i came back over a hour and a half later, after receiving a call from my parents (they did not mention my brother being there) and surprise surprise, the vehicles are still there!

i figure it must be some sort of situation where they left the vehicles there while meeting someone in our area of town, and so i go into the house

but no! there they are, lounging on the couch, waiting for me, intervention-style, with my parents!!

they never said anything beyond typical hello's and small talk, and so i quickly left the family room with some made up excuse, and I've been hiding, processing and typing up this post for two hours since then.
my brother and his fiancee are no doubt gone, but my parents remain. i don't know what their intention was, if any; i haven't dared go back upstairs.

it's such a lie that we have the perfect little family, but that's the one that my parents keep trying to "tell" at every extended family get together, where i have to sit next to the man who abused me and smile.
it was such a lie each and every time my parents asked me if i wanted to go to this party! they never would've respected my choice!
it was a deceit, as my mother tried to lure me into a restaurant to diffuse the "chewing out" that she deserved!
it was another deceit as my parents likely invited my brother and fiancee over for some twisted intervention, and if they didn't invite them for that, my parents undeniably allowed them to chill out for hours, knowing my wish not to interact with them.
i am so fed up with all of these lies!


i don't know if any of that made sense to any of you guys. i mostly just needed to get all of that off of my chest, but i would like your opinions. should anyone else have control of when i should "heal"

 

[concerned_husky]

Hey TR101,

I don't post much on the main forum these days, but your situation really resonated with me and I want to add my two cents.

Like yours, my abuse was incestuous, and like you, I'm expected to uphold the "perfect family" image. I know how exhausting and nauseating that can be, and I feel for you. It sounds like there is a lot of deceit and manipulation going on, and that the "peace" in your family is largely dependent on forcing you to be someone you're not.

To me, that's really two layers of abuse you're dealing with right now. Vent all you need - you're justifiably angry and upset about the situation.

To answer your question: no, I don't think anyone should have control of when (or how) you should "heal", but you. In fact, blaming you for the state of affairs and rushing you into "getting over" the abuse is counter-productive and downright destructive.

Of course, the simplest advice would be to get out of there, but I know (from experience) that that's not easy. It does sound like you've made your wishes clear and asserted yourself several times, but your family is not about to change and respect you or hear you out.

Just remember - nobody should be in control of your "healing". Only you are. And you're not obliged to do anything or talk about your feelings if you don't want to.

 

[1lifenow]

TR

My great and good friend went exactly through this scenario, names and faces not withstanding.

He refused to go to his brother's wedding, And his response was brilliant. No drama, no story, just a simple" It doesn't work for me". When asked to elaborate, he just said his brother knew the reason and he was not up for discussing it, best take it up with the groom. simple clean and off the hook.

He is now 50 and he and his brother have only had small talk since those days. But no one gives him a hassle now, the family understands what happened and when he put out his boundries and just kept reiterating , they finally understood. We can't make someone do something like have regret or apologize, that is up to them. But he brilliantly illustrated we don't have to be part of the drama. No thank you and just smile.

all the best
good luck

 

[TR101]

i appreciate the supportive responses.
i talked briefly with my parents last night after posting, they said my brother and his fiancee were just hanging out, which i guess i believe. i expressed a lot of the same feelings that i posted, hoping they would just listen, just understand and accept my feelings. but after each point i made it was almost offensive and spiteful how they responded.

i need to take healing at my pace, and stand my ground. i haven't given moving out of my parents house much consideration until now, but i will start looking into it, at least as a contingency. but ultimately i really wish they could come around to respecting where i'm at right now.

 

[tommyb]

(TR101)

I remember coming home after the first sexual assault and everyone was just them. I don't know what that is, exactly. It's as if everyone around you's selfishness (?) becomes self-evident. They're looking at you like they want to be good persons, politically-correct, and even be able to tell their friends what a good person they were dealing with their brother or son -- I remember a few minutes of them being like that -- but quickly I noticed the looks in their eyes -- a certain fear, like the subject matter was too heavy not only for the land we were on but for the community and the community of families each family feels in the midst of. I wonder about how scary the truth was for them, not to mention the truth of everything else that was going on at the time. Quickly, whether innocently or not, they turned on me, in much the same way as this, from the response above:


"... and like you, I'm expected to uphold the "perfect family" image. I know how exhausting and nauseating that can be, and I feel for you. It sounds like there is a lot of deceit and manipulation going on, and that the "peace" in your family is largely dependent on forcing you to be someone you're not. "


And especially agree with this advice from above:


"He refused to go to his brother's wedding, And his response was brilliant. No drama, no story, just a simple" It doesn't work for me". When asked to elaborate, he just said his brother knew the reason and he was not up for discussing it, best take it up with the groom. simple clean and off the hook."

I don't really have advice, but wanted you to know I read your post and in my own experience the two quotes above are dead on.

 

[Chewy]

I too, had to uphold the family image that was the only goal in life (it seems) for my mother. I don't know how much of the CSA she understood to have happened, nor whether she cared. If it had been my sister that had been abused, guarantee you my father would be rotting in jail right now. And the intervention you describe was my daily hell all throughout my teenage years. I recall hours of my parents trying to make me feel bad for the smallest things, it was beyond over the top. Was part of the control.

My advice: Do not sacrifice your health and future for their falsehoods and fantasy of a perfect family. Make a deliberate plan to leave, as soon as possible. You don't have to do it now, but soon. Just the planning phase will make you feel better. Don't tell them either, in fact be respectful and don't let them suspect or they will make it impossible for you to leave. If you have to get a job, go away to college, or just crash at a friend's or distant relative's house, I would, and I did at age 17. A couple friends from high school all chipped in and we rented an apartment our senior years. Then I joined the military a year later (but that's a whole 'nother post).

Maybe some day you'll be able to reconcile with the rest of the family, but you can't heal under these circumstances.