The whole situation was 120% fucked up in unacceptable ways. I couldn’t let my little brother take the fall for this family. It wasn’t going to happen. He called me last night after I had ordered a hoagie, the plan being that I’d have my hoagie and watch a movie and forget about the events of the day. He was obviously upset and in need of someone to talk to, so I told Beej that he should go get the hoagies and I’d be back in like 20, I just had to talk to my brother. I went and picked him up and we went for a drive around King of Prussia. He was very sad, very upset. He seemed lost and didn’t know what to do or where to go from where he was. He had mentioned that he felt forced, like he had no other options, to help my dad move out. He said that if he didn’t do it, it would never get done, and that he was just going to tough it out–and then he started crying.
My wings came out and my protective nature kicked in. He didn’t -have to- do it. He wasn’t responsible for that. He’s a child, a young man about to have the summer before his senior year of high school. There’s no reason a kid should feel responsible for the well-being of his adults; that’s just not right. And the emotional ammunition of moving memories out of a house you love…the trauma was unacceptable. To help his father make himself scarce at the edge of seventeen is a hot hell he didn’t deserve. He shouldn’t have to bite the bullet, not this time.
I went home and told my mom that he was very upset, and that it was not in his best interest to be moving things out this weekend. He had an invitation to go to the Poconos with friends from school this weekend after the prom, and him not being here to see this whole situation occur was, in his opinion, a better option for his own mental cohesion than helping my dad move to Maryland. My mom had no idea. Danny had apparently not told anyone else how he felt, which I can understand. He wanted to be there for his parents, he wanted to be there for his family, he could come second. He was thinking selflessly. Usually this is a course of action I’m in favor in, but this was just too inhuman for that. He needed to take his own feelings into consideration.
I offered to make the call, I figured my dad would listen to my logic more readily that he would listen to my mom. This was an incorrect assumption. His thought patterns were self-centered to such a degree that everything else had fallen by the wayside. He started making statements I hope he didn’t mean. He lied to me, told me my brother was excited to do it (this while the same brother is audibly crying in the background). He started calling me “the only problem that existed in this scenario.” He said I couldn’t know how it was because I hadn’t been around. He was apparently under the impression that he wasn’t moving out, but just “moving some of his things from one place to another.” He started pulling mal-formed statements from the broken circuits in his head. He started patching biosurvival insufficiencies into my actions in the best interest of my brother. He started making threats of not leaving. He started pulling underhanded emotional circuit rhetoric about how my action were making him into a fool. He started pulling unfounded moral circuit cries of injustices done to him. His rational circuit was totally let out, short circuiting. He tried to make it about money and support. He said that I’d fucked him. He was feeling (which i supposes his a definite step forward, anger and any emootion is better than no emotion at all).
I told him there was an entire profession of people that work on an as-needed basis moving things. He wouldn’t hear any of it. He said he couldn’t schedule it even if he had the money for it. I said he could as his friends. He said what friends? Which ones? He said he couldn’t even ask his closest friends to do this for him on such short notice. I reiterated, the moving trade is a spur of the moment kind of things, and that for a couple hundred bucks he could have it done more quickly than my brother and a friend could’ve gotten it done. He said that now he had to do it all by himself.
I let him sit in silence. This was one of his favorite moves when I was younger, acting like a bratty child, I figured he’d see where I was coming from and what I was actually trying to do. I’m not trying to fuck him, I’m not trying to mess his life up. I’m not working for my mother, I’m not trying to make his existence any more difficult than it has to be. I was looking out for my brother. I was keeping him from being hurt, something which apparently my parents had neglected to pay attention to. It just wasn’t part of either of their pictures. They had not considered how badly this would have effected either of us.
This brought him to a further fury, just like it had me all the times he’d used it on me when I was acting irrationally and immaturely. He lost his handle on the situation. I tried to explaiin to him, I’m not trying to make his life hell. I’m not trying to hurt him. God, if there were anything I wanted less than for someone in my family to come to harm I don’t really know what it would be. But the way I figured it, this entire scenario was 120% percent fucked up, and if i could do one thing right, if I could make one adult decision in this entire clusterfuck of hurt and betrayal and juvenile tendencies, I would make sure my little brother came to no harm.
He hung up on me. I had said what needed to be said anyway. I told my mom and brother how the conversation went, and stuck around long enough for him to call back and for my mom to try and make things right. I stuck around long enough to pick her up when she collapsed into a sputtering weeping mess, barely coherent enough to say something about “ruining another person’s life.” I told her she hadn’t ruined his life. It’s true, she hadn’t. I told her this was the right thing to do. At least, my compass told me this was the right thing to do. I left after that, went and got my hoagie and enjoyed it thoroughly. We watched “The Wrestler.” What strange overtones came out of the screen. The night sat uneasy and coldly humid.
I wish he could hear his own anger. I wish he understood what it does to people. I hope he can see that I’m not the enemy, and that in this circumstance there is no enemy. God, I hope that was the right thing to do.
