Dear Internet 7: The Day My Brother Tried to Kill Me

Dear Internet,

By a show of hands, who here thinks I could just be an experimental A.I. in development by Apple, or Google? Uh-huh, yeah, umm, okay, four, five. Oh, quite a few of you. I get it. A.I. is getting a little unnerving these days. None of you can actually see me; you only have my word to go by that I am flesh and blood, and a person’s word isn’t worth all that much on the interwebs. Maybe this hypothetical experiment is to see if humans can empathize with A.I. Is it working?

So what do you all know about me, then? By my own admission (and who can really trust that, yeah?) I am a human of flesh and blood. But what do you all know about me? I’m willing to bet not a whole lot. Depressed Millennial? Check. Childhood trauma? Check. ADHD? Shit, did I leave my oven on? Not a big fan of animals? Check. Suicidal? Check. Dad obsessed with Reagan? Check. Dead Nana? Check. 

Would you believe me if I told you I have a brother? Hadn’t mentioned him yet. Would you believe me if I told you he was worse than my dad? I wouldn’t blame you if you were a bit dubious. While my dad is an abusive asshole, I can at least understand him. I know why he is the way he is. Not that I’m excusing what he’s done. But I can trace back what made him who he is. He was raised by an alcoholic bus driver who sexually assaulted and raped late passengers as they got off the bus. He’d then come home, get drunk, and either beat his son or force him to clean his feet. So there’s that sense of childhood normalcy. My dad was sent off to military school because he was a “troubled child” and later became a Marine in the peace time ‘80s, and still had to shoot dead a combatant overseas. When he came home, one of the first things he did was beat the shit out of his “father.” The only role model he had told him that’s how we deal with our problems. My dad is a watered-down version of his own father. He could change, he just doesn’t know how and, like the rest of us, he’s afraid of change. My father raised me with the tools he was given, and he never bothered to look elsewhere for new ones. My father is tragic, broken… quantifiable. I get him. I know how to deal with him now. I call it playing politics. I have to act like a diplomat whenever I see him. It’s exhausting, but doable.

But I never understood my brother. In your mind, take everything I’ve told you about my childhood: the alcoholism, the abuse, see me in your mind’s eye, a little boy, alone. Now add another boy, a little older than me, out there in the living room in the midst of our father’s drunken maelstrom while I cower in my room pretending to sleep. My brother and I folding towels in the kitchen, watching in shock as my parents chase each other around the house like a couple of cartoon characters, witnessing the very first time our father pins our mother to pantry wall to shout, red-faced, spittle flinging in her face, to just shut up and listen him! “Let go, you’re hurting me!”  My brother inside the house on the computer when my mom comes home early to find me outside nearly dead, pretending he never knew I was out there. My brother refusing to acknowledge the Alzheimer’s ravaging our grandmother’s brain, standing off in the corner of the funeral home as I stare at the open casket. He was there through most of it. Then he moved out one week after graduating high school, leaving me to fend for myself in that shell of a home. 

I had a bear collection. Little knick knacks, small statuettes my mother and grandmother would buy me. I didn’t want any stuffed bears, I only wanted life-like bears, and everyone knew that. One day my brother comes into my bedroom with a stuffed bear to add to my collection. I looked at the bear, then to the shelf of bears and told him as gently as I could that it would not fit, which was true. He looked at me, and then my shelf, then to the stuffed bear in his hand, then grabbed the bear’s head in one hand and the body in the other and pulled. He handed me the bear’s head, stuffing bulging out the neck, then he smiled and walked out. 

When I was in middle school, my mom got a job, which meant my brother and I were left home alone during the summers when school was out. He didn’t like me. I guess? I don’t know. This is difficult for me to write. I’m kind of at a loss for words on this part of my life. Did I mention I don’t understand him? 

Okay, so whenever we were home alone, he would do things to “convince” me to go to my room. I’d wake up, pour a bowl of cereal, go to the living room, and find some cartoons. My brother would usually wake up after me, and if he did, he’d change the channel, to MTV usually. This is back when MTV still played music. He’d blast heavy metal like Rob Zombie, or some shit like that, full volume. I’d ask him to turn it down and he’d just act like he didn’t hear me. He’d be on the computer updating his MySpace with edgy anime AMVs, and shirtless photos of himself, typically holding either a skateboard or a knife. He loved knives. He’d keep the TV remote next to him at the computer desk and continue this charade until I went into my room and shut the door. Then he’d lower the volume on the TV or change the channel. This continued during the first summer between fifth and sixth grade, day after day, until our mom would get home from work at 3:30.

I tried a few times to take the remote, and he would snatch it away before I could. The last time I tried to get it, he placed his hand over it. I grabbed the butt of the remote and pulled it out from under his hand. He got up, zero expression on his face, grabbed my wrist and twisted. I fell to my knees and he took the remote from my hand and looked down at me. That look said everything.

Things got worse the following summer. I had the pit-sweats and the butterflies throughout the last month of the school year, anticipating the summer ahead. When the summer finally came, I thought if I took the batteries out of the remote after turning on cartoons and hiding the new batteries we had in the desk, he wouldn’t be able to change the channel on me. I was wrong. At first he was mad and yelled at me to give him the batteries. When I told him no a few times (scared shitless, by the way) his whole demeanor changed. He calmed down; his eyes, his posture, his smirk all exuded confidence. He walked to the TV and manually shut it off. We had a standoff, him standing in front of the TV, smirk cocked and loaded, me sitting on the couch fuming. I could either lose the staring contest or fetch out the hidden batteries to put them back in the remote and have a power button war with him. But then he would just snatch the remote, batteries within it, out of my hand and win. One simple move and I lost. 

It was the first time I realized I didn’t have any control. With my dad it was different. Sure, I felt powerless around him, but I never even tried to fight back. He was my dad. I was told by everyone—family, friends, teachers—that you’re supposed to obey your parents. But with my brother, well, I mean, siblings, yeah? We were supposed to have our backs, watch out for each other. And yeah, argue, but on even footing. Those first two summers taught me there was nothing even in my relationship with my brother.

He sequestered me in my room. I only left to make lunch and use the bathroom, but if I lingered, I was persuaded to return to my room. He had those eyes. Blank, cold, hard, unfeeling, rapacious—whatever cliché adjective you want to call them, he had them. It was as if he could grip you by the throat simply by looking at you. I knew with a look where I was supposed to be. At first I just kept to my room, not wanting to make him angry, but I kept fantasizing about going out there and yelling at him that I had a right to be out of my room, and watch TV and eat out there and have a goddamn normal day. And one day I did. And then he beat me. And beat me. And kicked me. And punched me. And threw me. And held me down. And spit in my face. I remember him doing that a lot. So I guess that means I kept trying to argue with him. It’s hard to remember. I feel like I’m floating whenever I try to. Kind of like right now.

I think it was the next summer our dad found out he was looking at porn on the computer. So my dad would change the password and only told Mom and me, and told me not to tell my brother. My brother was furious when he tried to log on the next day. He’d come into my room and ask me what the password was. At first I told him I wouldn’t tell him, my heart pounding against my ribcage. So he just stood there, in my doorway. He said he wasn’t going to leave, he wasn’t going to let me leave, and he wasn’t going to let me do anything until I told him what the password was. I sat there on my bed, not having eaten breakfast yet, and resolved to wait him out. I reached over to a book I was reading and he grabbed it out of my hands and threw it down the hallway. I went for my Gameboy, but he grabbed it first and pocketed it. I tried to turn on my GameCube; he turned it off. My anxiety spiked and I started to cry and he just looked at me with those eyes. So I told him the password.

Our dad found out again that my brother was looking at porn, grounded him, and changed the password again. This time, when he tried the same tactic to get the password out of me, I just stayed in bed. I tried to wait out the clock until our mom came home at 3:30. I was so determined not to let him win. All I could think about were different ways it would go down, and I tried to convince myself I would hold out. I woke up that morning to him shaking me, asking me what the password was, and I said nothing. He asked me again, and I remained silent. So he yelled the question in my ear, over and over and over and over again. My nerve shattered. And I told him. The password got changed a few more times after that, but I never again resisted. He finally learned how to erase his search history.

All that would be bad enough to give a kid crippling anxiety for the rest of his life, right? None of the above is normal sibling behavior, right? That’s what my therapist has told me anyway. It’d be great if I could just leave it at this and move on to greener pastures. But I can’t. Would you believe, there’s a motherfucking capstone on this course of chaos?

There I was, imprisoned in my bedroom as usual, when I decided I was going to make a break for the kitchen to make a sandwich. Of course, I never made it that far because as I walked down the hall toward the kitchen, I had to pass by the entryway to the living room, where my brother was watching porn. He heard me walk past the entryway and immediately bolted for his bedroom. He came out holding his largest knife. With those eyes, and that smirk, he walked down the hall and pointed the tip of blade just inches from my throat. I began to walk backwards, my hands instinctively going up. I tried talking him down. “Ryan, this is nuts. What are you doing? Just put the knife down.” He didn’t respond; just kept on smirking. I walked laps backwards around the house as we faced each other, his blade to my throat the entire time. I was panicking, trying to think of some way to end this, some way for him to put the knife down, so I walked back toward the front door. I thought if I went outside in broad daylight, there’d be no way he’d follow me out there with neighbors on either side of the house and across the street, which was a busy road right in front of the house. None of that mattered. 

I opened the front door and stepped onto the porch, still walking backward, and he still followed. I opened the porch door and walked outside, and he still followed. I walked circles in the front yard, aghast that he was still facing me, holding the knife to my throat, still smirking. I told him, “What if a cop drives by? Or what if Mom comes home early?” But he didn’t say a word or react. I guess I just broke. I put my hands down, turned my back to him and walked back inside. He followed me all the way to my bedroom and closed the door behind me. Then he stuck the blade between the wooden slats in my bedroom door and said, “If you ever come out again, you’ll get this.”

I sat on my bed, not really feeling anything, and I looked at my bear collection and fixated on the torn-off bear head, with all its stuffing falling out. I don’t really remember a whole lot after that.

I don’t know what made my brother the person he is. Maybe it was the abuse he and I endured from our father. But then, why am I not like him? 

When he moved out, his attitude toward me completely changed. He acted like we were best friends. It was so convincing that we eventually moved in together. And a similar pattern was engendered.