You can choose your friends......

Mum got a mothers day card from my brother today. Posted on thursday, so not a hope that it would arrive on time. Absolutely no other contact on the actual day though. You wait until you see this card. I know he will think its hilarious.......

Not a single bit of effort made. Not even a text. He used to send flowers, he used to pick up the phone to call her. Not long after we moved to Derbyshire he even drove for 2 hours and appeared at the front door just to surprise her. Now I can't remember the last time we saw him or my nephew. Its very much out of sight out of mind to them, but its the opposite for my mum. She is so upset, wondering what she has done to offend them. I keep telling her its nothing she has done. 

As I have mentioned before, I have my own reasons for no contact with them, most of the reasons are when I realised how much of a narcissistic gas-lighter my brother is. Nothing is ever his fault and he is not happy unless his actions are leaving a trail of destruction behind him. He has blamed every single issue in his life on myself or our Dad, and now it seems like he wants to start bringing mum into this ridiculous equation too. 

I spent my whole childhood and teenage years terrified of him, desperately trying to get him to treat me like he respected me. There were minimal times when I thought that this was going well but it turned out he was just doing it for his own gain and normally needed something or wanted to make me out to be the bad person. 

He has openly called me "the golden child" and always told me I was a "mistake". All I did was want him to love me, not hurt me. A big brother is supposed to be your hero. I have tried in adulthood to have a normal sibling relationship with him, never been successful. Even in the last couple of years I have tried, I have reached out to him, I asked him to give me away when I got married, and opened up in the hope that things could change but you can't change a narcissist. 

I don't understand how his mind works. It baffles me how he can be so cruel and heartless. How he can think that this is acceptable behaviour. I know he has his issues, he is an alcoholic with addictions to prescription drugs. What he does need to take for his mental health and pain relief he now can't, as they are too much of a temptation for him. He has also drank so much for so long that he now cannot go without drink, his body no longer knows how to function without alcohol. He blames most of this his childhood and my Dad. I won't go into too much detail but what I will say is my Dad was not abusive, far from it, he was the most caring person I have ever met. What I will say is he took issue with my Dad being in the Royal Navy and the moving around that came with. I had a different childhood to my siblings. Dad was at sea a lot during theirs, he had retired from active service before I was born so I had Dad at home all the time. That is one of the reasons my brother resents me. The other is that I was born at all.

I am just heartbroken for Mum.