So interesting. I wonder why your brother feels so insecure. Sounds like he felt he was under a lot of pressure to be successful with that lecture or something.

One thing I didn’t share with you is that I also have a younger, younger brother who is bipolar. And I’m very fascinated by the fact that you mentioned your brother dramatizing his life and adding bits from movies. My youngest brother actually does that too. Our childhoods had enough shit to complain about but he always takes it that one step further and adds one small detail to make it worse.

The classic example is the time my brother lost his shit (bipolar, remember) and pushed past our grandma on his way out the door. My mom (perhaps rightfully?) grabbed his shirt and pushed him against the wall, angrily explaining that our grandma was old and pushing past her was way out line. My youngest brother recounts that story as the time my mother choked him until he had bruises. My other brother and I don’t recall it that way at all. And to be honest, I think if you’re pushing past your grandmother, whatever happens to you next is pretty justifiable. Had she fallen and broken a hip, that would have been bad. My brother called CPS and they didn’t find his claim to be credible, so that adds to my belief that I’m remembering it correctly.

We were just a regular middle class family but my mom had pretty poor taste in men to be honest. Hence my drunk and absent father plus youngest brother’s bipolar which he inherited from his father, my mother’s second marriage.

I also recall the time he ran away to a friend’s house, which he recalls as the time that my mother “kicked him out and left him homeless for a week.”

I think the truth of all this is probably somewhere in the middle for us all. Our parents treated us differently because we were different kids. I had fewer issues and I’m sure I was easier to deal with. Maybe my mom scared my brother when she jacked him up against the wall. Maybe he felt like she didn’t want him home which is why he ran away. It’s just funny how perception works, especially when you throw in confounding factors such as mental illness and insecurity, different ages, different temperaments.

Well, best of luck to you and your brother. The best parents in the world still fuck up kids on some level. We can only try to be better for our own kids. This has been on my mind a LOT now that I have a newborn at home myself. I just want to be there for him and break the cycle of absent, drunken fathers. It’s a cycle that goes back to my great grandpa on my dad’s side, so even though I don’t do drugs or drink in my adult life, I worry about the family curse, haha.