I had a really weird dream. It was not a nightmare as such, but it left a bitter taste and a sense of uneasiness throughout the entire day. My brother was in the dream and I woke with a lucid echo of his terrifying accusation about how I ruined his life.
It happened when we were out for dinner; my parents, my then boyfriend and I; for the very first time. There was no friction yet, my mother had me fooled she accepted the boyfriend and my father had put on his costume of important executive. While waiting for our orders to be served, my brother called me on my mobile phone, and he started screaming straight away, how I destroyed his entire future and how he would never be able to get a normal romantic relationship because of me. He referred to the best girl he ever had; and how she met me and we became close friends, and she broke up with him shortly after. The same happened with the second best girlfriend he ever had - one afternoon out with me, of shoe shopping, seemed to have ruined her affections for him. Because I introduced her to her own freedom of choice (instead of his bullying and manipulative behaviour).
From early on, my brother's behaviour resembled that of my narcissistic manipulative mother. Growing older, he got meaner and sneakier, and consciously trying to disrupt our family as well as me personally. He would make sure I took the full blow of my mother's rage; even when he was to blame. He lied and spied for her pretending to be on my side, while passing on any information of my thoughts and visions and whereabouts to her - so I could receive any punishment. It took me a terribly long time to realise that to some extent he was treating me worse than my mother did. When my father was admitted to hospital because of his leg going septic after a minor injury, my brother nearly forbade me to pay him a visit. He called me on my parents' landline; making sure I knew they were in on it, while at the same time my mother pretended she never knew anything of my brother's intention to keep me out. I did go, however, and I got soothed by my mother who swore my brother had no right to push me off like that/ Only later I learned she damned well knew and had agreed on it - but there, at the hospital, she smelled an opportunity to alienate him and me even more.
This became very obvious on my son's first birthday, on which he retreated to a corner with my mother; whispering to her the whole time, while my father stood watch; and my brother's unknown girlfriend and her two daughters sat silently on the sofa, only to leave after the etiquettishly one hour attendance.
Things never were normal in my family, but from that day on I realised there could only be one solution. I went no contact with my brother shortly after. I did the same with my parents five years later.
But my brother's accusations linger.
Especially because I recognise his anger in the careful ways my friends keep their other friends away from me. I never understood why, for instance, one girlfriend in the past would meet me one day at some place and meet another girlfriend at that same place two days later. Why not mix up, go together, wouldn't that be fun, since she talks of that other friend so often I already seem to know her my entire life?
"No, because she is so much different from you that it would not work."
Excuse me?
"I will not risk losing either friendship just because she might think you're a bad egg for coming between us."
Well, the same excuse was given to me by several other friends. Apart from birthday parties, I was not to know these other people about whom they gossipped or complained; or who they revered or felt sad for. And then I found out these others never knew a thing, or very little and most of it negative, about me.
Suddenly it wasn't about being different anymore:
It was not only about being a bad egg and friendship-wrecking.
Suddenly I was some sort of best kept secret.
Why?
Because like my brother so firmly believes, I would steal their friends? Because of the possibility these friends might like me? Because I am just me? Or because I indeed am a bad egg, incapable of keeping close friendships because I like to destroy?
I am still very confused about it. I keep pondering the possible answers - they are hurtling through my mind like leaves in a gale. I am fully aware of the fact that I may indeed have done bad things, I am human after all, a human who survived a lot of crap and still is paying a price for that.
After all, we are all bad in someone's story.
But we cannot all be bad in
everyone's story. So I refuse to be the bad egg here because someone else
is unwilling to face their own insecurities.
I forget how often I already listened to the audio version of The Song of Achilles, written by Madeline Miller, narrated by Frazer Douglas. Just as I like to re-read certain novels, this audiobook is so far the only one I can listen to, again and again. Rarely have I read, and listened to, a novel as exquisite and touching as this one. Via Audible I got this novel from a friend and I am forever grateful to her for it.
I read Warrior Cats to my son, currently the second book of the second series and that story etches itself into my being in a delicate way. I have to work hard though, to read through the many, many, often awful mistakes in translation, spelling and grammar. As a writer and editor myself I get really worked up about those. The apparitions of Spottedleaf as a guiding spirit get me so emotional, though, that my boy can hear it in my voice - the way I experience our own cats, is intensely relatable. It may also help that I too am spiritually moved, with a love for stars and moon, making moon water and cleansing rituals with sage and salt bowls.
The wonders of stories translate themselves so often in our everyday lives; the slightest event or word in the newspaper can trigger our imaginations and all too soon we lose ourselves in stories of our own, mostly ridiculous ones, woven with sarcasm and giddiness. And he throws about him words that are beyond his age, many-layered words which he uses in the correct context, the right situation. As he makes his schoolwork, however, he keeps his vocabulary basic, as if embarrassed by the fact that he knows what he knows.