2003-05-23 - 6:46 p.m.
Some unexpected family matters
As usual, everything is resolved with the friend who was being a wanker. Apparently, I’m back in favor. Sort of. I get the feeling that he and I will do this a lot—we’ll argue, or one of us will get pissy, and we’ll stop talking, but then we’ll start again and neither one of us will outright apologize. Well, I will sometimes, but he never will. He’s such a stereotypical man in that respect, which is kind of unfair to most men, but please note that I said “stereotypical”. But every time something like this happens, I feel myself more and more drawn to him. He pisses me off sometimes, and I piss him off too, but it’s all outweighed by how much we make each other laugh.
[/end sap]
Work is so. fucking. BORING. I have senior-itis in a baaaaaad way. I just want to go home and curl up and watch Judge Judy and read trashy books. I was supposed to go to the mall today and buy a new pair of shoes, but I decided against that. I’ll go on Sunday.
I went to an alumni thing for high school last night. Things like that are always a little awkward for me; as outgoing as I am, I don’t immediately mingle well with some people, like former teachers. But I walked in and got hugs and smiled and ate hors d’oeuvres and drank a glass of wine, and it was all good. I had prepared myself for the toughest question, and it came up after I’d been there for about 15 minutes: “How’s your brother?” And its variants, of course. My answer: “He’s fine. He’s an accountant. He’s married now.”
I only know for sure that one of those pieces of information is true. I found out he was married from my cousin, who shares her manicurist with my father’s second wife. I found out from someone else that the wife isn’t Jewish, and I did an Amazon wish list search and found out that her name is Jennifer. And that’s it. I haven’t seen my brother in over ten years. I would definitely know him if I saw him—he probably looks a lot like my father, and besides, at one point in our lives we might have been twins. I know he’s tall, about 6’3”, and that he has thick, dark hair. He wore it long-ish at one point, and it looked really good.
But I know absolutely nothing else about him. I know he graduated from the University of Maryland, and I know that he’s almost 28. I’m pretty sure he’s an accountant. I heard he doesn’t talk to our father anymore, but that’s not certain.
I don’t know his favorite movie. Or his favorite beer. Or if he wants kids. Or if he owns a house. I don’t know or remember what he smells like or how he likes to dress. I don’t know his favorite food, or if he finally gave in and started liking raw tomatoes. I don’t know if he has any allergies. I remember his eyes were kind of oddly colored, but I don’t know what color they are now. What does he like to do on the weekends? Does he want kids? Does he hate our father? What has his life been like for the last ten years?
He’s supposed to be my brother.
Every once in a while, I get nostalgic about him. There’s an urge to find him and try to have a relationship, but it’s not possible right now. There’s too much pain connected to it at the moment. He hurt my family deeply, and for that I have a hard time forgiving him. He rejected my grandfather’s attempts to love him and support him. He was my big brother, yet he never tried to protect me from my father, and I guess I still hold that against him, a little bit. He humiliated me in high school by not acknowledging that we were even related, and that made a lot of people suffer. Any friends that we had mutually had to choose sides, and it was weird for a while.
I guess I’m at fault too. I could have made an effort back then. A 12-year-old girl who’s been seriously damaged doesn’t think like that. There is a part of me, a big part, that’s still that 12-year-old, and she holds the adult back in many, many ways. I am also so deathly afraid that I’ll get up the balls to write to him and he’ll reject me, and I don’t know if I can truly handle that.
At this point, I often wonder if it will matter. Even if we start a relationship, there’s a huge gap in there that we’ll never get back. He’s not really my brother, and he probably never will be. We share no memories of the past ten years. So many milestones came and went, and he wasn’t there for any of them. All we could do is become friends who happen to be connected by blood and pain, and I’m not mature enough to appreciate that now.
I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready. Until then, I have to master the smile and nod and the snippets of information. The truth is embarrassing and painful, as truth often is, I guess.
