I was awaken and pulled out of bed this morning, by a single thought.
I have spent the last couple of days contemplating the last conversation with my brother.
I have severely misjudged him and in doing so added to the pain he and his family were already going through.
When this all started. The one person that was there for me was my brother. 3 months in, when I pulled completely away, it was not because of him, but because of all of the pain, confusion and chaos and my fear of what it would do to us. He was also a reminder of how much I lost when I lost the relationship with my father .
At the time, I thought it would be much better for everyone, if we had more distance, give each other time and some space. Our families needed us.
But the distance didn’t actually help, it made things worse in some ways.
When you burn your hand on a stove or something equally hot, you have this natural reaction to pull away…and that is what I did.
I should not have pulled away from my brother, even though he is a reminder of the pain and loss my family is experiencing, he is not the source, that is my father. And in many ways…even though this happened to my daughter, my brother and his family have suffered a massive loss …our whole family has.
In many ways, he may be suffering the loss of my father even more. I spoke to my father every day, but he actually saw my father every day. How different his life must be now.
Within weeks of pulling away from my brother, as much as I missed him, not having that constant reminder of loss, felt a bit better, and I could concentrate on my daughters loss and grief much easier without thinking of my own. I could tend to my own family, without being burdened by the loss of my father or the added burden of the pain of my brother and his family.
In that last week of speaking to my brother, I had also spoken to one of my sisters and she told me how they were all in the courtroom when the charges against my father were read, and how they were all devastated.
But in all the conversations with my brother he had told me he was not there…he had told me he wasn’t allowed to be there.
A week later I was told by detectives that my family was being uncooperative. My mother refused to speak to them at all, and my sisters refused to return his phone calls. When I asked, had he spoken to my brother, the detective said, “yes but he was very short with us and not very forthcoming.”
The pain I experienced at hearing that statement from the detective about my brother was really what started this blog, after so much pain and loss. It was the loss of my brother that was finally too much.
But that isn’t what actually happened it was only what i was told.
Had I not distanced myself I would have known that.
Later I would learn that my brother had spoken to the detectives, and had already told them everything he knew , it just wasn’t much because he didn’t know much.
My brother also wasn’t at my father’s arraignment, he was told they would not be allowed in, so he did not go. Only my mom and sisters went and they were allowed in.
On top of everything we were already going through, what my father had done to my daughter , all the crazy emotional emails and texts from my mothers and sisters, and now this “betrayal” from my brother, sent me into a lonely state of depression..
For my wife, try that she might, all she could do was watch, as both her daughter and her husband were literally falling apart in front of her eyes. And for her, the source of all of that pain was my father, my mother and my siblings, and she finally lashed out and she lashed out at all of them.
I understand why so many families do not recover from incest and child abuse. It is the deepest of betrayals, and loss of any trust that you ever had, then all of the shame, emotion, pain and anger that follows in it’s wake, makes it very difficult to recover.
And it isn’t just the shame of the acts that took place, sometimes it’s the shame of misjudgment and of words you cannot take back.
I have misjudged my brother and am sorry for causing him and his family any additional pain.
I do not know if we will ever have the relationship we had before, as just speaking to him recently and hearing his voice was such a reminder of the loss we have all suffered…trust, innocence, relationships, my father and the circumstances by which we lost it.
It took me a few days to process the emotions of that phone call, and find my footing again.
My hope is that someone will learn something from what my family and I are going through, and understand the effect that incest and child abuse has on everyone it touches.