I had a birthday this week, but it was a bit subdued due to current circumstances (my SO and I are living apart at the moment while I try and process and work through issues around how much my PDA realisations have impacted me).
This is the first birthday I’ve had since I told my sibs (all seven of them) that I wanted to be incommunicado for the foreseeable future.
In my family, the members invariably send messages or call on birthdays, and this was no exception – all seven reached out to me in one way or another throughout the day.
It was with a certain level of resignation that I just saw them and ignored them. I don’t feel it’s practical to fully block them in case of any family emergencies (I’ve no issues with their children), but I’d much rather they didn’t inject these minor comms into my space right now.
I’d already had a few messages since I informed them of my decision on 1 January (great way to start the year!) – annoyingly, the most frequent sib to reach out is the one (second oldest sib/second oldest brother) who I think set up much of the dysfunction in our family by his abuse of the next two brothers (numbers four and five in the family).
As far as I’m aware, there was only one instance of any abuse of a sexual nature in our family, which was perpetrated by one of those two brothers against me, but while not physical in that way the other abuse against various sibs certainly left a lot of scars. As youngest, I certainly had an easier time in some regards, but that was while I was suffering as “the end of the line” of sibling torment.
I don’t think the trauma experienced by any of the others has really been looked at by them – but if they don’t tell me, I wouldn’t know, right?
There are signs, though, and the usual refrain of “Suck it up, sunshine!” (or words to that effect) whenever any of the problematic behaviour has been discussed over the years points to me to a lot of normalisation of the abuse which was meted out, rather than a considered approach to abuse, trauma, and recovery.
I swallowed that blue pill for many years, but it’s a complicated situation when, for example, on non-emotional issues, we would all trust any of the rest of us to be faithful and proper executors of our wills. But true connection? Understanding? Empathy?
That’s a big “Yeah, nah!” from me.
I’m going to give a couple of examples of late stage goings on, one which confirmed my decision to go incommunicado with them, and one which shows a particularly unsophisticated/ignorant position on what I’m going through.
Example the First
I’d pretty well made up my mind in the second half of last year to sever comms with my sibs (both our parents are dead, so need for such a decision with them although it would have been the same).
But there was something hanging over my head I felt I needed to deal with – my sister had decided to divest herself of our grandmother’s 1920’s treadle Singer sewing machine, something we were both interested in having after G’ma died. My sister received it, likely because she was female and older (this was the 1990’s), but asked a couple of years back if I wanted it.
I had scored a very similar one from our neighbour not long after G’ma died, and I was therefore pretty settled with that situation. I passed mine on a few years ago to a young friend as a themed gift, as she had studied as a costumier at Australia’s premier performing arts institution, NIDA, specialising in period costumes, and I thought she might like it. She did/does.
I didn’t want G’ma’s for myself any more, but I thought one of my offspring, who designed some of their own clothes and lives in a large house in the country, might like it as a decorative thing. I also thought if it could stay in the family, that would be preferred, so I said yes after they expressed exactly that interest and intent in receiving it.
One of my brothers picked it up when visiting the gifting sister and brought it back to Sydney, and it sat at his house for a year and a half while I dealt with “real life issues” – but if I was going to go incommunicado, I thought I should tie (cut?) off that loose end and get it from him.
I unexpectedly had a Sunday to myself last December, so I reached out to him and asked if I could duck over to pick it up, expecting it would be just a very short visit, very little engagement. He said he was visiting the oldest sister that day, and he’d be leaving in an hour – not a problem, I said: it would take me 50 minutes to drive to his place, a couple of minutes to grab the Singer, and I’d be gone and out of his hair.
When I arrived, he informed me our oldest sister, on hearing I was ducking over to his place, would head over as well as she happened to have a box to give me from the Singer-gifting sister (unrelated to the Singer, but she wasn’t aware what it was).
I didn’t feel in a position to just shoot off, so I agreed to stay for tea while we waited – at least there was a dog there for positive company. When our sister arrived, she handed me a smallish box inside which was a mug, with a supposedly comedic picture on it which meant nothing to me as far as interactions with the gifting sister went. It felt very odd.
Anyway, while there, the eldest sister relayed a story about visiting her late partner’s sister with him a couple of years back – I won’t bore you with the details (I probably already have bored you, thanks for hanging on to this point at least), but at one stage she described her partner’s youngest nephew in that branch of the family as “the [air quotes] poor sensitive misunderstood youngest of the family[air quotes]”, which was immediately followed up by my brother smirking at me and saying “we know what that’s like, don’t we?”
Typical “be tough”, “suck it up sunshine” bullshit I’ve had to endure for decades. I know it might not seem much, but that dismissiveness of it being valid to be “sensitive” or to feel “misunderstood” in a family of so little understanding just really struck a nerve that day, and made me more firm in my decision to cut comms with them. I left within a couple of minutes of that comment, and that was the last time I’ve spoken to any of my sibs.
Example the Second
I’d already cut those ties when my SO and I decided to allow me some time and space to figure out my shit in relation to PDA, and to allow us to effectively renegotiate our relationship based on our new understanding, by living apart. That process is ongoing, and, while fraught and unsettling, we’re still trying to work it out that we stay together. Progress is being made, it’s slow, it will feature in future posts.
I had no right, nor intention, to suggest my SO also cut ties with my family (we’ve been together for 28 years, they’re sort of their family, too), but we hadn’t discussed exactly when, or if she would discuss our current circumstances, but we had discussed a basic framing of what we were going through for family and friends. I expected it would be canvassed with my sibs at some point.
Then, just over two months after I cut ties with my sibs, my eldest sister texted me:
I heard your situation is changed. I hope you’re getting care and support and haven’t “awarded yourself a medical degree” and are self diagnosing. Reach out if you need to. Take care.
I knew immediately my SO had disclosed our separation that day, had mentioned me working through issues about my profile on the spectrum, and that my oldest sister had decided she knew exactly what that meant, and thought little of people on the spectrum self-diagnosing after \"awarding themselves medical degrees”. And that she needed to convey all this, and her “support” of me, to me, immediately.
My SO confirmed they had said nothing to precipitate that sort of response (I did not suspect them of that), and upon discussing this message, it’s context, and the fact that that was the whole communication from my sister, my SO finally began to understand, I think, the degree to which I am shut down by my sibs.
These examples are, by far, at the lesser end of the abuse I suffered. To start an incomplete tally…
Having fireworks thrown at my feet on cracker night when I was 3 or 4 years old.
Being teased for urinating “loudly” for as long as I could remember (I still sit when I go to the toilet to this day).
Being thrown into the surf when I had a (known) morbid fear of getting my head wet after a traumatic first swimming lesson where I was pushed under the surface unexpectedly by the instructor as she said “Oh, look – an octopus! Go and get it!” (I was an adult before I became fully comfortable with getting my head wet). Having that fear play out to being held like a battering ram by two brothers as my mother washed my hair in the concrete laundry sink as I wouldn’t let my hair be wet.
Being ridiculed for sitting next to or hugging our mother.
Being ridiculed for mispronouncing words I had only ever read, not heard spoken.
Being ridiculed for being bookish.
Being ridiculed for withdrawing from the house’s common spaces to try and protect myself.
Being ridiculed for being weak.
Being locked out of the house by my next two older sibs (sisters two and three) when I was 10-12, and then being asked “What do you want, little boy?” when I knocked on the door, giving me instructions to “Come back later when Zaxxon comes home”, and “Don’t be silly, you’re not Zaxxon, he's gone to a friend’s” when I’d say “I’m Zaxxon, let me in!”. This regularly happened, and would go on for hours.
Being harassed relentlessly by those same sibs to swear, as some form of dare, when I was 10-15. This regularly happened, and would go on for hours.
Being harassed relentlessly by those same sibs to indicate if I had pubic hair and to show them when I was 13-15. This regularly happened, and would go on for hours.
Being targeted by brother four, who was six years older than me, as some sort of experiment in manipulation, control and effect on this world – as one example, I had/have an overbite, and he would relentlessly get me to do these fake jaw exercises he had devised to try and reposition my jaw. This regularly happened, and would go on for hours.
Being sexually/physically abused once by that brother before I started school in a way which left a permanent scar on my genitalia, triggered one part of my psoriasis, and thereby seriously (and pretty well permanently) impacted my sense of self-worth and any sense of being physically/sexually attractive.
Being spoken over and beaten down whenever I tried to express my own opinion because you had to shout over everybody else to be heard in our family.
Being deceived that we were a strong family unit, who we could rely on each other when times were difficult.
Having abuse and manipulation normalised and something just to be ignored – that old “Suck it up, sunshine!” attitude.
I lament it took me 55 years to fully divest myself of these warped perspectives. They have impacted every single relationship I have had over those years. I still struggle with aspects of it.
I now see my parents’ actions and inactions as neglect, my sibs’ actions as abuse.
I now see myself as a survivor.
Fuck them.
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