My big brother

I have had so many posts bubbling and percolating in my brain that I actually am starting to dream about them. And I don't just mean dreaming about what I'm going to write about, I mean actually dreaming of my fingers hitting the keyboard as the thoughts spew out on the computer screen. That's not weird, is it?

I had a dream two nights ago about my brother. He and I were sitting in his old bedroom of our old house, just kind of hanging out.

To understand how truly bizarre this dream is you have to understand that my brother and I have NEVER hung out together. We never had a "typical" brother/sister relationship. My brother is clinically hyperactive, and if you look up the symptoms of what that means, my brother fits every symptom to the nth degree. Growing up I didn't know that - I just knew that living with him was challenging, to say the least. He was extremely impulsive and violent, especially to me. I came home from school one day and he flew down the steps at me and pinned me against the door, my arm twisted behind my back. I had followed him next door to our neighbor's house one day and climbed the tree after him and his friend. Once I was sitting on the tree house's ledge, my brother pushed me out, face first. My very first memory is of us walking back home from our neighbors after retrieving a railroad tie that for some reason they allowed my brother (who was four at the time, two years older than me) carry. That was my first trip to the hospital, taken there after my brother threw it at my head.

And when "I" wasn't being violent in action, he was being violent with words, intimidating and yelling at all of us. My parents did the best they can, but it's hard to remember family dinners without remembering the screaming matches between my parents and my brother. All in all, my brother really colored my memories of my childhood, enough for me later to get diagnosed with PTSD. But that's another story for another time.

Back to my bizarre dream. "I" was showing me how he was selling so much of his stuff on this version of e-bay. He told me how angry he was that Mom and Dad threw him out and made him take all his stuff, so this is what he was doing to get rid of it all (by the way, my parents never threw him out, so this was interesting - wishful thinking on my part?). He also told me about his two girls that he now has, one named Isabella and the other named Quiet (?) but he had some nickname for her that I forget. It was very interesting having an adult conversation with him, even if it was in a dream.

I have talked with my brother since we have become adults, but he is a very superficial person, so it's hard to have any kind of "real" conversation with him. He has chosen to separate himself completely from us. My parents still talk to him on the phone once a week, but he comes to very few family events and never returns my sister's phone calls (she still tries to have a relationship with him, I don't bother).

I don't feel anger towards "I". I have forgiven him for the traumas in my childhood. I know much of it was beyond his control. I have learned that my mom did everything she could to make sure I was never left alone with him, but she couldn't be there 100% of the time. I feel indifference to him. Sometimes that makes me sad that I never got to have that big brother that I've heard others talk about. But that's just the way things worked out.

I suppose I could work on this some more, revise it, make it look clever and insightful, but I mainly wanted to record this dream so I could remember it later. So for now, that's all I have to say about that.