illegally loved

Warning: This story includes themes of criminality and legal consequences, inability to understand consent, incestuous sexual abuse enabled by authority, internalized victim blaming, dissociation, emotional manipulation, and passive suicidal ideation (not wanting to exist). No portrayal in this story is meant to demonize any specific disability.

Physically, there's no acute threat to sitting on the couch next to my brother. Physically, his hands on me, one around my shoulder, the other resting on my knee, are warm, a weight that in a normal family might be a comfort, might be akin to cuddling, might be wanted. In a normal family, the gaze fixated on me would not be on my brother's face. A lover would stare at their beloved the way he looks at me, smitten, like my beauty has his eyes entranced, hypnotized, beloved. I smile as my eyes dart down, looking at his hand. The one on my shoulder has stayed where it is, but the other? The other is no longer a warm weight on my knee, but still heavy, moving upwards.

The hand on my shoulder cups my chin, and the smile falls from my face. The smile had been plastic even as I created it, only the mirth, joy, excitement and desire in my brother’s eyes is all too genuine. He leans in, pushing me onto the couch with his body. His mouth is on mine, his lower hand now my center of gravity, now working its way inside - clothes get removed.

Physically, the actions occurring are intimate, are meant to be expressions of love, and I do love him. But love shouldn't make me feel repulsed. He doesn't know what he does is inappropriate, and our parents say I owe this to him, since he's never going to have a real romantic relationship. We're meant to be, my brother said the first time he kissed me, back when I had pushed him away. I don't push him away now. I still have the same desire to, only alongside it lives guilt around not wanting his touch. We're meant to be. I'm meant to be here, doing this, so why do I want to act against him?

I'm in love with him, I lie to myself as his kiss deepens, as I breathe through my nose and squeeze my eyes shut in an effort to further the facade. If I had to see his gaze, his joy, glee, the sheer innocence he exudes, unable to comprehend how what we're doing is wrong if he feels good, I would be overwhelmed by the disgust and shame I already feel creeping in. His hands are cold in comparison to where he's touching, as goosebumps form. As he finally breaks the kiss, licking my lips as his tongue leaves, he speaks. "You like me, don't you? You're mine, right?" I nod, unable to use my words as my mouth still feels relief at his absence. I know what saying no would reign down on me. Know my agreement is made from fear, not true belief.

He doesn't know what he does is wrong, which according to our parents means he isn't doing anything wrong. But my gut feels nauseated when he moves my hands onto him, and I only smile genuinely when he shifts from focusing on me to focusing on our parents. I breathe easier when Mom drives him back to his group home. My parents thank me for occupying him, as though my body is equivalent to their attention, which is true enough, I think. I try not to think afterwards. I also try not to sleep, knowing I'll be re-living the afternoon in my nightmares. I sleep anyway.

I wake exhausted, flinching at shadows that first morning after. My boss stands in his office and I'm half-terrified, stepping backwards, mind imagining being kissed again. He doesn't notice, and my facade of normalcy continues. That night, the nightmare has him in my brother's place.

I sleepwalk through the work week, feel myself unable to feel emotions because if I did, I'd feel ones I'm not supposed to. When I am alone, though, which is most of the time at work, or something banal happens like a coworker mentioning their brother, my mind without fail takes me back to the living room couch. I don't want it to, I'll shift in my chair to remind myself I'm sitting rather than lying down, but that brings me back to the memory of how it started, his hand on my shoulder and knee. I'll feel his tongue in my memory. The shame, the disgust at how he makes me feel, how sometimes the memory makes my mouth feel good even as I have to intentionally try to breathe in order to make my heart rate slow, it all makes me try to do anything, eat anything to replace the physical feeling.

I'll read whenever I have to interact with people, like on the train, to try to distract myself from thinking about the unavoidable reality of strangers touching me, which always brings me back to the reality my brother is not a stranger, is meant to be loved by me. I'm supposed to love him, yet my body repeatedly feels so many sensations that should be incompatible with love. Or should be a love of another kind, just not brotherly love. My brother doesn't know the social taboos and seemingly doesn't feel any instinctive ones.

My brother doesn't know, and that leaves me carrying all the shame in the knowledge if anyone knew, they'd be disgusted. I participate in incest. I don't dwell on these thoughts, but no matter how often I try to push them away, they return again and again, like mosquitoes, shame an itch my mind scratches until it bleeds. Sometimes in the shower I claw at my shoulder or knee until it bleeds, trying and failing to wash this hand off, and then I have a physical throbbing to match the mental pain the memories bring. Or, no, not pain, that's too strong a word. But I don't know if the human language has a word with enough shades of emotion to describe how my brother, how the memory of what my brother did, makes me feel.

The nightmares continue, which at least gives credence to the excuse I'm not talking to my parents because I'm exhausted. I am exhausted, not just physically. Sometimes my mind wonders if this is how loving my brother is supposed to go, what's stopping my parents from letting him be intimate with them instead? Why - my brother doesn't want our mom or dad that way, that's why. He wants me. But still, what's to stop Dad from trying to kiss me some day? My mind thinks these wild incoherent immoral thoughts, and that, combined with the guilt I feel for not wanting my brother the way I'm supposed to, and the other feelings I'm not letting myself feel, has me keeping my distance from my parents. My brother still calls them twice a day, and I always have to say hi, tell him I love him, and most days the words feel like a lie.

Most days my existence feels like a lie. Nobody knows the horrible disgusting truth of who I am, of what I've done, of the crime I've committed. My brother has been determined by the state to be incapable of consent. I am capable, and didn't prevent him from doing what he did. I could be considered a criminal for letting him touch me. So I have no possibility of obtaining any kind of help from the real world. My brother doesn't know better, doesn't know what my efforts to say 'no' were trying to do, both legally and emotionally. All he knows is what he wants, and that me doing that means I love him. I want to love him, but that too feels like a goddamn lie. I could be thrown in prison for five to ten years for loving him the way he wants, the way our parents taught us was a good way of coping with his wants.

I try to retreat into writing, into fiction, into projecting my trauma onto other situations, different forms of the same feelings. A million reasons exist for someone to feel shame, after all, and fictional characters are constantly being put into situations. Not the specific situation I live in, but situations nonetheless.

My writing takes up most of my brain space, and sometimes it's tame enough to discuss with my parents. Sometimes I can pretend I'm an only child, until he calls. Sometimes I can even say I love you on the phone and mean it. Sometimes I can even forget - I'll eat a brownie without having remembered his tongue in my mouth, I'll sit on the couch and not feel my heart rate increase and a shiver run through me.

Then, of course, I'm invited for another movie date. I have no excuse, and he's already asked Dad, who thinks it's a brilliant idea because my brother has been acting out sexually in his group home again and if he gets that energy out of his system, he won't. He'll stop. He hasn't been touching his housemates, he knows that's off-limits, but he's been touching himself in public, meaning he hasn't been out in public in over a week. So he is in the backseat of Dad's car again, and I'm walking out of the house before Dad has to even knock. I know my place. Next to my brother, in the backseat, his hands on me, mine on him, I know what he wants before he's pulling my wrist to make me go faster, harder. I lose myself in feeling what's physically happening, my throat burning with bile but the rest of my body exactly what being in love would feel like. I am everything and nothing. I'm illegal, a criminal, incapable of doing what I know I should when faced with the reality of what doing that means losing.

We go to the movie after he's finally satiated, after an agonizingly long amount of time spent kissing in the parking lot while Dad reads on his phone and I'm on top of my brother, I'm being hugged against him, his hands are on me and then I'm sitting in a movie theater like nothing happened, like I was on a movie date because this is a date, we're in love. I'm a liar. I'm in a romantic and sexual relationship with my brother who can't consent. I'm staring at the screen but my mind is on another planet, that's how far away everything feels. I don't know how long I've been in this situation. I don't know anything except the physicality of what he did, the ironic cruelty of the world, wherein his wants don't count and my actions are - I'm incapable of being a victim here. I'm incapable of being a victim, and my body fucking knows that even as my mind drowns in anger (I have no right to feel), and yet more shame (I deserve), my body knows that because nobody who actually hated what was happening would have responded the way my body did.

I'm untouched on the ride home, my brother barraging my Dad with a million questions about the movie, if he could ever go to college, when would he be able to get married. Dad's reply makes me want to throw myself out of the moving vehicle.

"You don't need to get married, bud; that's why we have your sister around. She's the love of your life, you don't need marriage for that."

"Are you?" My brother's gaze, intense and earnestly infatuated, feels like direct sunlight hitting my eyes. "Are you really the love of my life?" Again, like before, I can't make myself speak. This time, it's not relief so much as the fear I might cry. I nod. He holds my hand, and I close my eyes. This isn't real. Nothing is real. I fall asleep that way, hand in hand, unable to exist. Criminal in the eyes of the law if it ever knew, actually agreed to being the love of my brother's life - everything is too much. I don't want to exist. So I let the vibrations of the car send me into a nap, my brother asking me over and over again if I'm sleeping until my dad tells him I am, so he should be quiet to respect that. If only my Dad wanted my brother to respect other aspects of me. If only I deserved that...

I wake up to my brother kissing me again, a quick peck on the lips before running off to his house. I don't kiss back. I drift again, like a dead leaf on a river, headed further and further away from an ordinary life, no matter how hard I try to pretend. I'm so extremely tired.