it's exhausting to be this angry all of the time

TW INCESTUOUS SEXUAL ABUSE, MENTIONED SEXUAL ABUSE OF A CHILD, ABLEISM, DISSOCIATION, AND IMPLIED SUICIDAL IDEATION

“At least he cares about you.” Dad said, in response to hearing that your brother asked you if you wanted a boyfriend or a girlfriend, if you planned on having kids. “He wants a relationship with you. That's good.”

You changed the subject. You always did, when he was the subject. Everything’s easier when you pretend you’re normal. Your parents find it easier to pretend your family's something resembling normal - after all, they're not constantly confronted with the specific abnormalities you are, just the general abnormality of a severely intellectually disabled son who can't carry a conversation without repetition.

Your parents pretend he doesn’t know what sex is, that a lack of education means that he never experienced any urges. You know better, of course. You remember when you didn't and often ache for that naive time, back when you assumed everyone experienced what you did, that this was similar to sibling rivalry. Just one of those things he's worse at socially than ordinary siblings, but still an ordinary part of life. You can't remember when you learned it wasn't right, or maybe you always knew. You don’t think you always knew because loving him used to be as easy as running across a street, an instinct you didn’t think twice about, and now? Now you’re intentionally not thinking when you cross the street.

The memories squirm through your body, sensations and words your brother said last time: “I want to touch you… is it funny? If I touch you, is it funny?” His laughter spits against your face, he’s close enough to kiss you and then he does, his tongue the worm burrowing into you, his hands indescribable (you don't want to feel pleasure but your body doesn't listen to your brain when you are this close, this aware of everything) against your skin, between the fabric of your clothes and your private parts, between reality and what doesn’t exist.

You don’t exist until your parents return. When they're in the room, they pretend he wasn’t doing anything besides cuddling, and his anxiety over punishment makes him ignore you again. In your nightmares, you never exist again, his body consumes yours. In your nightmares, he’s not your brother but a monster.

In your writing, he is both, is as close to reality as you can put into words but at the same time, in your writing, he's not who he is. He's not incapable of articulating his thoughts, he's outright able to say what he wants while using his hands and body; he's the villain rather than a fellow victim of your parents’ denial. Your writing reworks reality into something less than what he is, what you are.

In your writing, you're unambiguously a victim rather than reality, wherein you're nothing. You don't exist. You don't talk. You don't fight. How can you claim to not want what happens when you can't even use the one strength you have against him? You're smart enough to have found a way out… if you really wanted one. His eyes see through your clothes even when his hands aren't underneath them. You're supposed to be the smart one but your brain goes blank when he touches you, kisses you, is next to you, even when he's ignoring you, behaving himself.

You love him against your will. Love is both a verb and an emotion, and you can't control any aspect of what you experience around him. You love him but you don’t want to be forced into this type of loving, but what you want doesn’t matter. He’s intellectually disabled enough that he won’t understand why you’re angry, so you’re not allowed to be angry. You learned that from your parents, who are also not allowed to express anger or frustration towards him. You just have a different burden to bear than they do. The entire family warps reality around him - our emotions, definitions of words, everything morphs around what’s most likely to stave off a meltdown. You don’t want him to have a meltdown, obviously, but you want a world where he’s not the main character.

Your parents pretend he doesn’t know what sex is. You know better, of course. You know what his voice sounds like when he says “I want to touch your vagina.” You know what it feels like when he's flapping, his hand hitting your thigh, and you're such a bad person for writing about him but reality just hurts too much.

Your brain hurts too much when you think about him for too long - your body finds itself flung backwards through the memory of his tongue inside your mouth, his fingers inside you, inside what he said a decade earlier but you're not six years old - you're old enough to know better, to stop him but there's nobody to stop when it's just the memory of what happened.

When it’s just a memory, it’s not real, not current, not happening. You know that he’s barely thought about you in the month you’ve been away, and you wish you could stop thinking about him, stop loving him emotionally, stop the fear, stop. You want everything to stop.

Reality’s a different beast when you throw yourself headfirst into fiction. When you write from the perspective of someone, anyone else, write about someone learning what’s happening to their friend and being horrified. You write as though you expect people to know on some level you’re writing from experience, but they rarely do. They comment on your villains wishing violence against them, regardless of the fact that your protagonists always just want to escape, not revenge. You can’t want revenge against someone who isn’t doing anything wrong. You write characters learning what’s happening to them is wrong and wish you had someone who could clearly spell it out, clearly state that yes, you’re allowed, nay, expected to not want this. Wanting a relative sexually is wrong enough that people exist who treat the entire concept as though it’s always fictional, as though the wrongness is so apparent that writing about it is in and of itself also wrong. Wrong no longer feels like a word.

You don't know what you want. You want a different problem, or to feel the way your parents do, that his desire for you isn't a problem. Maybe you want to hope his questions are a good sign, that if you had a boyfriend or girlfriend he would see you as off-limits in a way your status as siblings has never been able to make true. Then again, he's half the reason you're scared of dating - who would possibly want to fall in love with someone who might be forced to cheat on them with his brother? It's disgusting, what you're made to do, but you wonder if you'll hate yourself more when he stops - if he doesn't love you, what will you write about? What will you be if you're given room to exist in ordinary contexts again? Could you even exist as a human being who wants love? You don't want to be inside the body you're in, inside the family you're in. You're so tired, part of you wouldn't mind the nightmares if it meant you never woke up.