I'm a middle brother
Apols for lack of lulz.

My father regularly beat my mother.
My mother regularly took her frustration out on me and my brothers.
My older brother was a herion addict through his late teens and early twenties.
My younger brother turned to petty crime.

I spent every moment I had studying, because i knew that the quickest way out I had was to go to university. I didn't care about the degree or the place, i just wanted to escape and be free. Luckily I got into a decent uni as far away from my family as I could.
So for me coming back home for the holidays was akin to descending into a Hades that specialised in simmering loathing, emotional blackmail and random outbursts of crazy.

I avoided contact with them for a couple of years after I left uni, but felt guilty about it. I repented a bit after I got engaged because I didn't like the thought of getting married with no one from my family present (my wife has a huge extended family) so I called to invite them and try to patch things up.

They didn't want to come and my older brother called me a traitor for having "abandoned" my poor parents and younger brother. I tried to remind him of what it had been like growing up there.
I reminded him of one incident I vivdly remember when he got caught smoking at the age of 15 and was beaten to a bloody, snotty pulp. The fact that both my parent are smokers and it was their cigarette he was smoking, didn't seem to him to impugne their parental skills at all. His actual response? "yeah, but it could have been worse".

I had no reply and walked away, haven't spoken to them in years.

What really annoys me now is when people ask about my family and I say that I haven't talked to them in years because we don't get on. They look at me as if I've just anally violated a puppy infront of them, using a kitten.

Run, run while you can.
(Bo Nidle Coming back in from the cold., Fri 13 Nov 2009, 0:09, 2 replies)

This is worth clicking just for the penultimate line...
*click*
(anvil, Fri 13 Nov 2009, 10:39, closed)

But to be fair to the people on the periphery...
half the time anyone tells me they don't get on with someone, their family or otherwise, it turns out that it's actually them who are or were the cunts.

I try not to look at people like that, but I do tread carefully. I know it must be annoying when you're the non-cunty party.
(StapMyVitals wouldn't mind a bit of that, Mon 16 Nov 2009, 20:26, closed)