A Truth Others Did Not Want To Hear

This is post is made in regards of what happened to me yesterday and a few days before that. I thought it would never happen again and it didn't happen for a very long time. However, somehow the situation I was in last week reminded and was similar to the ones I was in when I was a bit younger, think about when I was 12-14 and a lot less mature than I am now. I will explain more about it in this entry, hopefully you might understand my point of view. I really wanted to post this on the Asylum Forum but last time I said anything about this I got flamed and told that my attitude is overly negative and that I was wrong in every single way. All I want to do is get the truth out, my truth, not anyone else's, just the truth about how my day to day life used to look like a few years back and how that affected my life.

from l-r: Eva (younger sister), Me, David (older brother), Dad.
Somewhere on a mountain in Ireland. 

I will begin at the begin. I am a girl from the Netherlands and was born as second child of my parents, my sister joined the ride later on. I got an older brother and ever since he was old enough to communicate he always seemed a little off, a little different than other kids. So when he started to have trouble at school when he was 4, my parents decided to see doctor of sorts to see what's wrong with him. After a long time they finally came to a diagnonsense, PDD-NOS, which means he has a form of autism that is not categorised and has different symptoms of different sides of the autism spectre. So, I have basically dealt with autism for most of my life and I do not share the same sympathies others do about this.

Everything was ok for a long time until he hit puberty and so did I. He had been hard to deal with because of his bouts of emotional distress reducing him to tears. When you are a child it's sometimes hard to deal with the fact that someone at home gets more attention than anyone else, anyone but you. He did demand a lot of attention, help with his homework, actually, with all kind of stuff. My mother would just have to help him because else he would start crying and almost throwing a tantrum over something we might find silly, she would be helping him out every single minute taking up most of her time. I know my parents are probably one of the best you can ask for when it comes to parents, they have dealt with doctors telling them they are no good parents because of my brother and had a lot of problem just getting him on a school that would help him to learn and deal with his PDD-NOS. I always felt that I had no right to complain and cry at home because there was no room for more drama, while I was emotionally turning inward, taking up the bullying at school and at other places because there just was not enough time for me to explain my to my mother what I was dealing with, school didn't help either.

So there I was, going to a new school, trying to make new friends. At home it was a different story, my brother had become violent. Everybody makes jokes and everybody gets mad at each other every once in a while. We sometimes call our siblings losers because they are getting on your last nerves, David has the habit to do that with his odd behaviour, so I one day called him an idiot because of something stupid and the next thing I knew he was chasing me through the house with a knife. This happily ended with him jamming the knife into the table and scratching it and walking downstairs. Those years of early puberty we often got into fights when my parents were aren't home and also often when they were at home, they usually ended up with him beating me up and me trying to escape by fighting back like any girl would do. Now he is taller and twice as strong as me, so it weren't fair fights to begin with, but when you could be beating up, hands pushed to your through you sure as hell watch what you say when he is around, so I spend more time away from him to avoid that. His autism just made him violent, I now see the signs, when it gets mad he bites his tongue and makes a sort of groaning noise, back then I just wanted to get my right even if that was wrong. I don't think he would be violent if he wouldn't have PDD-NOS, he just reacts very strongly on any accusation or insult made towards him and because he does not know his strength or boundaries if often turns out bad with somebody bruised and crying.

I have learned to deal with this and when I was 14, had problems at school, had hardly any friends I retreated to my bedroom, every single day. I still do, because when there is someone who just doesn't shut up when he starts talking, says the most outrageous things and often insults everything you stand for without knowing it you will feel sad at the end of the day. It might not be fair to speak about him like this, but just imagine how it is when somebody calls you a pig, as a joke, but not understand the impact it makes on others, especially if they are not thin. I learned to deal with insults from people really meaning them, it's a whole different thing to deal with insults coming from someone who just does not really understand that what he just said was an insult. You can't call him off, because he didn't know that he was insulting someone in the first place.

Last week it went back to almost fighting for my life again. It had been years since he really went mad over anything, but now it came back and it frightened me. Me and my sister were joking around over something silly and were passing the potato chips between each other saying he couldn't have it, while we both knew we would give a lot to him if we were done fooling around. Yet, the first he did was grab my sister and pushing his elbow into her throat so she couldn't breath and also putting his knee in her back, when she passed them to me to get rid of him he attacked me doing the same time, holding my arm backwards close to the point that it could have broken. The same happened the next day when I was eating some prawn crackers. He asked for them and immediately wanted to grab the bag, so I had the bag to the side so he couldn't reach, because I wasn't done eating yet, he reached and I moved the bag to my other side, teasing a little, however, I shouldn't have done that and he tried kicked my legs from under my body. I am glad that he only hit one leg else I could have hit my head against the edge of the kitchen table and smacked to the floor.

Yes, when I am at home, I hide from him, I avoid him. I have an older brother I can not look up to, he can't teach me anything. I got an older brother who is my little brother but has the strength of a real construction worker and the mind of a 13 year old at times. I love him and I hate him. He is the reason I want to move out (amongst others), he is the reason that I know how to fight like a girl. He scarred me in many ways, physical and mental, but I would never really want to blame him. With this I am not talking about how everyone with some form of autism is, I have told how he affected my life, how I have ended up spending so much time in my room and why I can wish him to hell and no harm at the same time. Sometimes he still scares me, when he bits his tongue and groans like an animal and he does it often enough because I never know what he will do. I will never know how it is to really have an older brother because I am the one who seems more mature, it's strange.

How would you deal with it?