Emotional Abuse Support Group

Hey there,

Yesterday was a case of adult sibling rivalry/abuse. I have been living with my divorcee father for almost a year because I am currently unemployed and had just finished a nursing program. My mother passed away 6 years ago. My brother is married with a 2 1/2 year old. They finally moved to their own place last December from her parents house.

They lived with my father after they had their child. Since then material things slowly started to filter in to the house. They moved into her parents house six months later and still left their stuff here. Long story short, when they finally got a place of their own I thought everything would leave. It hardly made a dent. People came over last week and asked "how many children live here," that is how cluttered the house was. They went away for the weekend and decided to stop by on their way home. Stopping by = unloading everything from the trip.

Yesterday I woke up to a mess and all of their belongings everywhere. In the living room there was a small path amongst piles to stuff, to get to the next room. I text messaged them that I had it, I could not live like this anymore, my dad's solution was to sell the house that they had 2 rooms in the house and all their stuff was all over the place.

That did not go too well. I got responses like " you don't pay rent" "why do you care" "its not your house, you don't own the deed." Worse came to worse.

I started chucking all their stuff into the foyer. My brother, who just woke up at 1pm, started video taping, laughing at me, saying that I am crazy and I am going to be committed. I grabbed the camera from him and he wrestled me to the floor. I threw the camera into the pile of stuff and went to my room, locked the door where he barged in and dragged my off the bed screaming at the top of his lungs "get my camera you stupid bitch, get a job." I could go on and on but he attacked me 3 times because I did not give it back to him. He ripped the phone out of my hands and placed it under my tire as I was trying to drive away from him.

I sat in front of the police station for an hour, shaking, smelling his morning breath on my skin thinking of whether or not he destroyed my possessions and wondering if I should report him to the police.

My father is not taking sides. My sister in-law texts are either provoking, concerning,irrelevant, or saying how could you do this to us. I feel disrespected from being taken advantage of. Free babysitting and a dumping ground for their belongings is what our house is to them. They have their own home.

Today I am sore, my house is clean and I am still amazed how much anger I was able to incite in my brother. That was the longest interaction we had in 3 years. He is depressed and holds a lot of anger and unwilling to communicate. I hope he gets the self-respect, assertiveness, anger management and years of psychotherapy he needs.

I know I need therapy too, but I don't think its cool to tackle and manhandle a sibling who suffers from osteoporosis and is half his size.

We are both in our 30s and reverted 20 years ago yesterday.

I'd love some outside perspective please.

It is certainly never ok to use physical violence. However, unless your dad is willing to take a stand against them, there isn't much you can do about them leaving their belongings in the house. What you can do is protect yourself against them. One thing you should know is that text messages can now be used as evidence in court. Don't erase any threatening messages you might receive.

These types of situations are always so hard because things get muddled when they involve family. I think we have a tendency to forgive our siblings a lot easier than we would forgive anyone else for doing the same thing. I'm not saying that's ok, but it's generally the way things are.

They ended up cleaning up their stuff and putting it into their respective rooms. They also, or probably my brother went into my room and took pictures of my medications with my fathers camera. To implicate me for what? Being depressed and anxious? Its not as if I am bi-polar, schizophrenic or have anti-social personality disorder and have not been taking my meds. The thing that bothers me the most is that no is concerned that I was physically abused and why did I not go to the hospital or police? They just want to know where their camera is.