As I’m dealing with this throbbing headache (caused by my own doing), I keep wondering how my brother felt after his “incident”.

About 15 or so years ago, my brother had what I consider to be an emotional breakdown. He locked himself in the bathroom, crying uncontrollably and bashing his head against the wall for what seemed like hours.

I remember sitting in the living room, and for the first time, really seeing and understanding the pain my brother was in. The pain he could never verbalize, because he was never very good at verbalizing much anyway. The pain we were never allowed to show the world.

I was used to the pain. But up until that point, I assumed my brother just handled our torture in a different way. He never seemed bothered by it, at least not in very outward ways that I could recognize (keep in mind, I was just a young teenager at the time). But here he was, in very obvious pain.

Once he came out of the bathroom, bruised and bloody, life just continued as if the entire incident never happened. Move along now, nothing to see here. Looking back at it now, I see how fucking bizarre it was. Your son just locked himself up in the bathroom and gave himself significant head injuries and a concussion, and you go back to watching television and getting ready for dinner, like it was just a normal day.

I wish I knew how they explained the very obvious injuries to my brother’s face. I’m sure, whatever it was, it wasn’t the truth. That would tarnish my mother’s “mother-of-the-year” image. But how did no one wonder what the fuck was going on?

Of course now, I feel like I channeled that same pain when I continually banged my head yesterday. The only difference was that I chose the table instead of the wall, and I didn’t do it hard enough to bleed. The emotion behind it was surely the same. 

And now I’m telling myself that I’m just like him. Can’t say out loud what’s going on, so just bang the noise away. 

What a fucked up family.