Wolf in Sheep’s clothing

Growing up I loved and admired my brother, he was by far the coolest person I knew. When we were kids he was always my protector and hero, the person that I ran to for help with the neighborhood bully or when I needed advice. The year my Gommy died was a turning point in my life for many reasons, I had turned 10 years old the previous November and now with Gommy gone I would go from 10 years old to grown overnight. My brother was raised in private education, starting his schooling at Good Shepard catholic school and ending his private education at Tome school. He would complete his schooling at Northeast high school. My brother should have graduated in 2000 and he very well would have if not for meeting his future spouse and dropping out of high school. Obtaining a diploma from Vo-Tech, he would not complete high school. Preoccupied with playing house while he should have been focused on his future he was subconsciously setting the bar for myself, I would follow in his foot steps to the T and perhaps surpass him on some things. My brother was 16 approaching 17 when our Gommy passed, he was a good student and always received high marks. He played starting positions on his high school sports teams and had a very promising future. I use his story to illustrate how simple choices affect large parts of our lives.

My brother would meet his future wife in Red point, she had moved there to live with a family member to escape an abusive relationship. She was a native of western Maryland and brought with her a new way of navigating the world. Her family originally from wild West Virginia, had made a career out of welfare fraud and abusing government assistance programs. My parents were very different proud people, in the 1970’s my father would suffer an accident that left his right arm paralyzed and limp. My mother and father would seek help from the government and be rejected. My fathers heart would harden and he would become set in his ways for 40 years. Vowing to never ask them for another thing as long as he lived.

Gommy would pass and my brother would move his ready made family in with us. The new girlfriend pregnant with my brothers first born, also had a daughter from her previous failed relationship . With everybody under one roof we were a happy and tight knit clan, we did everything together. Dad owned his own business and therefore we worked for dad, we lived with dad and partied with dad. My brother more so than myself because he is 6 years older than I. As tight knit as we were, this was only accomplished by my mothers drinking. As my mothers drinking continued to worsen my father would come to rely heavily on my brother and his future spouse to handle the family affairs. The needs of his household and myself would be cast onto them as a heavy burden. This is where the systematic abuses would start. My brother had picked a winner, her father had effectively defrauded disability for years and her mother had raised multiple children with Uncle Sam’s hand outs. In fact in all the years that I knew my brothers in-laws, neither of the parents had jobs.

This would become the excepted mindset in my family, creating a new normal of how things were done and how they would be done in the future. Everything would change in those few years following Gom’s death and leading up to my mother’s getting sober. My mother would put down the bottle in 2003. The home we were all sharing had grown to small with the arrival of my brothers second child, third including the one that his spouse brought with her. The house was too small for all of us so mom, dad and myself moved back into their original house and left my brother to live in at Gom’s house. They had effectively done it to me again. I was uprooted from the only home I knew and moved next door to be with my parents. My brothers spouse would gain full control of the family through my mothers drinking, the power struggle between the two of them played out on a daily basis. Both sides being petty and vindictive. I remember the time my mother stole her shoes. Her sole purpose in stealing the shoes was to replace them, and be the hero. The only problem; she was a drunk and didn’t hide things very well. I would find the shoes hidden inside one of our out buildings and show them to my father. The resulting fight would only secure my brothers wife the ability to lead the family. They would get full reign, the wife would be given power over me to decide my affairs. At the time I was a troubled teenager lashing out at the world because I had been abandoned by everyone that was supposed to care and didn’t know how to respond.

My brother and his wife would only take 4 years to ruin what 3 generations before them had built. A legacy built by my father and his grand father, then handed down to my brother. After taking full control of the family they would squander everything. Blowing all the cash on drugs and consumer junk, the bills were paid by Uncle Sam; Food stamps, energy assistance, and state health insurance. Manipulation of the welfare assistance programs, a trade brought with her to our family. My parents were not educated in how to abuse the system. Answering the questions just right to make sure you received the maximum payout. This was her families trade and she had effectively passed it along. Her families craft would completely corrupt my brother and in doing so would effectively finish off our family structure. Between the welfare lifestyle and the drugs my brother and I would grow apart. Having nothing left in common, his wife would come between us next.

In 2007 my father caught my brother stealing from him. (My father would make my brother leave after this, but that’s part of another story). My father was self employed and was doing $5,000.00-6,000.00 each week, clear money. Every week they would cash the company check, my brother had full control of the money. Him and my father would count out the pay for the help, next they would count out the money needed to pay all the bills due in the coming week. The last thing they would do is put money aside for fuel and material for the upcoming week and split what was left over. By this time my brother had 4 or 5 children, the welfare system was not providing the lifestyle they felt they deserved and so they started skimming the money.

Stealing from my father for who knows how long, it was $1700.00 dollars that my dad found tucked between pages in a book inside the work truck. My father had returned to the truck because he forgot something and would catch my brother slipping. My brother would tuck the money, wait for dad to retire to his house and then go back and retrieve the cash. I believe he was financing his coke habit at the time. Within his circle of friends they really enjoyed cocaine and the party that followed it. The first time I smoked weed was with my brother only because him and his best friend wanted to cut lines out. They would allow me to smoke pot in the back seat while they sniffed lines of cocaine in the front. The deal was made, “you keep my secret and I wont tell dad” my brother would say. This would become our style. Keeping secrets from mom, dad, and his spouse for him and in return he looked the other way while I developed a dope habit. I remember working with him one day, he ate a pain pill while I crushed and sniffed mine. I still remember the tongue lashing I took from him, but he couldn’t say anything. We had a deal, a deal that only compounded with age. Ending in a spoiled relationship. The only thing we had in common in the end was drug use and it would drive us apart.

I write this story not to paint anyone as being to blame, but to show a failed family system as a whole. To show that I now recognize where things turned for the worse. It was not huge decisions that set my family on the path for destruction, but rather small unrecognizable choices made subtlety. Slowly my brother and his wife took control and through the same undying loyalty that my father held for my mother, my brother defends his wife. I have not spoken to my brother in 4 years. It has been over 10 years since we had a relationship. 16 years since our common ground was found in something other than drugs.

In closing I would like to add; the family unit is critical to proper growth of the children within it. I use my own story to examine these truths, that our environment dictates our path in life. If you are reading this with young ones under your care please take time to recognize how fragile their young hearts and minds are. You see, it is easy to pervert a child’s thought’s and action’s. It is even harder to refocus these things in the recovery that has to follow. Broken homes create broken people. My escape was found through drugs, however this is not the only avenue for escape. We abuse ourselves in multiple ways due to the trauma of our pasts.

Recovery is possible…