2025.10.30

The lie I grew up believing is that I was better off dead. Or, more aptly, that everyone else would be better off if I died. But maybe dying isn't enough— maybe I should never have been born at all. It's been fifteen years since I first considered killing myself. I remember it like yesterday.

I was in the fourth grade. Every couple of weeks, mom pried herself away from work to braid my hair. At night I crawled into her bed to stave off nightmares. If I was lucky she might spend an evening on the couch, where we could watch the home-and-garden network in silence. I read and wrote countless stories about lonely little girls, sometimes whispered them directly to my pets. For Halloween I was a black cat. I wore the felt headband every day thereafter until one rainy, April morning, when I accidentally snapped it in half.

My country was in terrible economic recession, a word I could not spell but associated with my parents fighting about money, complaining about gas prices. War broke out all over the world. I was concerned about orphans, poverty, guns, bombs, and terrorism. That was due in part to my favourite TV show: 24. For those who don't remember this prime-time gore-fest proudly aired on FOX, it follows an FBI agent who very patriotically tortures and kills people, and on a few occasions gets tortured and nearly-killed himself. I liked the part where he shot some guy in the stomach, then stuck his thumb in the bullet hole. I liked it because dad did. The show came on after my bedtime, but I'd stay up just to watch it with him. Mom gave up trying to stop us.

What I did not know in the fourth grade is that my father was a deadbeat and a narcissist. He boasted about his chronic underemployment and string of failed marriages like it was military service. He bragged about dodging the Vietnam draft by threatening to shoot superior officers. He claimed allegiance to the Black Panther Party and a personal relationship with Angela Davis, but was only a poseur, a hanger-on. A saucer with Che Guevara's face on it was proof enough of his communist acitivism. I did not know that he was a porn addict, that he'd only hidden his collection when my mother confronted him, that she'd been forced to shred it herself. I could never have anticipated the missed calls, voice mails, and text messages left for me (at age 21) when dad discovered lesbian pornography that he "thought I would like" because it "reminded him of me."

In the fourth grade, I only knew the dad who watched Naruto on weekends, took me on bike rides, and suffered valiantly under the oppression of his crazy, vindictive wife who did not love me or anyone, who preferred her computer and her vacuum cleaner to her children. I did not know mom's constant working and cleaning was the only thing keeping me healthy and fed. I did not know that mom begging dad for help— her husband who had promised her so much more— was the genesis of every screaming match. I did not know the arguments escalated because dad always insulted her, lied to her, turned his back on her, blamed her.

When mom shouted, "you are the one!" she was asserting a truth I could only learn later. All I got from dad were lies. He would seek me out to "apologise" for the noise, insofar as denying responsibility is an apology. Mom was too busy working and cleaning, keeping me healthy and fed, to defend herself. She is also a normal human being. Normal human beings don't triangulate their elementary-school-age child against their spouse.

Like all children do, I blamed myself. If only my parents didn't have to buy me food, clothes, or toys, there would be more money to go around! I already knew a bit about hunger. By the time I was old enough to ask for food with words, but not old enough to fix it for myself, I learned to go hungry until mom was finished working. She trained me to keep quiet while she was on the phone. Whenever I was stressed out, I ate and spoke less. I'm twenty-five and I'm still in the habit of delaying and denying my basic needs. I am still learning to ask for things.

In the fourth grade, during our daily after-lunch free-writing time, I listed everything wrong with the world: poverty, war, orphans, "reseshun," divorce. Then, in the smallest letters I could manage, I whispered to my notebook: "suicide may be necessary." Not just because the world wasn't worth living in, but because somehow my death would solve everything. All children blame themselves, but isn't that going too far? Where is the miracle in my ceasing to exist? Why did I need to die???

Simple. My brother told me so.

I've written at length about the unhealthy dynamic between my parents because that is the environment in which the abuse that actually ruined my life thrived. I will not mince words. I hate my brother. I'd kill him if I could. And whenever I'm in the business of blaming people, it all comes back to him. When I was a toddler, he followed me around with a video camera, calling me ugly and insisting I was an alien who did not belong in his family. He stole and destroyed my toys, and "accidentally" set one on fire. Once he covered my room in baby powder just so I wouldn't have anywhere to sit. He made a game out of ruining my fun, vandalising my artwork, bullying the friends I dared to bring home. He told "jokes" at my expense and laughed when I got upset. He convinced me that I was stupid, that anything I liked was stupid, that my feelings were stupid, that unless it had his explicit approval, everything was stupid, stupid, stupid.

In his adult life he is a rather unsuccessful narcissist, but when we were kids he convinced me he was the coolest, smartest person in the world. To my detriment— and largely for my own survival— I took after him. I acted aggressive and superior. I liked the toys and TV shows he liked. I tried to argue the way he did, but he had five years of vocabulary and cognitive development on me. I wasn't able to hold a real conversation with him until I was a teenager, and I didn't realise that we're intellectually on-par until I was an adult. He's not a genius. He just assumes shit with confidence, beats you down til you stop arguing, and ultimately stop questionning him at all.

What happens when you're too young to argue? What happens when the first thing anybody tells you is the truth?

Every year on my birthday, he found some way to make me cry. How old was I turning— six? Seven? Eight? The early years, when he was still teaching me to stop celebrating my birthday, all blur together. However old I was, just before our family dinner, my brother pulled me aside and told me that nobody loved me. All these people might have gathered for my birthday, but none of them wanted to come.

"Everyone," he said, "would be happier if you weren't here."

When my eyes welled with tears, he walked away satisfied. I stood there crying silently until someone across the house beckoned me to the table. It was easy enough to wipe my face and join the party like nothing happened. Everyone hated me, anyways. Why should my feelings matter to them? They'd probably be happy that my brother spared them the trouble of hurting me themselves.

This memory haunts me in part because he attributed his hatred to everyone else. Sure, on plenty of other occasions he lamented my existence, told me to go away, or shunned me as if I wasn't there. Of course he hated me. But everyone? Our whole family? Maybe even the whole world??? I was stunned. By the time our parents were officially divorcing, I had resigned myself to it. One evening he told me point blank that if I didn't exist, it wouldn't be happening. Once I was born, they started wasting all their time on me, fighting with each other, and ignoring him.

I replied, still kind of guilty, "sorry, but they didn't pay any attention to me, either."

I'm sure he argued. I don't remember with what evidence. Our parents might have been having their own spat, sending us scurrying to our slightly-quieter rooms. I spent a lot of time in my room, making up stories about lonely little girls, wondering when and how I should kill myself to bring about world peace.

This idea is the core of my psychotic disorder. In a delusional state, I convince myself I must die to save (and occasionally entertain) people, sometimes aliens, sometimes war orphans, always and especially my family. My existence is bad, wrong, illegal, unplanned, disallowed. Continuing to live makes me selfish. It makes me sadistic. If I would just get over myself and fucking die, then everyone would be happier! It's only because I'm so stupid, ugly, annoying, worthless, insert-thing-my-brother-called-me-here that I ruin everything by being alive.

So... yeah. For a long time, sincerely believing such things and looping the thoughts in my head— accompanied by flashbacks to various unfortunate memories, felt-sense hallucinations, and uncontrollable crying— was just Tuesday for me. In the decade since my psychotic symptoms first appeared, I've gotten good at refusing to hit or cut myself, or take the suicidal thoughts beyond fantasising. Lately when things get bad, I distract myself by reading, journaling, and playing games. I focus on real sensations, real noises, and remind myself of the current date and time, where I am now, how long it's been since whatever memory I got trapped in. If I'm bedridden, I'll try to sleep it off. Daydreaming about Sans helps a lot, too, but we'll get to that. I'm not done with the "I'm ashamed to be alive" half of this entry yet.

The title is clickbait, kind of. Because when I have a clear head, when I'm having fun with hobbies or friends, when my basic needs are met... I'm not ashamed. I actually like myself a lot. Like I'm fairly funny and cool, I have some talents, I get along well with others. Also I'm the protagonist of this story and, generally speaking, the most interesting thing in my own life. Call that egotism? I'll agree!

But I carry all this shame from my childhood— shame that doesn't even belong to me. I never asked to be born, and I certainly never asked to be the younger sister to such a hateful person. My brother has always been selfish and mean. He acted aggressive with everyone in our family, including adults. He was a notorious bully at school and proud Internet troll. I only got the worst of it because I was the most convenient target. He admitted that himself when he first propositioned me for sex.

I was fifteen. He was twenty. I was washing the dishes while he meandered around the kitchen and encouraged me to make livestream pornography.

I said, "my boobs are too small."

He said, "there's a 'category' for that."

He had been describing to me, at length, the first pornographic video he'd ever seen, and asked me to describe mine. Proudly he told me he could "get off to anything except piss and rape." I was uncomfortable but did not yet understand the horrendous situation I was in. When I finished the dishes, I started to leave. Right at the mouth of the stairwell, the moment I was walled in on either side, with him a just breath behind me, my brother made it very clear what kind of situation this was.

"It's only logical to fuck your sister," he said. "If you're both horny, like, why not?"

Why not...? BECAUSE THAT'S DISGUSTING! YOU'RE A FUCKING FREAK AND I HATE YOU! OBVIOUSLY!!! But in that moment I was so startled I couldn't think, much less scream in protest. I just stood there with my foot hovering over the first step until I got enough control of my body to walk calmly up the stairs.

He continued: "they have a saying in the South: why go across the street when you could go across the hall?"

BECAUSE NOBODY WANTS SEX WITH THEIR FAMILY MEMBERS! OBVIOUSLY THAT IS WHY.

I don't know what I actually said, if I even said anything. I probably just laughed, because he had to be joking, right? I was used to my brother "telling jokes" that hurt my feelings. I went to my room and shut the door. (He was literally across the hall from me BTW.) I'm sure that I just got in bed, scrolled on my phone, maybe played on the computer til I had to finish my homework or go to sleep. That should have been the end of it, but it was only the beginning of a months-long campaign by my brother, who had suddenly stopped bullying me and started seeking my friendship, to badger me into sex.

When I analyse the situation, I see that he knew rape was wrong— or at least that he was unlikely to get away with suddenly assaulting me. If he wanted to abuse me, he had to get me to "agree," to think that I wanted it, that it was beneficial for both of us. So he used his mental illness and drug addictions to guilt trip me. He could only stop smoking if he was "really, really distracted," he said with an imploring stare. He insisted all girls needed practice giving blowjobs and told me which techniques were "crucial." He commented on my body and clothing. Once he came into my room (uninvited!) and said it "smelled like sex."

Suddenly everything was sexual. One evening I stepped in cat vomit and played up my disgusted reaction for the laughs. I stood on one foot and, with some effort, hiked the other into the sink. It was a stretch so I jokingly asked, "what if you were always in this position? Like, you always had to have your foot up like this?"

He laughed and said, "then it'd be really easy to fuck you."

Can you believe I loved my brother through all of this? Pitied him? It was hard not to when it all unfolded on the backdrop of his complete failure to launch. He flunked out of a great university because he was depressed. Academic institutions more rigorous than public school proved too difficult for this self-proclaimed genius. Instead of studying or even showing up for class, he played video games all day, which is the nice way of putting "screamed at League of Legends and made his roommate miserable." In his first year he dropped out, came home, and began the manic-depressive failson cycle he still hasn't grown out of.

From what I can tell, all he did was smoke weed, watch anime, fall down Internet rabbit holes, and masturbate. Getting him to do chores was like pulling teeth. Suggesting he get a job or go back to school would trigger a full meltdown. I was always dad's favourite, but in that era our father despised my brother. Every day on the way home from school, dad mused aloud about punishing him. He wanted to confiscate his things and kick him out if he didn't abide by a whole new set of rules, or meet some arbitrary yet unreasonable deadlines for "growing up." There was never any follow-through on this, but these fantasies gave dad pure sadistic glee. When asked for my input, I'd say something noncommital and turn up my Mumford & Sons playlist. Normal people don't triangulate their high-school-age daughter against their college-age son.

My brother started peeing in jars (not kidding) because he was too afraid to leave his room. He stopped eating because he figured that if he didn't use any of the dishes, he shouldn't have to wash them. For many years, he'd been threatening suicide. One morning, he held a knife to his wrist and asked what I'd do if he killed himself in front of me. I stuttered, "um, call an ambulance?" and ran away to get dressed for school. Great thing to have on your mind during homeroom, right? And this was just because dad wanted him to mow the lawn or something. Everyday I was afraid we'd come home to his corpse.

At the heart of this conflict— again, something I wouldn't know until much later— was my brother stealing my dad's weed. But dad could never confess that he, too, was addicted to cannabis (among other things). God forbid his therapist-daughter tattled to ex-wife number four! All I knew is that I was in the middle of a life-or-death family conflict. Again. My brother, smartest college dropout in the universe, implied it would all go away if I just let him rape me.

Pretty quickly I stopped writing it off as a bad joke and started wondering how I could make it work. I did not want to do it. Not only am I lesbian^*, but that's my sibling? My unhygienic, unempathetic, cruel and unfunny sibling who bullied me since I was born??? I didn't even mention the part where he nearly killed me as an infant. But I'd spent most of my life believing my death would save my family. In comparison, offering my body is no big deal. Right? He made it sound so easy. I barely understood what sex physically or emotionally entailed. I was picturing like a one-and-done thing, not the every-possible-opportunity sexual abuse he obviously had in mind. Obvious to me now, at least. Back then? God, I was so naive and he knew it. It makes me want to scream.

^*At the time I could not articulate that I was exclusively homosexual, but lacking language doesn't change your natural preferences. Basically, I don't want any dick ever. The only one I ever considered, despite being repulsed on every possible level, was an abusive adult's during this active grooming period. He had me convinced he'd become a stoner suicide statistic otherwise.

The closest he ever got was April 20th, 2016. Yes. Weed Day. Dad was out of the house, so he invited me to smoke a blunt and watch Armageddon (1998). I am certain that I did it wrong because the cannabis had no effect on me. I just coughed a bit and sat on the couch. He flopped beside me, tilted his head unnaturally downwards to stare at my crotch, and rather rudely pointed at it.

"What's that?"

I was wearing pajama shorts with an old period stain. "That's blood," I said.

And that's it. He tried to goad me into smoking more, watching more movies, but I figured one mediocre film was enough and I left. I'm just going to spoil it now and let you know this is a story of near misses, total predator fails, and perhaps divine intervention. I wasn't on my period that day, but he assumed I was. He decided he didn't want to deal with my icky menstrual blood the first time he got physical with me. Incest is no biggie, of course. Periods, however? EW!

What if I'd been wearing any other pair of shorts? What if I'd inhaled properly? What if he was more skilled at manipulating me? Or less worried about the consequences of sexually abusing his sister? If he'd forced himself on me, I can't actually see my teenaged-self resisting. He conditioned me to accept his abuse, to give up on arguing, to quit flinching when he threw a punch and stopped just short of my face. I wish that was a metaphor, but when we were younger he actually did that to me. What was there to complain about if he never actually hit me? What if I was the one who said, "just hit me already?" What if I thought getting punched in the face would save the whole world?

After silently enduring this for around six months, I finally told someone what was happening. Not to complain, just to get a second opinion before I gave into his advances. It was another night of yelling and suicide threats. I laid paralysed in my bed, in the dark, too scared to even get up and turn on a light. Then they'd know I was awake, and if I was awake they might try to rope me into it. So instead I texted my best friend some of the totally logical justifications for incest my brother had implanted in me, particularly the "sex cures drug addiction" angle. I still didn't want to do it, but it was for the greater good, wasn't it? If it was really going to help him, maybe even save his life, then it was a worthy sacrifice, right?

WRONG!

CONTINUE