25M, brother is 27M, we have a complicated relationship and I just snapped at him on the phone this morning. Moving abroad in a few months and I'm torn on how to handle this before I go.
This morning I woke up at 8am after a really good weekend with friends, and my brother called me from the end of a trip in Japan. I've been ducking his calls lately and felt bad about it, so I picked up. He sounded so happy. And somehow that made me sad.
Then he said the thing he always says. That me and him are "just alike," that there's "something wrong with us," that we both need medication of some kind. He told me he's been experimenting with Adderall and feels like he needs it. He's said versions of this for years and it has always quietly crushed me, like he's diagnosing me with something broken. I'm 25, I'm doing fine, I have a job I like, I have friends, I don't think there's something wrong with me.
I snapped. I said "sure, idc, go ahead and take your amphetamines." He got offended. I told him I hate when he diagnoses me. I apologized. He didn't apologize back, he just explained for a minute why he was justified in saying it. I told him I had a work meeting and hung up.
I've been driving around all morning feeling like an asshole, and also feeling like he finally caught a glimpse of a version of me that has been sitting right in front of him for years.
Here's the backstory.
He's 27, I'm 25, he's the middle, I'm the youngest. Classic sibling rivalry growing up, hated each other, got better in adulthood. He was the golden boy, academically sharp, could argue his ass off. I was more average on paper but more social, and I think most people who know us both would call me the cooler one. None of that ever really bothered me. What bothered me is that from about 18 to 24, he talked to me like I was pining to be him.
The honest truth is I find him unbearable and awesome at the same time.
The unbearable part. He won't shut up. He talks AT people. Zero awareness of whether anyone is interested. He dominates every dinner table he sits at. When I talk to him I feel so unheard it's pathetic. I'm an extrovert in every other context, but my own brother describes me as a quiet introvert, because I can never get a word in. His last girlfriend told him on the way out that she was tired of him dominating rooms and not reading them. I've had private meltdowns after conversations with him, the kind where I've put my fist through a wall. When we lived together at our parents' place last year I would cry in the car on the way home from work, wishing I had a normal brother.
His ego is loud. He walks into rooms intending to be the smartest guy there. Everyone in his life, his coworkers, his friends, they're all idiots in his telling. He never admits he's wrong. If you try to change the subject or leave the room, he lashes out and makes you feel like the asshole.
The awesome part. He's the funniest person I know. Sharp, weird, witty in a way nobody else in my life is. He's a nerd in the best way. He has a genuinely good heart. He treats my family well. He texts me a lot and tries to call. He really does like me. He has no idea I feel any of this.
That's what makes it so heavy. The resentment is in me, and he's just blissfully unaware, calling me from Japan happy to talk to his little brother. I hate myself for not being able to receive that.
Here's the thing that's making me write this post instead of just sitting with it. I'm moving to Berlin next fall for grad school. Whole new life, new continent, new everything, and I'm probably not living in the same country as him again for a long time. I don't want to leave on a bad foot. But I also don't want to swallow what I feel and walk onto the plane pretending I'm the quiet chill little brother he thinks I am. Something in me wants him to finally hear me before I go.
So my question for the older folks. What would you do? Those of you who've had a sibling like this, or who've been the sibling like this, what actually helped? Did you ever say the real thing out loud, and if you did, did it change anything?