It took me about 50 years to get my brother’s voice out of my head. My oldest brother Jack tormented me (and my family) throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. About halfway through the 1990s I grew bigger than him and was able to physically keep him from tormenting me, but it would take another 20+ years before I was able to keep him from mentally tormenting me. Stories are powerful, especially when they are told to you within an abusive relationship you can’t escape from.
My oldest brother Jack tormented me throughout my childhood, but the worst of it was inflicted on my older brother Rick. Jack never punched me in the face (until I was 17), but he would punch my brother in the face, and repeatedly punch me everywhere else while antagonizing me with verbal abuse, which included calling me “girl” all the time. I used to consider myself lucky. I finally broke free of it when I kicked the shit out him after he punched me in the nose as a teenager, and I realized I was actually bigger and stronger than him. This was far from the end of his torment though.
Jack’s voice, and even Rick’s voice would remain in my head for the next 30 years. Early on in my adult years I thought I was crazy because there were literally voices in my head that would call me names and remind me of what a piece of shit I was. Over time I got use to these voices, and assumed I was indeed crazy. But it was manageable. It was only in the last couple of years that I realize it was literally the voices of my brothers playing over and over in my head from my child hood. The voices would respond to things happening today, but they were echoes of voices and abuse from my childhood. Once I realized this, I was able to begin the process of doing away with these voices.
This realization coincided with the death of my mother. After her death there was a massive void in my existence and thoughts that was just gone. It was silence. I hate to say, but it felt really good. With this backdrop gone, I realized that the voices left weren’t all mine, and they were also my brothers—-who are both still alive. This isolation of the signal in the noise allowed me to begin doing the work to silence and do away with this part of my narrative. I still look in the mirror occasionally look and the mirror and hear “piece of shit” or “girl” (despite being a 50 year old bearded man), but I know that they aren’t me, and they are just abusive echoes of my childhood. The more I dismiss, the fewer moments I hear the voices, and the more my narrative gets rewritten.
Stories are powerful. Especially when they are told to you while under stress. You end up believing them. You end up living with them as part of your narrative. You end up thinking they are a true part of your narrative and that there is no escape. It wasn’t my mother dying that allowed me to separate the signals from the noise. It helped, but I had already identified and began doing the work before she died. It was reading books that helped me do this work. Doing the work of reading books helped me separate which parts of my narrative were mine and which were those of others around me. If I hadn’t begun reading in earnest again, and specifically reading books from authors with diverse voices, I suspect I would have continued the rest of my life thinking this was normal.
