I Guess This Is Goodbye Old Pal...

(Just for clarity before we begin as some people got really the wrong end of the stick - no one has died!! X)

I knew I was going to write about this. 

I've known I was going to write something like this for over ten years. 

I didn't know how hard is was going to be. 

On the 25th December 1998, my brother was born, and I was suitably pissed off. 

We were just sitting down to Christmas lunch and my mum realised she was going into labour - four year old me was fucking FUMING that I wasn't going to get a Christmas lunch (it's ok they dropped me at my nans on the way to the hospital and I had lunch there - crisis averted). So then he arrived and life was obviously very different. 

We largely didn't get on throughout our childhood for the sole reason of we are chalk and cheese - you've never met two more different human beings in your life as kids (and probably to a lesser extent as adults). He just irritated me beyond belief, and this only amplified when we were at school - as there's 4 years between us we didn't spend a huge amount of years at school together (2 at primary and 3 at secondary.) I think I was always embarrassed by him (because he annoyed me so much and never seemed to be afraid of opening his mouth) but, because of, well, me, I was also embarrassed FOR him. 

When he came to starting secondary school, I had just come out and was beginning to live my life as my authentic self (well, I guess as authentically as you can at 16 when you're still full of self loathing and have only told your parents because you were worried someone at schools parent would beat you to it - dad didn't take it well, it was a whole thing, it's fine now but we didn't talk about it for a decade) and I was horrified that I might cause his life to be made more difficult (kids are fucking vile creatures as I'm sure you are fully aware). It literally ate me alive for the whole of the last year he was at primary school - I was...fucking terrified. I very quietly, on the inside, turning into a lunatic. It was also around this time that I lost an insane amount of weight (I put it back on as anyone who's seen me will know - but I lost multiple stone in...a very short space of time - I hadn't noticed it was really a problem until the Head at school pulled me aside one day and was like...dude are you ok? No reader I was not but I thought I was doing a pretty good job of hiding it - dropping 4 jeans sizes in 3 months maybe wasn't hiding it that well though). No one made the connection about what was causing it, because I couldn't voice what was killing me inside: that I'd ruined this kids life and made it unnecessarily hard. 

Thankfully, that didn't seem to happen too much beyond kids just being shits, but people got used to it. 

When I was 17, I became an adult overnight. It's a really odd, long and complicated situation to try and explain (those who've been on the journey for a long while with me have had it explained to them, and those that were there at the time are aware just how much it felt like we were living in Eastenders) but essentially my parents split up but it went about as badly you could possibly imagine. Actually, whatever you're imagining, it was worse. Way worse. Like gold medals in the Olympics of 'how shit can it be' worse - I look forward to when I pitch it as a TV film with Maxine Peake playing my mum (they will absolutely laugh me out of there and and tell me it is the most far-fetched thing they've ever read...) It's all set against the backdrop of the 2012 Olympics, which I watched in my Aunt's front room whilst living in a caravan in her front garden (told you it was dramatic - we had the police over during the 100m heats...weird the things your brain remembers!) And it remained bad for a long time. But bad became the norm and I just got on with it, rather than going 'hold on a second, this is fucking bananas and I'm literally still a kid trying to figure out who I am, and now I've got all of THIS to deal with?!' 

I used to talk about this all the time, how even 10 years ago we were so much more closed off about mental health. When I started having anxiety and depression (before I knew what it was) I literally used to think if I told anyone I'd get sent away and locked up because I was broken. Now, you realise everyone you know has it in some form and you're not broken (or you are but everyone is - one of the two.) 

Anyway, I digress. So I became an adult, and inadvertently a parent, on the 2nd of July 2012. The father in my brothers life was gone (for a while - he came back - we never talked about what happened, still to this day really - families are fucking weird) and I...took over, kind of by accident (and we'll get on to how awful that actually was). Over the next 18 months life was really rocky, but I stuck to him like glue - determined that I wasnt going to let him become anymore troubled than his hand in life had already made him. The short version is that didn't work and the whole situation did a 180 degree spin in September 2014 when my mother fully lost it and threw us both out (don't panic we weren't homeless we just went and lived with my dad). I knew it was coming and was prepared (in whatever way you can prepare for being shunned by a parent) and yet this poor 15 year old boy once again has everything he knew olbiterated in an instant. But life changed again, and yet there he was, still there, still clinging on, still trying to make the best of it.

(Side note here - I spent most of 2021 in therapy, and it's the thing I've realised I'll never be able to let go of - the anger at the way a parent utterly destroys their child's life and in a way that isn't by accident. There are many reasons my mother is not in my life, but this is the reason I don't think she ever will be again). 

Fast forward to now, and for the last 5 years we have been living together, on our own (yes, it was just me and him when he was 17, that really fucked me up with the 'this is your child/you're a parent' complex). We bicker as siblings do, but largely it's been a relatively peaceful co-existence. But all the while, somewhere in the back of my head, I've just kind of accepted that...I have a kid? Sounds mental but it does feel like it I tell you.  

Essentially what I'm getting at here is that, despite our life literally at times being like an mash-up episode of The Wire and Hollyoaks, I have always had him. Every day, he's the one person that's always there. And now...that's changing. In fact, that has changed.

Because he's moving out and getting his own place. 

In fact, by the time you read this, he will have gone.

I think this must be what a parent feels like when their child goes off to university, because it feels like my anchor is being unmoored (I'm never having kids so am thrilled that I don't have to ACTUALLY go through this with actual children - but to all my women who have done this with their kids, fucking hell it's hard isn't it?)

In my head, he is the same 13 year old boy he was when our lives got turned upside down in July 2022. He is still a child, that I inadvertently have ended up looking after. Whereas in actual fact, that boy is now 23, a man, and fully independent. And that is weird as HELL. 

Look, in the long run this is a super thing for both him and me. He's getting his independence and making a life of his own (although I am worried about if he is ever going to eat - I have cooked his dinner for him every day since the pandemic began so like....who knows if he's remembered how to cook!), and in amongst all of that...I get some independence. 

The old pandemic properly made a mess of my brain (hence spending 2021 in therapy - shout if you want my therapists details, she was a fan of musicals and we talked about Hamilton a lot - shed had tickets rescheduled about 12 times, I hope she finally got there) and I basically don't like being on my own anymore. My dad is moving in to my brothers room (that's a post for another day) meaning I won't be on my own, but we'll see how long it takes me to kill him (currently bets are he'll be dead by Easter - let me know what you want to put a bet on, I might actually set up a sweepstake. Maybe I'll take the winner out to dinner...)

You know that old phrase: they fuck you up your mum and dad, they may not mean to but they do?

It's essentially our life motto. It's probably what I'll call my autobiography. They truly didn't mean to do what they did, I know that from my dad and I half expect it from my mum, but the resentment and the damage is there. We are two semi-broken souls who are plodding on with a massive amount of emotional baggage. 

I promise I'm a hoot really, let's go see a musical, or we can go on a date? (That last one is a joke, well kind of...)

Who knows what I wanted to get out of this if I'm really honest?

I kind of hope he never reads it, because the way I've talked about him is not how we talk in real life...

But if you do read this - thanks pal. 

Thanks for hanging on in there whilst we both went to hell and back. 

Thanks for being the anchor. 

Thanks for somehow putting up with me catastrophising everything over the last 10 years no matter how small. 

Thanks for eating REALLY crap dinners when I couldn't be bothered to cook. 

Thanks. 

Couldn't have done it without you. 

Be good. 

Have fun. 

Live life. 

And cook something other than potato fucking waffles for the love of god. 

Now I understand. 

And it's time to leave the woods.