I have my brother back

My brother Michael texted me y'day. we spent hours talking via text. he said it was funny that I reached out when I did because around the post Xmas he had a dream about me. so he thought it was funny that he saw I'd reached out to him when I did because it was around that time. he thinks, and I agree with him, that it was Dad bringing us together again. he knew I would be okay as long as I had my brother because of how close we were so him seeing his ex wife separating the two of us was something he wasn't tolerating anymore like it's been FIVE YEARS.

Mother basically isolated the two of us from our support systems and has been gaslighting me this entire time. has he fucked up in his life? yes
has he done shitty things to me? yes
he's in therapy now and medicated and he has changed so much. but this is also how I found out he still talks to Rob regularly, because we all know how Mother is as a person and we all know the less she knows about our lives the better. but that explains why Rob doesn't come up here unless he needs to and explains why he's always said he hasn't heard anything from Michael.

we have plans for the summer to go down to see him so I can finally see his house (that he bought shortly before we moved) and he can finally meet my wife. and like here is the thing: I am friends with his girlfriend. I've been the entire time. that is literally how he's been keeping track of me.
but he doesn't really check his FB he went on there last night for something unrelated and saw that I'd messaged him. and because he no longer had my number, he then had to text Rob, who thought it weird he wanted my number.

"it's been 5 years"
yeah and I've missed having him in my life for that long. I'm just. I'm still in shock. I didn't expect this. I expected him to either ignore me or to tell me to go fuck myself because of how long it's been. he said if he ignored me then he would be proving Mother right about how much of a monster (she says) he is. he's in therapy! medicated for his depression! he showed me a recent pic of him and Laura and he looks so happy. I am just

I can't tell Mother ofc because then she would be like "why are you talking to that piece of shit"
and if I told her that he's changed and going thru therapy and everything she would tell me "how do you know that he's a liar and always has been"
because I know my brother. we did everything together when I was growing up and we relied solely on each other for so long. unlike Mother I am not going to let money mean more than my own family and I don't give a fuck about what he owes or doesn't owe. the fact that this $10k means more to her than having a relationship with her own son speaks volumes and because Rob doesn't do whatever things she thinks he should do, he's been disinherited too. I firmly believe my dad had a hand to play in all of this. like yeah Serena and I talked about me doing this, H and I talked about it too. but I felt such a STRONG PUSH to do it and the only other time I felt that feeling was when I was thinking of proposing. this very strong push in the back like "go and do that thing you really want to do". I get those nudges from my dad every once in a while as a way of telling me that I should do that thing

so yeah!

and like for all of my uncle's faults Mother could've still kept in contact with him since they were at one point close. he's dead now. she might have regrets because he died basically cut out of the family. I'm not going to have that be me. I just. I'm so giddy and relieved and happy that I'm afraid I'll have a manic episode lmao

I still have to deal with my mother's bullshit but I have the upper hand/advantage of, if she pushes me to leave, she's fucked herself.

I just find it hilarious that Rob apparently talks to Michael frequently, since he knew about Adel (my SIL's mom) and her tantrum over the broom incident and that was this past Christmas. so like. she's content thinking her second child is perpetually stuck in his 20s when he was having all sorts of issues that caused him to be a monster and that's fine because that's her problem. but my brother is 40 years old now, has been doing therapy, has been on medication, he has changed so much, and I can only imagine how much this has hurt him.

we have plans to go to his place probs in the summer for a BBQ so that'll be nice, it's been a while since I saw Laura even

he tried to warn me

The last time I spilled my guts about my family and my reaction to all of the manipulation I’d been subjected to pretty much my whole life was in this entry…

Which I made around the time I reached out to the brother I was manipulated into cutting out of my life and was gaslit into thinking was this horrible human being.

I’d written this entire message on Facebook because that was the only way I could reach out to him. Like it didn’t occur to me to contact our other brother to see if he had a number I could text. Detailing how he was right about everything he wrote in the letter he’d sent to our mother calling her out on her shit. How I was finally breaking free from her manipulation because I have a support system in my wife and through her I gained a family.

I could tell he didn’t really use Facebook much, but I felt that, if he’d check in at some point and saw what I wrote, whether he responded or not, that that would be enough. I didn’t expect anything. I left it all up to him.

Last night I got a text from an unfamiliar number that simply said, “Hi. I got your message on Facebook.”

Admittedly I thought it was a scam at first lol and I debated ignoring it or at least doing the whole “new phone who dis” bit but the longer I looked at the number the more familiar it looked. So I sent one response.

“Mike?”

“Indeed.”

He told me that regardless of anything that happened that I was still his sibling. That that would never change. That he’s been keeping track of me through his girlfriend’s FB (who I’m friends with). He was doing everything an older brother does even after five years of no contact.

He said it’s funny that I contacted him because he’d had a dream about me like a week after Christmas. I told him when I was talking it over with my wife about reaching out to him, that I felt this need to do it. A literal shove from behind to go do this.

“I think that was our father pushing us back together.”

Our dad knew how close my brother and I are. He knew I would be okay so long as I had him there. Seeing us torn apart in the way that we were probably angered him for some time and he’d finally had enough and did what he needed to make sure we ended up speaking to each other again.

I firmly believe this.

We talked for a few hours just catching up because we missed five years. He missed milestone birthdays with me and he missed seeing me get married. He never got to meet my wife. We plan on going down to visit in the summer since he said he barbecues all the time when it’s warm and then I can finally see the house.

Also apparently our other brother is still in regular contact with him even though every time Mother asks him, “Have you heard from Michael?” all he says is “no,” and then she goes, “I don’t know why you bother with him, he’s a lost cause.”

A lost cause who ended up going to therapy and getting his life together but hey, it doesn’t matter, does it? If it doesn’t fit the narrative she’s written out, she doesn’t know what to do with it.

My uncle who wasn’t a stellar example of humanity in the least died recently. He was 73. Mother was upset because that was her brother. She was very close to him up until my brothers were older and I was in the picture and then they were barely around, him and his wife. And one of the things she said was that she was sad that everything ended up how it ended up because of how close they once were.

I wasn’t going to have that be how my relationship with my brother ended.

I expected no response. If I got any, it would be something like “fuck you it’s been five years”. I didn’t expect this to happen, for us to basically pick up right where we’d left off with things. Like there wasn’t a five year gap but instead a five month gap. He was always someone I could talk to about anything and everything.

Music. Hockey. Anime. Language. Deep shit. Whatever. We got each other through hard times and then someone’s bullshit manipulation tactics got in the way of everything.

Well I’m done with that shit.

She doesn’t need to know that we’re talking again. She doesn’t need to know that I restored the relationship she thought she’d fucked up for good. She doesn’t need to know that my brothers are on speaking terms because he didn’t put the money that is owed get between the two of them.

That’s what it all fucking boils down to.

Money. Money money money. Money.

I can’t wait to go down in the warmer months and see him for the first time in—what will be at that point—six years.

Six fucking years.

I’m not letting this happen again, if I cut someone off it better be for my fucking reasons and not through manipulation tactics and being convinced that how I remembered things was incorrect and that this, that, and something else actually happened this was, remember?

Did he actually steal Wind Waker and Legend of Dragoon from me or did she just convince me he did?

You don’t understand how much doubt has now been cast on literally everything between the two of us since we all moved from our hometown. Especially the period of time that was 2017-18.

She’s been telling me that the man who comforted me when our dad died and comforted me again when our grandmother died actually hates me when you’re the one who put whatever thoughts about me in his head. That he’s realised were completely wrong.

She keeps telling me what a monster he is, what a liar he is, how he’s a good for nothing who only thinks of himself.

If he was really the monster she keeps saying he is, he wouldn’t have kept tabs on me via his girlfriend’s FB for five fucking years just to feel like he still kind of knew me, hoping that there would be a time when I would talk to him again.

He got therapy for his mental health issues, he got medicated, he looks so happy. He’s been at the same job for years now instead of hopping from job to job and place to place. People can change. I see it. I feel it. This is the brother that I have always known.

This is the person I want my wife to call her brother-in-law.

I think it says something when all three of someone’s kids are all on the same page and agree that yes, their mother is a manipulative narcissist with a major victim complex. It means we know what to share and not to share with her and how to tweak what information she does get to be as sanitised as possible.