the favourite child syndrome
17 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
in family, reflections
I’m tired of suppressing my emotions, and at the same time, I still do not know how to talk about it to people. So this is really the best way to vent it in a coherent manner, because it will just feel like another forum posting for me.
Yesterday, we got the results back. It was positive. The cruel thing was not in the result, but in the way it was given to us. He was at first let out on bail after the 7 days of being detained, because the results had not yet come out. So he came home, and that was the biggest lie. The deception of things going back to normal, that he was going to be alright, that after this we can work on issues in our family together, was in him being allowed to come home for a week. My sister even wanted to bring us to USS, just us siblings, and in my family that’s like winning a Nobel Prize. It had never been done before, we had never hung out as siblings. That was the cruel part of this entire crisis. It made the news we heard yesterday all the more devastating, the disappointment all the more hurtful. It may not sound like a big deal, 6 months. People would say that others have gone through worst. At least my brother is not in prison, some might think. That, would be like saying, “Oh cancer. At least it’s not terminal.” I’m sorry, but there is no degree of suffering here. The pain is universal, and it’s the process that hurts.
After making a few phone calls, I arranged for my family to go and see him at the station where he was being detained yesterday night. I’ve always tried to be the strong one. In front of my family, I’d react to bad news such as this in the most passive of manners, sometimes cold. Actually, I do it for all. Everyone cried in the car, except for me. I held it all back, because I thought, if everyone’s going to be a mess, who’s going to talk to the IO? And I held it for as long as I could, until I was allowed to see him.
It was a really heartbreaking sight. The brother that I saw, was not the 20 year old brother I know, but the baby brother whom I’d always felt protective of when he was a baby. Growing up, I’d always resented my brother for the favourable treatment he’d received from my parents, such that I was overlooked and always had to give way to his every wants. I’d hated him before for being a disappointment to the family, for everything that he’d put my parents through those years when he was being rebellious, for not appreciating the love he’d received from them. But all those grudges, jealousy and anger from the past 17 years or so evaporated as soon as I saw how remorseful and sorry he was. My sister hugged him and as the only part of him I could touch was his hand, I held it. It was the first show of affection I’d given him in all my life as his elder sister. He was in such a broken state, all I wanted to do was to help him fix it. All he could say to us was to take care of our parents. He must have repeated that like 43 times in that space of 10 minutes that we got with him. And in that time as well, I finally got to say to him what I’ve always wanted to say since the very first time he got detained. The most important thing I said however, was to admit to him that he was and still is the favourite child of the family.
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