My Invisible-Feelings Brother

My brother came over last night to eat dinner with us. He must have been lonely because my parents were away. Felt fear of abandonment. From adoption feelings he has no consciousness of. I had unrealistic hope. Perhaps this time we'd feel connected and validated. But alas I could not be with him and myself together. I saw my blindspot -the need for being seen and perhaps some leftover childhood resentments in how he triggered the bleep out of me when he took over every. Single. Conversation. Like yesteryear.
 
Argh did he get me upset. Infringing on every boundary I set, or thought was there. Apparently I left it open for him to step on. I tried being a gracious host, and gave him the food I made, but he threw it back in my face by saying exactly what he didn't like about it. I felt gassed. He tried to take over with my husband, pretending to show interest in his work and then turned it back onto himself. My husband graciously gave into him, and egged it on. I sat there awkwardly. I grasped at straws when he seemed to show interest in our birth family and conversation about feelings. But it was so slight and then he shut it down, saying in his opinion I had to be grateful to our adoptive mother for raising us and did not want to hear about how I convinced her she was wrong to not face emotions. It seems he can only disagree with her about his fights with her, and nothing less loyal than that. I just withdraw my entire dependency on her..

He did the cheerful face thing about everything, and jumped to say he wanted to come over for the holidays. I felt my forced chipper tone like a soggy lettuce as I answered sure, we love having guests... Knowing full well that he didn't believe it. At least not him. Guilt sat in that I wasn't open enough, would never be able to fix him... My daughter was antsy and tired too, but he didn't seem to care and treated het like a doll the way our parents treat kids... With the cooing and inability to see them as real.

The disappointment was subconscious, as it was too painful for me to feel. It just drifted over my entire weekend, as I tried desperately to find answers in Nancy Verrier's The Primal Wound book. I had started with it before he was over, so strong was my intuition that he needed help. It said that adoptees tend to treat close ones to "projection identification" and dispell all their rage and hostility on them at expecting them to leave, like the baby at birth that gets left. The adoptive parent takes it personally because they were expecting gratitude and bonding to happen. Unfortunately, if they don't deal with their own issues of fear of rejection, they will be unable to see their adopted child's pain. And it is there if they are looking closely. The mistrust and inability to connect.
She also writes of the dynamics of two adopted siblings, how one will always act out and be aggressive while they other will feel forced to retreat inside and be compliant. I was the compliant one, and it grates on me still. I hate having him play his role as usual, making me feel smothered and unable to express myself. I feel he sees me as the angel who has to pretend to be perfect. While I see him as uncontrollable and irrational.

He makes me feel crazy, on top of all that, by denying the impact of adoption on him. He shuns any notion of feeling, saying he is okay with accepting adoptive parents as the only ones. He mocks our birth parents as silly. I am the opposite. He must be too enmeshed and scared of facing life without the comfort of the parents who babied him. He cannot face the unknown- the lurking emotions inside of him. Unknown and invalid to all outside indicators. I am alone and crazy. I can't face him anymore, he makes me feel crazy and actually yells at me when I try to voice my truth.

I am not as strong as I thought. I can't hold up his invisible emotional self, while dodging his physical bullets. I heard Jerry Wise say that having to figure out why people act the way they do is enmeshment and not a healthy relationship.