AITA for agreeing my brother did something wrong, but my mother handled it badly and we should work together to fix it?

Censored word for non-consensual 18+ stuff, since AITAH doesn’t like the actual word.

My (19NB) parents (55F and 62M) are separating. To be honest, it’s about time. My father is a verbally, physically and has even ‘inappropriately touched’ almost everyone in the family for years. It took a LOT of fights for her to finally explode and say she’s leaving.

Us two and my little brother (17M) but not my father are preparing the house for sale. My brother isn’t doing much. He has a gaming addiction that he refuses to admit to that I keep trying to get my parents to help with. Like, actual parental controls on his computer and such. But their solution is to randomly walk in and yell - not scold, yell - at him. Call me crazy, but I don’t think that’s gonna work. Especially considering it hasn’t worked for literal years.

But to give context to my mother’s side. She actually hit her finger doing some decking yesterday and her finger has swollen up. She’s seen a doctor, has been administered anti-biotics and I’m driving her to the doctor today so she can get more. So, I already help out but she needs extra help which I’m happy to give! My father isn’t much help and my brother complains until he gets more computer time, though he still does what I ask him to do.

His job was to sweep a section of the newly painted decking to get off dust and leaves, then put the second coat on. I tried to do it but she kept going back and forth about whether I was supposed to use the roller or not (“the roller’s fine for a first coat, not a second” “I want you to use the roller for a second coat”, etc) and considering she has a history of yelling at me if I follow her instructions and she turned out to be wrong, I wanted to be sure what I was supposed to do and she got pissed. So she told my brother to do it.

The one rule: DO NOT PAINT ON THE HOUSE. Very reasonable, probably not the easiest from my experience with big chunky paint brushes, but a very understandable thing to be pissed about.

He painted on the house. I ran out to full on screaming because I thought my mother had bumped her finger or fallen over and gotten hurt. Nope, just screaming at him. At first I saw a little blotch but then further down, there was a long line of paint at the bottom of the wall. The wall ‘dips in’ a little, so it was clearly done by accident while trying to fit the big brush underneath the wall to get the decking there, which my mother had explicitly told him to do.

This is where I’m genuinely not sure if I’m the asshole.

My brother, like me, is probably autistic. I’m diagnosed. My father joined a meeting with the doctor who diagnosed me to ‘observe our family dynamics’ and she mentioned to my mother he is probably autistic too. My brother has the same symptoms as me and acts very similar to both of us. Mom is probably the only one in this house who’s NOT autistic.

A part of autism, especially for me, is poor motor control. I’m the type of person whose hands shake constantly and I need to watch where I’m walking like a hawk because I tend to walk into tables and have even fallen down flights of stairs before. Basically, clumsiness. There’s a VERY good chance my brother just couldn’t hold the brush without it shaking and couldn’t control the brush properly in such a small space. It’s less than a centimetre gap and the brush is thicker than a centimetre.

I was shocked and just said, “(name) that’s a LOT of paint. That’s a whole line…” and tried thinking of ways to fix it. My mom, this ENTIRE time is screaming. At the absolute top of her lungs, mostly for him to piss off. That he can go live with our father (again, narc abuser) and he obviously did it on purpose. He actually started crying, which pissed me off. I completely understand being angry about it, but screaming and making him cry is not going to solve the problem or teach him how to do it properly.

My mom started yelling to me about how she didn’t know how she was going to fix it and obviously, I wanted to help. I took a photo of the house wall and got a paint colour match. She got scoffed and yelled at me to leave as well. My next idea was to figure out how to get the paint off the wall but y’know what, if she wanted me to leave and not try to fix it for her then she can deal with it herself. I was really mad she made him cry when there were so many better ways to handle it.

She could’ve given him a smaller brush. We have few small paintbrushes lying around from when we were kids that could’ve worked better for that edge. She could’ve told me to deal with it and left to take a break and cool off. She could’ve told him to stop painting and give her time to think, with much less screaming.

She always complains he never listens to her but always listens to me. But, she’s never believed he could have autism too and treated him badly. She didn’t believe I did and yelled at me before a disability aid at my first high school (who was also my first year social studies teacher) said she’d been keeping an eye on me and she was 99% sure I was autistic. It’s obvious to pretty much every doctor who sees me, every disability aid, every autistic person I’ve ever met. Just not her.

She doesn’t have much empathy at all, really. She didn’t even realise that her husband’s abuse affected US and not just her. I told her I was glad she’s leaving because of all the stuff he’s done to me and how it’s affected me. For multiple reasons, my doctors think I have C-PTSD (complex post traumatic stress disorder) and my father is one of them. She said she genuinely didn’t realise his abuse would affect us. Like… I’m trying so hard to be empathetic but seriously? You complain how badly he’s affected your mental state but you didn’t think your kids would be damaged living with him?

She’s also, because this post is long enough and the situation could be it’s own post so I won’t explain it, victim blamed him for being ‘inappropriately touched’ by his ex-partner and is a full blown misandrist. She was abused by her father, her ex-partners and my father so I know where she gets it from but men have abused me most of my life as well and I still know not all men are stupid and abusive.

He trusts me and he doesn’t trust her. I’ve always had empathy for him, tried to compromise like I would if I was a parent, asked him politely to do things and if he doesn’t do it (which is rare) I ask sternly. He respects me but fears her and our father. I feel like more of a parent than a sibling, sometimes.

I have money so I can buy her new paint, which I offered. I can’t drive without an adult (learners license) so either her or my father would have to come to the store and get paint with me. Or I could buy her something to strip it off and help her do it. But she refuses all help and I think that’s the wrong way the handle it. Especially if she’s hurt.

But I feel crazy in this house. I can’t trust my father’s perspective, I don’t think I can trust hers on this and I don’t know if I can trust mine. I was the product of a narcissist and raised in a dysfunctional, abusive household. I’m always scared I’m an abusive, shitty person and I don’t even know it. Maybe I am totally the asshole here.

Reddit, am I the asshole for thinking my brother badly screwed up but my mother could’ve handled it better and we should all work together to fix it?