I abused my little brother

cw- csa, abuse

I realised last year. It has been eating away at me. I think I have always been slightly mean to him. One way to get my brother to comply and be easy for our mom was to threaten him. I always threatened that I wouldn’t play with him anymore. I felt so smart at the time for realising I could manipulate him into eating breakfast that way.

I remember an other time our downstairs neighbour was knocking on the door really loudly. As if he were angry. I opened the door and I think he was taken a back that a child stood in front of him. He asked to see an adult. I told the truth, there are no adults here. Just me and my little brother. He didn’t believe me I think. Me and my brother got in a verbal fight. At some point I got so frustrated I decided to discipline him. I spanked him multiple times. I pulled his pants down. I was 11 I think. I feel very guilty. My brother was begging and screaming for me to stop. He was crying. No one in our house was safe for him. I really really hate myself.

We’ve had physical fights after that. At some point I started hearing the kids upstairs begging no please stop. I haven’t heard them in a while. I struggled distinguishing if those noises were real because no one else heard them. I’ve tried audio taping the screams when I hear them. I’ve listened back now after years and I don’t hear the real distinct screams that I definitely thought I heard.

I used to have nightmares and sleep paralysis where I’d hear a child speaking my native tongue obviously being abused. I’ve been smoking weed daily for almost 5 years now. I don’t know how to cope with any part of my childhood. Especially the parts I can’t write about.

One time we were in a bedroom and I started dry humping my little brother. My mom noticed from an other room and immediately put a stop to it. It never happened again. I only figured out it was wrong because my mom didn’t approve. I feel awful now. I feel like my family’s life would’ve been less bad without me. I know it isn’t true, I know our parents would’ve still been heavily affected by war and emotional neglect. I know they’d still inflict that upon my siblings with or without me. I feel like I’ve become who I never wanted to be. I regret it all and I know we’ll never be as close as we had been.

He’s a stone wall now and I feel like that’s my fault more than any one else’s in this house. I understand why he’s like that, it’s to protect himself.