Living through it again

For context I’m 22F.

A year ago I left the dv relationship, today is actually exactly a year since I called the dv hotline for the first time and in 2 weeks it’ll be a year since I got out.

But I’m in a situation where I’m living through a lot of the same abuse again and the crushing feeling that comes with ending up back in a terrible situation after surviving it the first time and surviving getting out and the aftermath that followed is hard to describe.

It’s not exactly the same but there’s so many similarities that terrify me.

6 months after I got out, my brother (25) called and said he was getting evicted from his place. I’ve always been the helpful sibling, I raised all 3 of my siblings even him despite him being older. But now that we’re adults, he only ever would contact me when he needed something, money etc.

but I have a heart and family is family so I wasn’t going to let him end up on the streets so said he could stay with me for a few weeks until he found a place.

Well it’s been 6 months now and I’m just being used and manipulated again. He helps with nothing, I’m a single mother to a man older than me. I pay for everything which my expenses have doubled having him here and I’m in debt just from trying to afford to support him. He has cooked 3 times in the 6 months and 2 of those times were because our mum had come to visit (parents live 5hr away).

He has all these made up health problems and mental health problems, which sounds harsh but I know this kid better than anyone and I’m not one to accuse people of lying about health especially mental health ever but it’s very blatant lies.

He’s also just disgusting with no hygiene, spills things and doesn’t clean it, I had to argue to get him to change his bed sheets because it had been 6 months and he hadn’t changed them once.

I work 10-12hr days and come home to clean up his mess, cook dinner etc. I have not once even gotten a thank you.

If I ask him to help with something even as simple as taking the rubbish out on bin night suddenly he’s unwell.

He doesn’t work, never has had a job not even for a day. I started working when I was 13 to keep him and my other siblings alive.

He gets a decent amount of money from the government though, enough to order uber eats for lunch every day and for dinner if I’m not home to cook. I asked him when he moved in to pay me $100 a week which would include rent, groceries, utilities, everything.

He’s paid me 3 times in 6 months, once when our mum forced him to, once when our dad forced him to and once when our grandma forced him to. He knows exactly what he’s doing. And that $100 is very very fair, I live in Sydney and that amount only covers the additional groceries he costs me, it’s not even enough to go towards anything else. And he knows exactly what he’s doing, he is willingly using me.

My tipping point was last night. Today is not only a year since I first called the dv hotline but a year since my ex murdered one of our dogs. So leading up to this my mental health has been taking a very steep spiral which isn’t helping. But it started on Thursday night, I wasn’t home until late, so like a single mother would I texted and said hey I wont be home until late, there’s frozen pizza in the freezer you can make and IF you feed the cats, sab is on meds and needs half a tablet with dinner. But if you’re not certain then they can wait until I get home and I’ll feed them then and if they’re bothering you just give them some treats to get them through until then.

I thought it was a very clear message.

It was her second last day of meds and I got home to find an empty medication box on the counter which is when I realised my brother had double dosed my cat which she is a kitten I rescued a few weeks ago, she’s very small.

Thankfully with what the meds were we got very lucky and she was okay. But if it had of been a different type of medication, she most likely would have been dead before I even got home.

But I stayed calm, I was mad but I didn’t lose it and I spoke calmly and said that it was not okay and that he could have killed her. All I got in response was oh my bad and then he went to his room.

My other cat got a scratch on her head from playing with the kitten, nothing crazy. It happened earlier in the week. She’d knocked the scab off so it was a bit raw for a day and then the new scab was a bit bigger and more chunky for lack of better word. But all in all, I’ve been keeping an eye on it and it’s healing fine.

I got home yesterday after a 14hr shift already barely keeping it together with the anniversary of the murder being this weekend and the second I get in the door I get grilled about how it looks bad and he’s concerned. So I said I’m not too worried but I’ll see if I can put some cream on it or something and then he looked at me like I was a psychopath and mansplained how I’m going to poison her if I do that and I said well obviously not a random cream, I’ll make sure it’s cat safe and suitable for the problem and he kept just pushing and pushing acting like I’m the worst cat owner on planet earth until I finally snapped and said ok I’ll take her to the vet tomorrow I couldn’t take her to the vet during the week because if I take time off work then I can’t afford to take her. And then he finally dropped it.

And this cat - I got her a few weeks after I got out because he murdered one of our dogs and the other died less than 2 weeks after I got out and to be pretty blunt, I needed a reason to live because at that point I had no reason or desire to keep living. This cat is the only reason I’m still here today so you can imagine I am very on top of making sure she’s okay because if I lose her I lose my reason to live. She saved me.

But it was just psychological warfare, he needed to make himself feel better about almost overdosing my other cat the night before.

And I feel so helpless because I don’t know how to get him out but I’m really running out of fight and I’m so tired of being on edge all the time. In the past 2 years I’ve lost 18months to psycho men that just use and manipulate me.

I know this situation is different because it’s my brother and there’s a lot of the abuse that I had to survive from my ex that’s not a thing in this situation but mainly just the manipulation and using me. And it especially has been really bad for the ptsd. I don’t know what to do anymore.