My mother (62F) married her second husband Ted (51M) when I (33F) was around ten years old. Pretty much immediately he started to verbally and emotionally abuse us both and occasionally to physically abuse her. He was a violent alcoholic with a severe mental illness he did not seek consistent treatment for. I do not exaggerate when I say we regularly feared for our lives. My brother (21M) was born only a year later and the abuse continued, though never directed at him.
When I was around twelve or thirteen, Ted started to physically abuse me as well, with my mother's full knowledge. As time went on, he became even more hostile and threatening toward me. It got so bad that after the insistence of a friend who figured out what was going on, when I was fifteen my mother took my brother and me back to our home country, where we started a new life. Over the years, I've told my brother about some of incidents, but not the full extent.
There was a lot of fallout from our time with Ted. My mother has always been emotionally distant, probably due to her own trauma and her inability to process it. I struggled with physical affection of any kind for many years and I know this hurt my brother a lot. Still, I did my best to be there for them both and became a quasi second parent to him as we have no extended family. They both rely on me a lot to this day and I'm their emotional rock; that comes with its own pressures, so I don't feel entirely comfortable showing weakness in front of either of them.
Then I moved to a neighbouring country for university and have been here for the past eleven years. In part this was due to the chaotic situation at home, and the need to have my own life where I wasn't constantly reopening old wounds. I've been through therapy myself and have come a long way to a truly healthy and happy place in life.
My brother suffers from pretty severe depression, dropped out of school and is really lacking direction. I feel guilty for abandoning him and worry for his well-being and future. He constantly laments the fact that he misses the old days when I still lived with them and we were a 'happy family'. He's also old enough now to reflect about my lack of physical affection toward him and the emotional distance between my mother and me. He takes this very personally, wants me to forgive her and open up to them both.
While I have mostly forgiven my mother (I've told her so) and recognise that she is also a victim here, the fact that she abandoned me to such abuse is something that I'm not sure I can ever fully forgive, or at the very least my trust in her will never be the same.
Should I tell my brother about the full extent so he understands the context? I've kept it from him so far because that's not something anyone wants to know about their father and my brother is very worried about becoming like him. It's also because I may well destroy the relationship my mother and brother have only recently built up. He had so much anger and resentment toward her for her role in everything and her emotional coldness after that it's taken years for them to reach the point they're at now.
Help me, Reddit! You're my only hope!
TL;DR: My brother is upset because I have never been completely open with him or my mother. Should I tell him this is because his father abused me as a child?
Submitted November 28, 2019 at 08:38AM by Throwaway96849837 https://ift.tt/2XXXKgv
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