To get back to venting: My brother did it again. He once again blatantly took a cheap shot at me, only this time my mother got caught in the crossfire too.
So essentially, I've already gotten what I really
really wanted for Christmas: for our mother to wake up and realize what a total P.O.S. excuse for a human being my older brother really is.
Here's what happened: When I left Vegas after our ultimate falling out earlier this year, I could only take one small carry-on luggage and one more in storage. My mother had sent out three whole boxes of stuff thinking I'd be staying there, so I couldn't take everything home; everything she'd sent out, I packed right back up in those three boxes to be sent out later. I knew there was a good chance I'd never see anything I'd repacked ever again, but she was on his back about it, so I knew he wouldn't just throw them out like I'm sure he wanted to.
Anyway, of the three boxes, two of them had mostly clothes in them as well as some fragile stuff I'd intentionally wrapped in the clothes, and the other one was a smaller box that had mostly CDs, computer software and a bunch of other electronic stuff in it. Well, yesterday, I finally got the two boxes with the clothes in it, and today we got the smaller box. . .
In which we found a woman's handbag.
The only other two things we found inside were a bus schedule I'd previously put on top of the package contents so nobody could see into it, and a note from the USPS apologizing that the package had been damaged (but it was an old box to begin with, so I think they just looked at the box and threw the note in to be better safe than sorry). At first my mother thought he'd sent her the package as a gift (since he'd addressed it to her instead of me) and called him up to thank him / let him know about it, but he called up shortly thereafter sounding very surprised because he'd never sent a purse to begin with.
That got her upset because she thought somebody from the postal service had stolen all of my CDs/electronics and stuck the purse in there (I, on the other hand, already knew what was coming). She asked him to check on it, and he later called back stating that the missing handbag must belong to his girlfriend's mother (both of whom he is currently living with).
So Mr. Wonderful somehow misplaced everything I had packed and taped up the night before I left and accidentally sent out his girlfriend's mother's handbag? Yeah right!
So the consensus between my mother and I is now that he'd held off mailing my stuff back just to screw with me, and that he'd unpacked the box with the electronics in it to sort out anything he wanted for himself (and probably decided he wanted everything, again, just to screw with me, except for the bus schedule with he probably just left in there as trash), that his GF's mom had used the now-empty box for herself, and that once she finally demanded to get sent the boxes back (one of them had my winter boots in them), he just taped it up and shipped it out without even bothering to look in it, thinking he was sending out an empty box and that our mother would assume everything had been stolen (which she almost did).
We still don't know the full story yet, however, because when our mother offered to send the purse back, he told her "oh don't, it's just an old purse." Nuh-uh, it's a new purse. It even still has that "new car" smell on it. So now she knows without a shadow of a doubt that he's B.S.ing her. I could have told her years ago he could not be trusted to tell the truth about anything under the sun, but she tuned it all out. Now she knows without a shadow of a doubt.
I packed all that stuff knowing I'd probably never see it again, so I'm not upset that he screwed me out of it, or that he thought I'd be stupid enough to think somebody at the postal service stole it.
I'm venting, however, because even after this, I think my mother is still clinging to her illusions that I'm the rotten egg of the two of us, because even after these she's only stating that she "didn't raise you two to be like this" or "doesn't know where you two went wrong."
The problem is that "we" never went wrong.
He went wrong and he dragged me down with him. When she put us in the same apartment together while we were going to college, I was a full-time student, while he was taking one class a week and getting stoned/wasted every day while dipping into my college savings to pay his half of the rent. When we lived together in Vegas, every day I went out and looked for a job, and every day he was gambling with the fat of his job by smoking pot, at least when he wasn't trying to make my life a living hell in new creative ways. I've been honest to her about everything apart from my most personal inner-most thoughts which I have not shared with anyone, meanwhile he's a habitual liar; he's lied to her about things he didn't even have to lie about (when he sent me packing back to Massachusetts, for example, he told her he'd gotten me a window seat when it was actually a seat in the middle; he didn't have to lie about that, but for some reason, he did).
She knew way back when we were in junior high that he was a rotten human being, but she always tried to ignore it, always tried to believe he was a model citizen and I was a worthless screw-up just like he told her, because he had a job and was giving her money; she let him buy her love. I could have (and often did) tell her everything he'd ever done to kick us both back down, but she didn't want to hear any of it because then she would have felt guilty cashing the checks he was writing to her. Now that it's painfully obvious that he's not only an a-hole, but evidently thinks as little of her (if not less) as he does of me, the best she can do is say that we were both screw-ups.
So what do I want for Christmas now? For my mother to say "Okay Terry, I'm sorry I ever doubted you." I want her to consent that everything my brother ever said of me is now suspect, and for her to now give me at least the benefit of a doubt.
[/end rant]