Diapers

My little brother is 10 years younger than me. I was in junior high school,
coming home to find mom outside weeding or something,
and my little brother still in the crib… In dirty diapers, and rocking.
Banging his head against one of the solid ends of the crib. 
Creating his own necessary version of interaction and stimulation. 
How long had he been in there? All day? 

I scooped him out, cleaned him up, and kept him with me.
Mom didn’t have to do what she wasn’t doing anyway. 
I became a responsibility addict. Taking on more and more burdens.
I took him hostage, into a different sort of captivity, confined him lovingly with me,
In my custody, freedom under a watchful eye.

And, HE a second set of eyes seeing goings on in my life. 
An unpredictable and uncontrollable voice, to tell what he saw.
Unconsciously, our symbiosis increased my feeling of safety too.

I was walking at 8 months.
Mom would leave me in the back yard alone, for hours. Or in the front yard.
With that older brother, that I cut off contact with over 15 years ago.

There was a story she told a number of times…
Of me taking my diaper off, mom assuming “I didn’t like wet diapers.”
She did not approve of this unruly, offending, and improper behavior at all. 
I had become responsible for my own diapering and dryness.
If mom was so inattentive to my little brother and his diapers,
was she equally inattentive to me and mine?

I had figured out how to climb out of the crib early.
Both brothers learned to walk, at well over a year old, and were not climbers. 
My little brother just accepted his cage, his confinement, his imprisonment.
And rocked and banged his head for stimulation. What choice did he have? 

I am grateful I was walking at 8 months, and a climber,
and that I don’t remember being stuck in the crib when tiny. 
I chalk this up to not having the brain maturity to form memories yet. 
I do remember confinement in my parents’ room, 
sleeping in a crib in their room until I I was two.
There were uncomfortable methods that surfaced in EMDR therapy.
Methods that my dad used to silence me when I had needs, or they were busy. 
I prefer to be able to breathe.
There were uncomfortable things to be viscerally aware of in that room.
While I laid down and didn’t move, so as to not disturb them, not to invoke the monster. 

This was a time of acquiescing, yielding, going along with,
Learning well to lay low for self-preservation. 
Don’t make the monster angry. Just don’t. 

My tiny little brother, learning to tolerate the family insanity, all of it.
Caught in the middle of everything and everyone.
Safety within unsafety.
Learning to trust the untrustworthy.
Something known as “Love” all mixed up with fear and terror. 
Danger and protection, secureness and insecurity,
Shelter, sanctuary, and refuge.
Anxiety, apprehension, and unease. (Dis-ease?)
Vulnerable, hesitant, and with a heaping helping of nervous tension.
Stress and agitation, jittery and restless.

My younger brother is 58 now, I am 68.
He seems to have stopped drinking once again. 
He is growing again. 
We are each on our own paths.
Growing and healing, each in our own way.

Lena L