Rain, Rain, Go Away

It’s a truism of my life that I can sit at home for days, enjoying the nice weather, but then when I’m actually required to do something, actually go somewhere, the weather will turn.

And so it has came to pass again this morning. The rain is pounding away on the roof above me, and I’m sitting here desperately hoping that it will stop by 11am – the time I need to be heading out of here.

It’s been a desperate few days. Not only have we been dealing with my brother’s broken nose, and the nightmare of trying to get the police interested (even though we have a photo of the perpetrator, his name, contact details and CCTV footage!), but in my own life there have been the usual turns for the worse.

Number 1 – I have wasted a significant degree of time chasing after people and applying for jobs that either a) don’t exist; or b) were already sewn up. I’ve tried to secure some part-time work recently, including applying for an old job I once did. Now my calls aren’t returned, and in any case it was their turn to reply after I’d jumped through all the hoops. If they’re not bothered, then fuck them. I’ve had enough of being pleasant to people only to get it thrown back in my face. It is any wonder why I want to be self-employed properly? I hate sucking up to bosses – “Oh yes, I really want this job because it will be a wonderful challenge for me and I want to work for such an outstanding company that will help me develop as an individual!”. Bullshit. You want the job because you need the cash and you’re sick and tired of watching Flog It! and Jeremy Kyle.

Number 2 – the football club seems to be heading into ruin because of the incident, and ongoing traumas which were enhanced still further on Saturday. Not only is it a logistical nightmare, but the so-called “kids” were playing against (many of them are overage) are thugs and have no class. Same goes for the managers. Then there is the problem of leagues threatening to go renegade and quit the local FA structures. Total nightmare, and all because of a few egos and the low level of intelligence that most people running football clubs and leagues have.

Number 3 – due to my brother’s broken nose, I have assumed all his responsibilities for delivering his newspaper round. Yes, that does mean I take his pay, but for £20 it’s a lot of pissing around. For instance, today I’m going to a job, then coming home to do the paper round, then going back out to do another job. Lunacy. But it has to be done, and no one else can do it.

Number 4 – my elder sister is a constant source of agony and woe to us all, but particularly my mum, who feels like she has to help her do everything, from pay her bills, to finding her a new place to live.

And in the midst of all this, there are birthdays and Father’s Day. They’re meant to be happy, joyous occasions. But no one feels like celebrating anything because of the continuous compounding of misery we’ve suffered the past two weeks or so.

I despair. I really do. I wish I had good news to report, but there just never seems to be any. The only good news is that at least I’m fit and healthy. Not everyone can say that.

Axe The Family

In recent weeks, I’ve become increasingly despondent due to the relationship with my family. I know I love them really, but it’s just one of those things that really needs a bit of distance.

It’s not good to live with your close family all of the time. In the end, you just get frustrated with them. Their quirks, habits and annoying features all get under your skin. If I wasn’t living here, I wouldn’t be witnessing them on a daily, if not minutely basis.

The problems range from my younger sister who incessantly watches television, no matter how crap. From soaps to reality TV, from Hannah Montana to The Suite Life On Deck – no insipid dross is bad enough for her. It all just flows in. And then there’s the obsession with the Jonas Brothers, and her constant desire to talk about every last detail of what happened in school that day.

My brother in university is something of a joke. He should have gone away for uni, like I did. He’s trying to live his own life, trying to be different, except it’s being frustrated by living at home. Such a rebel. If he wanted to drink till all hours, come home whenever he feels like it and stay up all night watching shit on YouTube (or worse) then he should have found his own place. While he’s here, his anti-social behaviour is disrupting the rest of us.

Worse, it is a terrible example to my other brother. He’s still in school, but thinks he’s such a big, tough man. The language from him is absolutely disgusting, especially when he’s on the Xbox 360. I’ve never heard anyone filled with such bile, such bitterness, towards people he hasn’t even met. Stereotyping people on the stroke of a pen, my brother’s degenerate behaviour really has been something of a shock to me since I moved back home.

So, basically, I want out. My parents are OK, but they’re useless now. They’ve clearly given up on the rest of the family. There is no way that me or my older sister would have got away with the way this lot behave. And I recognise that my attitude towards life has become so down and negative simply because I’ve been the one having to tell my brothers and sister off if they do something wrong or inappropriate, as my parents just don’t seem to care any more, letting them get away with murder.

There’s just a slight problem with my master plan. No job. No money. Business is a disaster right now. Even if it wasn’t, I don’t have a reliable source of income. At any moment I could get work and then the work could dry up, and I’ll end up with nothing and still be left paying rent (because a mortgage is never going to happen).

So I’m stuck here for God knows how long. Stuck living with a family that I can’t tolerate for much longer. Depression is returning, I know that for sure, as I’ve been extremely down for more than a week now. I just wish someone would give me a break.

Pressure Point

The atmosphere is particularly tense in this house at the moment. 

The reason is simple. Last night I told my brother just how disappointed I was in him, the same one I’ve been having a rather complicated time of things over lately. The flash point has been a couple of rather damning revelations involving the police, chases and my brother’s descent into the realms of worrying which people are going to snitch each other to the police.

It’s all very depressing. I thought he was smarter than that. Mistakenly, I thought he was cut from similar cloth to me. I wasn’t bothered with all that shit in school. I shrugged my shoulders and said “I don’t care”. Maybe times have changed and it’s harder to steer clear of trying to look tough now. I carved my own niche out, I was smart but reserved, didn’t draw attention to myself, but somehow I struck a happy balance of not making any enemies by being generous and helpful. The odd bit of homework help here and there (and no more than that, I wasn’t that generous!) does wonders for one’s popularity. It was no skin off my nose, and it kept everyone friendly.

I don’t think my brother has that luxury. Sadly, he’s not as academic as I was. So I think he feels he has to carve his own identity out, which is the usual young male bravado thing. The language is foul, the subtle racism is there, the endless sexual references disgraceful, betraying a very disappointing view of women, and his attitude towards the people who put themselves out for him on a daily basis – us, his family – is shameful. 

So I flipped. Very quietly, very politely. But leaving him in no doubt that I’m simply surprised and disappointed as to the direction he’s heading in. 

No more words have been exchanged since then. In truth, they’re not likely to. In this family, we can’t talk to each other. We can’t even look at each other half the time without it either turning nasty or being turned into a joke to try to deflect from the very real danger that we might just possibly talk about our feelings about something.

The thing is, I know so much more. I have lots of stuff stored in reserve now. I don’t particularly feel bad about how I’ve obtained this information, but it all is slowly leaking out as it becomes possible to do so in public, either through a lapse or a very tactful leading discussion. I won’t go fully public with all of this unless or until I’m pushed into it. And right now, we’re pretty close to that line. 

I just worry where we’re headed. There is a great risk that if we push too hard he’s going to go into serious rebellion. No one wants that. But we can’t just stand by and hope for the best, thinking that he deserves the independence and freedom that he has been given for the past few years. In truth, he doesn’t.

But I do know this. I’m glad I’m not growing up in today’s generation.

Treading The Boards

It’s not been a particularly good week for me. In light of recent events, I’ve spent most of my time wondering what I can do, what I should do, what I must do, and what might be a good idea to do. This has meant a lot of agonising and wondering what right I have to intervene. And how to do it without it being completely obvious that I’ve been spying…

In the event, I’ve done absolutely nothing. Yet. I’m keeping an eye on proceedings, and if it looks like the danger level is rising then I will take action. But there is still the small matter of the phone contents that needs to be resolved. Perhaps I’ll have to engineer a situation where I “accidentally” stumble upon it while I’m in the same room as him. 

So the wood laminate floors in here have been taking a beating as I pace up and down them thinking about things. My brain is churning up lots of things at the moment, moving from one item to another, seemingly in a state of endless excitement. It’s almost like I sense something is afoot. Something is round the corner. Something I keep denying myself. It’s putting me on edge, for sure. 

Maybe I’m just denying myself a life, something I’m now very conscious of the fact that I don’t seem to have one. I tried to do something about that this week when I decided that I really must take the plunge and give my business idea a go. So, early next week, I will take delivery of a contract mobile phone, which will allow me to run my business affairs separately. Got a pretty good deal too. The website is ready, the flyers have been designed, and I’ll stick an advert up in the local shop window. Then, it’s up to the good people of my town to suffer from a broken computer…

But I seem to have more energy than usual at the moment. I’m getting the urge to burn it all off. Since last year I’ve been doing at least some form of mild exercise each day, some press ups, sit ups, pull ups, a few weights, that sort of thing. Now, however, it doesn’t seem to be enough. I think I’m going to start going for a run every couple of days. Now that’s definitely a hostage to fortune.

There’s one other thing too that I’ve signed up for this week. Today, and Monday to Wednesday next week, I’m going to help out at my local school. They need extra support for putting on the school play, and, in my current inactive state, I was only too happy to oblige. I like doing that kind of thing anyway. Though it’s not quite treading the boards, it is scampering across them, moving scenery into place and making sure everything goes smoothly. I like logistical stuff like that.

Gotta be better than sitting here, anyway.

The Predicament

In the past couple of days, I’ve been dealing with something of a rather difficult situation in my head revolving around the youngest of my two brothers, currently aged 14, and what he gets up to. He’s at that awkward age where he thinks he’s not a kid, but really he is, taking stupid decisions and needless risks, because he’s invincible. Fair enough, we all felt like that, and it’ll never change as part of humanity.

But my brother is causing me a bit of concern. He is something of a Jekyll and Hyde character. He has a load of friends who are all quiet, hard workers and don’t really go out much, meanwhile he has a bunch of friends who are much more “street”, and come with everything you’d expect them to in terms of attitude and appearance. 

My brother can’t choose between them. He alternates between groupings whenever he feels like it, but lately he has become more attached to the latter group because he now has a girlfriend. Some nights he goes out and returns after 10pm, smelling of smoke and girl’s perfume. I don’t think he smokes, but someone in the group is, and it wouldn’t surprise me if alcohol will soon follow in the years ahead. 

He’s growing up, I know that, and I accept it. He’s exploring who he is. He’s not doing it quite as I expected him to, but kids are like that. As his older brother I feel like I have a bit of a duty to look out for him though, and try to offer him advice on subjects that might be just too embarrassing to speak to our dad over. 

But, of course, that’s just the theory. As brothers, we have never been all that close. We don’t really have common interests (I’m determined to find something though, as per my previous post), we don’t share life experiences with each other, and we certainly don’t talk about emotions. That’s unthinkable. 

So in reality, there’s very little I can do to talk with my brother over the things he gets up to and try to make sure that while he can have his fun, there are some risks that are just unacceptable, and he must know the boundaries that simply can’t be crossed.

But therein lies a further complexity. The modern world, with its commercialist pressures and the freedom the internet provides adds a bit of a problem. Boys will be boys, and now they can be even more so by free access to a huge range of pornography, widely distributing it to each other on mobiles and computers, and in some cases even making it themselves, despite all the legal problems that may cause if it falls in the wrong hands. Like I said, they take stupid risks and don’t understand the consequences.

So the other morning, I was a little surprised to see some unexpected items in my Google search history. I’m not sure how they got there, as my search history is linked to my Google account, and there’s no way my brother could have logged in as me, but there the search terms were, and at times when I knew that there could have been no one else responsible.

I did a little digging, and sure enough, while the history had been erased, the relevant files were all still in the cache. 

It left me in a dilemma. He’s a teenage boy. What he was looking at came as no surprise. In fact, I’d be more surprised if he wasn’t looking at it. In truth, when I was his age I did the same. I also know my other brother did it. No – the actual porn itself is not an issue. While I don’t look at it any more, and haven’t for several years, it’s perfectly understandable that my hormonal brother would be looking at it.

The thing was, this time I didn’t really want to leave it be. The sites he’d visited had left a number of presents on the computer (viruses, adware, etc) – and so, at the very least, I had to give him a bit of warning to be a bit more careful about the links he clicks on. Of course, this would be a very embarrassing conversation not just for him but for me. But I figured it would be better him hearing it from me than from my parents, as I’ve no doubt my dad would have done his usual spyware sweep of the computer in good time and uncovered all the stuff himself.

But there was another reason for me doing it. I wanted to show my brother that a) he’s not invincible after all, he will slip up; b) that I care about him and want him to be careful and c) that he has another person he can confide in if he needs support or guidance. 

I think I did that and handled it sensitively. There’s no need for me to go to my parents with any of this info, as long as my brother starts to appreciate his situation properly and have more respect for himself and others. 

Unfortunately, it didn’t end there. Yesterday I stumbled across some rather unsettling material on his phone, and with that as justification I’ve had a look at his MSN conversation archives. Suffice it to say, they’re not good. Full of masculine bravado and massive exaggeration no doubt, but behind them is an obvious veneer of truth that my brother is in with the wrong crowd.

This isn’t the brother I grew up with. He has changed almost beyond recognition in the last year. And it hasn’t gone unnoticed amongst his former friends, as I read in his MSN archives. 

He’s gone astray, and I’m now incredibly worried about where he’s heading. The difficulty I now have is that all the information I’ve got which I could use to have a talk with him has not been obtained legitimately. I can’t raise any of this without making it obvious that I’ve been forced to spy on him to try to get to the truth. And that’s a massive breach of trust.

But at the same time I’ve got all of this running around my head constantly and it won’t go away. 

I just can’t believe how early kids lose their youthful innocence these days. It seems only five minutes ago when I was talking about the good day I had with this very same brother eating the Pizza Hut buffet lunch…

I need advice, badly.

In Other News

As I sit here once more underneath a cloud-ridden sky, dumping shedloads of yet more rain onto the window above me, I feel like it is an appropriate moment to look a little bit wider than the very narrow focus of my life at the moment.

That is to say that my family deserve a look in. At this moment in time, things are looking up for the first time in a very long time for my older sister. She is about to start a new job, and she has finally put her foot down with the waste of space ex-partner who spends all his time engaging her in mind games involving my nephew. It’s a shocking situation, but one that had to end sooner rather than later because we’ve all become surprised at just how badly my nephew has been behaving lately – with compulsive lying being the number one development.

It’s all quite unfortunate just how long it has taken for her to settle down, but with her new house, new job, and passing her driving test, she may finally get the freedom and independence she deserves. And my mum and dad need. Because she has been a very large drain on their resources, both physically and emotionally, for a very long time now due to her endless stream of disasters. Fingers crossed that it’s on the up for her.

Meanwhile, my brother, the older one, is not having such a good time. He has been searching for a job all summer and is constantly being rejected. Or rather, not quite rejected, but he just never hears back from people. Even McDonalds haven’t got back to him, which has been a particularly bitter pill to swallow. He’s just looking for something to tide him over when he (hopefully) starts his university course in September. But for the immediate future, the real interest now is whether he gets the necessary A-Levels on results day next Thursday. I’d say it’s touch and go.

We don’t really talk all that much to each other now. I don’t quite know how that happened, but it has. We talk about football. But that’s about it. Not particularly convincing. He has his own life now, and is very sensitive to any comments about it, so I often feel it’s better not to say or do anything that might offend him.

My other brother and sister are both doing OK. The brother is a typical teenager, liking to pretend he is a tough cookie, playing up in front of his range of friends (who all do exactly the same) when in truth he’s nothing of the sort. This generally includes listening to a lot of black R&B and rap. Which really annoys me because I can’t stand hearing it. I hope he grows out of all this. To me it’s the ultimate expression of the success of the capitalist society – it’s all about money, violence (survival of the fittest) and girls.

Meanwhile, my sister tries her best… she’s still too young to be sure how she’s going to do in school, but as long as she stays out of trouble she should be fine.

Finally, my mum and dad could do with a hand. I help out around the house where I can, but my siblings do absolutely nothing, and actually make everything worse with the mess they make. I can see my mum and dad are getting frustrated with it. I sense in the near future there are going to be very cross words with my useless brothers and sister…

That’ll do for now. At least we’re all reasonably healthy and OK.