Bro-tastic

My brother has been acting weird. And by weird, I mean like a jerk. He’s been snapping at my mom a lot and I know exactly why. Before my brother went to boot camp he was this way. I know it’s how he’s dealing with his impending deployment and combat training in a few days but it’s really starting to grate on me. I think if he’s mad at all of us when he leaves he thinks it’ll be easier but it’ll just make things more difficult for us.

My mom’s birthday was this weekend and I decided to go buy her a gift. While I was on my way out the door I asked my brother if he wanted to come.

“Hey I was thinking of going to buy mom a gift, wanna come?” He looked at me, contemplated it, and decided he would come but he needed to take a shower first.

I wasn’t very happy about that because my mom was going to be home from work soon and I wanted the gift to be a surprise. After waiting for about 20 minutes we finally got on the road and eventually to the store. We decided to get my mom a computer game, a ball that lit up and made sounds (for her special needs students, they like the stimulation) and a GPS system.

“I don’t know if she’ll like that Justin. She doesn’t even know how to turn on the DVD player, do you really think she’s going to be able to figure out how to use this thing?” I said looking at one of the smaller GPS systems.

“She’ll be fine, and if she doesn’t like it we’ll just take it back.” He said shrugging his shoulders.

We returned home to find my mom’s car in the garage so I told my brother to stall her while I went down stairs and put her gifts in a gift bag and stuff.

“Faith’s downstairs wrapping your presents!” He yelled as soon as we walked into the house. I glared at him in anger and disbelief with a little bit of a “why-do-you-have-to-be-such-an-asshole” look as I trudged downstairs.

Part of the reason I wanted this to be a surprise is because Justin has a very poor track record of participating in family moments and I wanted to be sure he participated in my mom’s birthday. What I mean by that is, he usually forgets about us on holidays when people are usually spending time with their family members or celebrating things. He comes home for Thanksgiving and Christmas but he does so reluctantly and makes it seem like we’re the worst family to spend time with. He’s been like this since he was a teenager (he’s two years older than me so he’s in his mid twenties now and it’s getting pretty damn old) and it really takes a toll on our mother and family experiences. For example, this Mother’s Day my brother was in Virginia going through cultural training for his deployment and he accidentally left his phone charger at home so he “couldn’t call any of us” due to lack of battery. I found out through one of his friends, though, that he had called her (his friend) three times. He didn’t call my mom on Mother’s Day, though. Maybe I’m being overly sensitive but when I found this out it really broke my heart. I decided not to tell my mom because she would be devastated to know he’d call his friends rather than wish her a Happy Mother’s Day. I tried to bring it up with him but it spiraled into a fight about how all I do is make him feel bad. I think he just doesn’t like being called out on his shit because the truth of the matter is that I point out when he’s being a selfish asshole and that would make anyone feel bad. The conversation went something like this.

“Were you able to call mom on Mother’s Day?”

“Nope. My phone was dead.”

“Your phone was dead but you were able to call Shannon twice before and once after Mother’s Day? That’s nice.”

“They were only like three-minute conversations.”

“I bet mom would have liked one of those on Mother’s Day.”

“Shut up, Faith, what do you want me to say? I’m a terrible son I guess because I’m going away to war and trying to do what’s right.”

“You don’t get to guilt me for a choice you made. If it were up to me you wouldn’t be going to war so don’t try and use that crap on me. And going away to war has absolutely NOTHING to do with the fact that you would rather call your friends over your own mother on MOTHER’S DAY.” At that point I had to leave the room and we didn’t talk for the rest of the day.

Anyway, I brushed off the fact that he ruined the surprise gifts and proudly gave them to my mom. She was nervous but excited about the GPS and when it came time to use it my brother ended up storming out of the room and shutting himself up in the basement for the rest of the night complaining to his friends about how horrible we all were while my dad and I tried to convince her to get in the car and try it out. Justin was pissed and honestly I don’t know why he got so angry so quickly over nothing.
To make a long story short, my mom likes her new GPS, it just took me about three hours and a saint’s amount of patience to teach her how to use it and my brother is still acting like a child. He’s leaving for combat training in a few days and that will most likely be the last time I see him until he comes back from Afghanistan so hopefully he stops being such a jerk about everything long enough to say good-bye to the three of us.

I’m sorry it sounds like all I’ve been doing has been ranting and complaining about being home but I was able to get a lot more sleep the past few days (no paper shredding! Yay!) so I think I’m out of the complaining funk for now.