Dearest Brother,

There’s a photo of us that I think is the first and last photo that was taken of you and I where you truly loved me. Your toothless 6 year old smile and eyes lightly closed as you lovingly caress my two-week-old self. I’ll send it along with this letter, because it brings be so much heartache that I just don’t want it anymore. It makes me think of what could have been had we been raised in a different family, or if my father truly loved you the way he loved me. That’s why you hate me isn’t it? Because your dad wasn’t in the picture, and my dad was? He made it obvious that he didn’t consider you his son and still does. He always paraded me around as his one and only, and you were just the abandoned kid lying around. You were too young to understand that it wasn’t my fault, and that I didn’t really understand what was going on. But you had to take your anger out on someone, and it couldn’t be a grown.

You’d dragged me, punched me, choked me, and kicked me repeatedly in the stomach all before the age of 10. It was easier to keep me from telling when I was a baby, because you’d hug me, kiss me, and give me an ice pop. You’d assure me that it was my fault. “If you didn’t cry all the time I wouldn’t hit you.”

Unfortunately, as we got older, you got stronger. I will never forget that one time in the first grade when you slapped me so hard and my face swelled up. You gave me an ice pop. I took it and waited for the hugs and kisses and the hour I’d get to spend playing on your Gameboy color as reparations. But instead, you asked me who I hated the most in my class. There was this one boy named Walter who always called me stupid and ugly, so I told you that. You smiled and said, “Perfect. You can get him in big trouble.” And that I did. The next day my mom was calling the school and his parents, making a bigger deal out of this than I thought she would. Walter eventually left the school. An innocent seven year old was collateral to your abuse, and I will never forgive myself for it.

The physical abuse stopped when I hit puberty and started calling you out on your shit. But then that invited verbal abuse. You picked me apart at my most vulnerable point in life and called me ugly and fat. You made fun of my hair, as if I didn’t get enough of that at school. You made sure that I didn’t have any self-confidence whatsoever. Bravo, I didn’t. I went to high school completely unsure of myself.

I guess I developed Stockholm Syndrome because when you went to basic training for the Air Force I cried every day for weeks. But I wouldn’t tell anyone that. Just like I didn’t tell anyone about what you did to me. I always talked about you to my friends, and said amazing things. I frequently made up stories about you saving me from something—some middle school horn dog or a biking accident. But the Air Force fucked you up even more and every time you came back home, you were even more enraged. You’d say the most horrendous things to me concerning my weight and overall appearance. You absolutely loved to pick on the fact that I struggled academically (little did you know some of it was because of you).

By that time, I was old enough to stand up for myself. I’d stop talking to you for months at a time. I even considered myself an only child, completely taking you out of the picture.

But every time you came home, I’d run and jump into your arms.

But every time you came home it’d take you three days to completely turn into a monster.

June 2014 is when things took a turn for the absolute worst. We went to lunch together the day I came back from a music festival. I told you I smoked pot and you told me about your girlfriend. I thought to myself, This is all I want. I could forget about the past if this is what our relationship could be like.

We went home and you freaked. My dog ate your asthma inhaler and you wanted to kill her. I thought this time would be different. I thought that you wouldn’t turn into a fucking monster again, but you did. Suddenly I got so sick of being your puppet and I jumped up and got right in your face and screamed as loud as possible right back at you. You pushed me, I pushed you, you threw me onto the bed and I got up. You cornered me, spitting in my face and I tried to push you away and you raised up your fist and got me in my right eye. You immediately apologized and for some reason I expected you to run downstairs and get me an ice pop. But you didn’t because I wasn’t six anymore, and you weren’t 12. We were 17 and 24. You were six feet tall and 220 lbs of muscle, and you punched me in the eye. I was sick of it, so sick of constantly being subject to this kind of abuse. I got up quietly and looked in the mirror as my face began to swell, the way it did when I was 6. I turned around and promised you I would press charges. You said, “If you weren’t yelling in my face I wouldn’t hit you.”

I had to go to graduation with a bloody eye, I missed out on a job opportunity because I wouldn’t take off my sunglasses during the group interview, I cried every time someone gasped when they looked at my face. Not because I thought I was ugly, but because I knew they were going to ask who did this to me and I didn’t want to say that it was my brother. My brother who I loved so much. My brother who I still love so very much. Who I want to hold me and tell me everything’s going to be OK despite the fact that he’s hurt me the most of anybody my entire life.

Sometimes I want to forget everything you’ve ever done to me and consider you my heroic older brother, but I can’t put myself through that again. I love you, but I hate what you did to me.

This was a love letter,

Your Baby Sister

—Valerie V., 19 Plainfield, NJ