I had a pretty dramatic, traumatic childhood. It was a lot to handle, and I grew up with two alcoholic, raging lunatics who were broke, but cared about me and my brother as best they could. They stopped drinking when I was seven, but never stopped the verbal abuse. I was always at the ass end of any abuse because I'm three years younger than my brother and have always had to go to school an hour later than him, meaning he got to leave the house first and didn't deal with an of the verbal abuse that happened every morning until I was 11. So 5 years old to 11 years old, I was screamed at, manipulated, and mentally belittled. You can imagine I grew up and matured a fuck-ton faster than most people my age, and blindly threw myself at ways to distract myself. One of those things was instrumental band.
I'm top of my class and section, and was told by my band teacher to take private lessons. Each lesson costs 20 bucks a pop, and while my parents where fine with it, it was a lot of pressure to practice ever day for however long I was expected to, and every Saturday, driving a half hour to a lesson, only to come back and be yelled at by my father that I preformed poorly and nearly crying over it in the car. Every week. A lot of pressure. I was twelve. What started out as something fun that I loved, turned into tears and abuse. I told my parents I didn't want to do it anymore. They forced me. I love my private lessons teacher. She's great. It's just too much. Finally, I just accepted it. Then, one day, my father told me that I was favored and treated better than my brother. I lost it. I screamed that that was NOT true, not the slightest bit, because just because my parents were spending more money on me now, my brother
didn't have to go through all the shit that *I* endured as a child. I told my father that he knew I wanted out of lessons, and if financials were a problem, then let me quit. 60 dollars a month for something I didn't want to do seemed like a pretty good price for the bullshit I endured all of my life. But of course, my family was always on my brother's side.
I do NOT mean to sound entitled in anyway, but my parents sent me to school crying and late everyday for the past six years and my brother had the ability to leave earlier every day and have great days at school with his huge groups of friends, when I haven't had close friends in years because of my trust issues and the fact that everyone knows about my family's abuse and doesn't want to be associated with the girl who weeped in the the bathrroom every year of Elementary.
Am AITA?
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NTA for blowing up. Anyone in your situation would have had enough, and I'm so sorry you had to deal with all of that abuse. That's disgusting and I hate that people feel okay with doing that to anyone, and especially their own kids.
One thing though, while your brother may not have gotten nearly as much of it as you did, he may have also experienced abuse. It sounds like you are a bit bitter about this, and reasonably so, and it may help, at least in one aspect, if you talked to your brother about it. Have you tried doing that?
