Forever Tainted

From the moment we wake till the time we go to bed it seems Lars and I are on the move, doing something. All of it seems split between working our day jobs and working on the suite. It equates to two very, VERY exhausted people by the end of the day.

After another trip to Home Depot today, my father calculated his total spending on the renovations so far to be around 6 thousand dollars. Hopefully, we won’t spend more than a few thousand more, max. It seems like a ridiculous amount to spend on the basement suite and today, when we picked out a sleek granite counter-top for the bathroom, I didn’t have to wonder why. I feel guilty for it, even though he insisted, not caring about the price.

I’m lucky I come from a very generous family. For the most part, we help each other out when we can. Together, we put money towards household bills, like mortgage payments, food, electricity, etc and together we share most of the household work. Though this doesn’t really apply to my brother, however I’ll get to that in a minute. I imagine this is a slightly strange environment for Lars to move into, though he fits in well and his actions show he agrees it is a healthy way of living.

It seems the Western culture is pretty much the only one where families don’t grow to be conditioned to work as single unit, but instead live under a firm belief system that as the children near adulthood they must move out and fend for their own, and senior citizens often go to care homes before their offspring will take them in. I’m not certain there’s any real benefit to this tradition and personally, perhaps after so long in the Middle East, I can see many flaws in it… though we’ll save that conversation for another day as it’s not really what’s on my mind

On my mind today is the length of the days, how much work there is to be done, and how hard everyone is working, excepting my teen-like adult brother, who instead just sits at his computer all day and night playing games, works the occasional single day job at Labourers Unlimited, drinks obsessively, keeps a filthy bedroom, has no respect for noise levels in the middle of the night while fighting with his long distance girlfriend over the phone or simply getting over-excited over his game-speak, while contributing less than the least possible expected to the work, nor the finances of the household. None of us know what to do with or about him anymore.

We try to bring these things to his attention and he gets defensive, even abusive. He won’t grow up. He won’t learn to fend for himself but instead is consistently looking for the next free ride to cling on to. If it weren’t us, it’d be his sister or his biological father. He can’t keep a job longer than a few months and has little to no self-respect, let alone respect for anyone else. He doesn’t take part in any of our discussions, as he’s too busy in his room at the computer, on the phone or drinking his beer. He doesn’t help out with the chores other than maybe clean up his own dishes every now and then. He takes no interest in our future as a family, any of our projects, whether they are house renovations or future business proposals.

And none of us have the heart to kick him out and force him to learn through tough love giving him the opportunity to make it or break it, because well… there is a higher chance of him breaking it then making it. And we’d never be able to forgive ourselves should something happen to him. He was my mom’s last child and only son. She always spoiled him rotten, never allowing anyone to chastise him and is perhaps solely responsible for the complete ‘fail’ he is today.

I know if he were to read this he would object, perhaps with a lot of anger and aggression, ’I paid this much here, and that much there. I clean the dishes. I had this reason or that reason to quit my job or was unfairly dismissed/laid-off. You’re a fucking bitch!’ And a big part of me thinks, maybe he should read this. Maybe it’d force some reality into him about what he is, how much of a burden he really is on us by simply refusing to be any part of this family unit while expecting to have electricity, internet, a roof over his head, a hot shower, and more while offering little to nothing but disrespect through late night screaming matches on the phone to disregarding simple requests like, “don’t answer calls if you don’t recognise the phone number,” in return. And perhaps it’d force him to see who he really is and how much better he should be able to make of himself but chooses not to, because he never learned the life skills one needs to make it. The guy wants to be a father one day and I shudder at the idea… How can he teach any life skills when he hasn’t bothered to learn them himself?

What would he do, where would he go, if there was no one left to depend on? Mom was proof; our safety nets aren’t there forever. We have to learn to take care of ourselves. And what are we to do to help him without abandoning him or enabling him anymore?