Wednesday, April 21, 2004
A sad story

My elder brother and I don’t get on and we fight. A lot.

Although smaller than me, he knows all the tricks and is much stronger and is better protected. I have come close to getting him a few times, he always wins the day.

He has always has a bit of a chip on his shoulder. When he was younger one day he had a near-death experience at the hands of a physco-kid. It was pretty shocking and I don’t think that anyone will forget it, but boy, does he remind us of it when he is in trouble. He seems to think that the entire world is against him, but really they just don’t like how he is acting at the moment.

Since that day he has always assumed that he is special – as if no one else had ever experienced pain and bullying.

I don’t know whether is he trying to shake off his ‘victim’ image, or whether he is just self-centred, but now he has turned to bullying me. It all started when our parents made us share a room. Sure - I was unhappy, but eventually I realised I couldn’t have everything my own way.

As he is smaller than me he has always managed to keep our bigger brother onside; to fool into thinking it is all my fault and to keep our parents out of it all. (Secretly, I think my parents are scared of our big brother.)

For a long while, my elder brother has been knicking my stuff. Slowly but surely he has knicked all my best things to use them himself. When he comes looking for stuff to knick, he breaks other stuff just looking for it. Some of my stuff he has had so long, everyone now thinks that it is his ! There are a few things that he has given back, once he realised that they were useless or our parents noticed they were missing.

Sometimes I try to get them back while he is asleep, but when he notices, he just comes back and takes even more.

Recently, as well as the stealing, which continues, he has developed a real nasty streak. (I also think he has been in trouble with the law, but our parents can’t do anything about that either.) He has barricaded me into my bedroom and I have to ask his permission to go even to the kitchen. It is so humiliating. He also punches me - in front of everyone - trying to provoke me into fighting him.

But still no one seems to notice or care. Or, if they do, they won’t do anything about it.

Just last week, to look like the 'good guy' in front of our big brother, he gave me back one of my things that he had taken ages ago. It was pretty ragged now and useless on its own, without the rest of it, which he told our big brother that he was going to keep for good.

So now, all of a sudden, he expects me to be grateful because he is giving me back my stuff that he had stolen. Our big brother thinks that this is great and now he is trying to persuade our parents that I should be thankful too.

He still doesn’t let me out of my room, he has still got most of my stuff, I am hungry, I had to pack in my job and he still treats me like dirt.

When will the UN Security Council actually do something about it?

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