A LOT CAN CHANGE IN AN HOUR: PART ONE

This is going to sound super melodramatic, but on the family Zoom call on the Friday of last week I received two pieces of information that allowed me to drop some emotional baggage that I've been holding on to for many years.

The first piece of information I've already shared: My brother Jason got engaged to Amy, his girlfriend of four years. This news is good for me because I know my brother blames me for his last engagement falling through. I know this because he shouted it at me through a haze of catatonia. He's not wrong.

I renamed Jason and Amy after the leads in my favourite romantic comedies

His last fiancée's name was Tamsin. He met her riding the bus to the VIth form college where he was re-taking his A-Levels. We both attended secondary school in our hometown and, unlike me, he'd stayed there for VIth form despite doing a lot worse than he should have sitting his GCSEs there. (He was bright enough but no-one could motivate him. The teachers were frustrated and my parents offered him £100 for each A grade he got, meaning he could have had a grand cash at age 16!) I think he mainly stayed because his friends were there and they meant a lot to him, but also because leaving would mean following in his big brother's footsteps, and he hated being similar to me in any way, even back then. This probably started at primary school when he was one of the most popular kids in the class, whilst his brother, 4 classes older, was one of the losers.

Tamsin and Jason moved into a flat they rented from one of her family members a couple of towns over; it was further from the VIth form college and from our hometown where he worked part-time at a supermarket, but in a lovely rural village and presumably they were getting a good deal. They definitely had their issues - our mum didn't like her or her mother, and I doubt her folks were thrilled she was snacking up with a kid two years her senior that had to repeat a year of school despite being old enough to know better. Eventually they moved into a different flat back in our hometown, I can't remember exactly why but I think it was a falling out on her side of the family.

We saw each other a fair bit; he would let himself in to do laundry and pop in for tea every Sunday after his shift at work. One day, shortly after I had come home from university, I was walking home from the charity shop I was volunteering in and Jason pulled up alongside me and offered me a lift. I knew right away something was up, I'd only been in his car twice before though bought it long before he left home. He'd driven past me countless times before and, when my mum suggested I drive him to a party once because he was a little tipsy after pre-gaming a couple of beers, had loudly declared that he would rather run there backwards than let me drive his car.

NB: It's not like I was a bad driver, I'd passed my test on the first go round with only three minors compared to his fourteen AND I had to pass a giant machine laying tarmac when driving the car up a steep hill, meaning I had to mount the pavement on the wrong side of the road. I didn't want to drive his fucking car anyway!

Carrying on! I clambered into the passenger's seat and he drove us home, a journey that lasted about a minute. He told me Tamsin was pregnant, and I asked him what he was going to do. He said he didn't know. I don't think he was expecting me to have any advice and I didn't have any to give. I'd barely spent any time with her and hardly spoke with him. I'd been in their flat, once, with my parents and saw him on Sundays when Mum fed him, but I didn't know enough about them or about life to say anything of value, so I said nothing at all. I remember my very first thought was "I hope I don't have to rent a suit."

 I kept his secret for a few weeks until my parents point blank asked me if she was pregnant. I had just revealed my own secret that I had been eating at me for months, especially after moving home; I wouldn't be graduating from university. My parents were rightly furious and I was already in tears, I didn't have the emotional bandwidth to tell them another direct lie. When Jason eventually told me he blamed me for his break up he saw it as me throwing me under the bus to get out of trouble, and I can see how he would think that, but it really wasn't the case. I was never really "in trouble" in the sense of being prescribed a punishment, my parents just hated me for a while, especially my Mum, and never fully trusted me again. I can't blame them.

I know my parents spoke to Jason, and presumably Tamsin (I guess?), about the pregnancy and I don't know if they were in favour of her getting an abortion (though my Dad did say they were "too young to be grandparents" when I spilt the beans. It literally occurred to me as I wrote this that he was dead wrong - if you have two sons in their twenties then guess what, dickhead, you are definitely old enough to be a granddad! I should have started this thing years ago!). She did regardless. My brother proposed to her on Christmas Eve of that year, hiding a ring in an advent calendar. They broke up a handful weeks later, she'd been cheating on him for a couple of months.

Jason moved back home, and it fucking suuuucked. I barely saw him, and he would talk to me as little as possible. I'm a big comedy fan, but I learnt to stop laughing because it would make him angry. He argued with my Mum constantly. I don't remember exactly when it started, but he would go out for a few hours each Saturday to a mate's, a pub and the one nightclub out on the industrial estate on the other side of town. He would come home at 3am, every Sunday morning, incoherent. He would always, without fail, hammer on the door to be let in. He usually had his keys, but never had the wherewithal to reach in his pocket and use them. You'd have to convince him people weren't after him. He'd get some water from the kitchen and then crash out on his bed upstairs. It was always  my mother or me letting him in, and he'd never remember it the next day. He would always work Sundays 12-8 at the supermarket - his one fixed shift on his zero hour contract. Mum would bring him breakfast in bed - something she only did for him, and only on those days. I don't know why she and Dad weren't trying to stop him, it was ridiculous. He'd never remember any of it. Our front door had dents where he'd be kicking it.

I was working as assistant manager at a charity shop that was 2 hours away on the bus. I had to take two buses each way and was constantly worried about being late. If the first bus was late on my way home and I missed the second then I couldn't get home until midnight. The manager quit at Halloween so I was running the show until January. I initially had a lad from another shop coming to help me out a couple of days a week and cover my day off, but I found he was running a penny-ante scam with the shop's raffle tickets and ringing up false returns. The charity didn't have a lot more help to offer, obviously keeping staff costs as low as possible, and volunteer hours always took a dip as Christmas approached and people had other commitments.

I came home from work on Christmas Eve having worked eight straight days, the shop staying open on Sundays to snag any Christmas shoppers. My brother went out drinking and I'm sure I had a few drinks myself, probably vodka, definitely alone in my room, before settling down early, glad not to set my alarm for once. My mum woke me up just after 3, my brother had of course come home and woken her up and was sporting an open wound on his forehead about the size of a five pence piece. To this day none of us know how it happened. I had been a volunteer with St Johns Ambulance for about a year and a half at that point. so my Mum wanted me to patch him up the best I could with what we had to hand. In the morning my Dad took him to A & E to get three stitches. He lay on the couch until lunch, we swapped presents after and he disappeared in his room just after dinner. It was bleak as fuck.

My parents went away on a cruise in March; it was the first time we had the house to ourselves since he'd returned home. I stayed up until 3 that Saturday, knowing I'd only be woken up anyway. I was more right than I realised - he came home still to drunk to remember his key but different than usual. He wasn't compos mentis - every time you spoke to him he would pause and concentrate before replying, like he had to parse each word before formulating a response. At first he thought I was watching gay porn on the TV in the living room - I'd been watching Dude, Where's My Car? and paused it during the scene where they're changing and discover they had tattoos (Dude, what does mine say?/Sweet, what does mine say?). Once that was cleared up he told me that I'd put a strain on his relationship, that I betrayed him to cover my own skin, that I was fat, a loser, a disappointment. That I always had a bad back, that I had no friends, that I had never had a car or a girlfriend, that I'd ruined my future, that I'd be better off if I were dead. I'm sure he was hoping to start a physical fight, he lunged forwards a couple of times like he was trying to make me flinch. At one point he punched the wall hard enough to put a little dent in it. I knew that if there was a fight one of us would need an ambulance; he works out a fair bit and was seeing everything through a haze of rage and alcohol, and I'm assuming drugs. I'm no fighter, but knew if we started he'd keep coming until he fucked me up or I put him down. I sat on the couch and kept my distance, goading him to lay it all out. I could take it. It was nothing I didn't already know. It took about half an hour. I felt dead inside.

The next morning he must have remembered something because he said "he was sorry if he had a go at me." This was the only time he ever apologised to me for any of his drunken antics. The closest I got after that was about two and a half years later, when he was living in London with Amy and her brother. My Dad told me that Jason told my parents the brother went out drinking without them, so he could relate to how annoying it was to have to deal with that when you're sober. Fucking cry me a river, douchebag.

That argument took place in March 2014. This carried on for a couple more years, never as bad as that but still pretty bad. One night he called my Dad to say he didn't know the way home. He ended up spending the night on a couch in the lobby of a residential home, leaving in the morning before anyone discovered him. Another time my parents were away and I woke up smelling what I thought was burnt toast. I was surprised Jason was up earlier than me. Turns out he'd put some frozen food in the oven after I let him in the previous night and then went to bed. Whatever it had been now resembled charcoal.

Things did get worse in the May of 2016. My mother had stopped going to get him unless he pounded for ages, assuming  I'd do it instead. I had taken to staying up and waiting for him and would usually have binge drink all night up to then myself, though I never got blackout drunk or unable to use a key. One Saturday was different though; I was about to take a trip to Italy for work, highlights of which are mentioned in yesterday's blog. (It's a lot more light-hearted!) I had worked all day to ensure there was no dry-cleaning in the store waiting to be done, so they would only have to worry about cleaning whatever they came in during my absence. (Though we'd both received training for the dry-cleaning equipment I worked the till and cleaned and pressed anything that customers brought in, and a couple of ladies took care of anything that couldn't be dry-cleaned (duvets, wedding dresses, some curtains) and all the contracts we had with hotels and restaurants.) I live in a pretty rural location so I would have to get up at 6 to get a bus to the nearest city, where I'd take a coach to London and a tube ride to the hotel I was meeting my travel buddy Chris for the first time. I came home and packed and turned in relatively early, and my mum asked Jason not to overdo it this one time.

Well, three o'clock rolled around and sure enough, I was woken by the sound of Jason kicking on the door and shouting. I gave it a minute and when I couldn't here my Mum I resigned myself to my fate and went downstairs to let him in. I remember I didn't raise my voice, but tried to guilt him. "You couldn't give me one night. I have to get up in three hours to get to London, then I'm spending four days with a stranger in a country where I don't speak the language. This is my first time away in over two years and you couldn't give me one night. Why do you feel you need to do this every weekend?"

He ignored me and headed into the kitchen. I was making my way upstairs when he came at me from behind, putting me in a headlock and shouting incoherently. My parents came out the room and he bolted out the door and drove off in his car. I couldn't believe he'd unlocked it and got the ignition going. My parents got in their car and tried to find him, I kept calling his mobile. I left a bunch of messages threatening to call the police if he didn't call back within five minutes. It was terrifying and I didn't know what else I could do. I didn't want to have him arrested for drunk driving, but I knew I'd never forgive myself if he died, or killed someone else. I was living with the guilt of not speaking up and letting someone else get hurt over a decade earlier, and I'll share that in the second part of this story.

Luckily I got a call back before the five minutes had run out. I asked where he was and couldn't get any sense, only saying stuff like "You know where I am" and "Don't pretend you can't see me." He'd abandoned the car in the middle of the road just off the roundabout where you turned in to our housing development, with the door open. You could just see it from my parent's bedroom window, so maybe that's what he meant? I don't know. It was two streets away.

Jason never apologised and I never felt safe in that house again, moving out a couple of months later into the first decent flat I could afford. I was paying my parents £75 a week in rent and buying and cooking all my own food anyway. My own flat would only cost £15 extra plus bills, and I was being paid a good deal more than minimum wage and was free to work whatever overtime I wanted on top of my guaranteed 35 hours. My brother never paid them a fucking penny. I told my parents not to tell Jason exactly where I was living, scared he'd get drunk and come kicking on my door. The only thing that had changed when I got back from Florence was that Jason had to hand over his car key before going out drinking so Mum could hide it. The first night in my flat I watched Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping for the first time, standing in the kitchen and watching it on my laptop because I didn't have a desk or a chair. It's an insanely funny movie, and I realised I was free to laugh out loud as much as I wanted. The relief from doing so was better than cumming.

Jason and Amy started dating at the start of the new year. My parents told me that now when he came home drunk he would keep trying to call her over and over until my Mum would come in and tell him she was sleeping. They met her in April, on his birthday. I was stopping by once a week for a chat, and my Mum told me he didn't want me there. She may as well have punched me in the gut, I couldn't believe he suggested it or she was enforcing it. I died a bit inside, telling my parents I was OK but deciding on the spot to keep the presents I had bought him, a hamper full of different Reeses products (he loves peanut butter!) and a bottle of Wray & Nephews Overproof rum (67% ABV, because his drinking didn't bother me any more. I mailed him an  Amazon voucher and a card. Fuck it.

I finally met Amy at Christmas that year, eight months later. That Christmas was miserable. There had been a fire where I was working and I was doing all the pressing and cleaning twice a week, an hour away, in the showroom of the company we got all our equipment from. Those were my only guaranteed hours I was working so I was pretty much broke. I bought a couple of DVDs for my parents and Christmas cards for them and my brother. I spent the afternoon with my parents and we waited for my Jason to show up with Amy, her mum and her brother. We played a few quiz games (her mother was very loud and took it a little too seriously; my parents don't like her much!) and I took my brother aside and explained that I couldn't afford to get them a present but I had theatre tickets to two different shows they were welcome to, The Comedy About A Bank Robbery and a stage adaptation of The Twilight Zone. I had been planning a trip to London in the new year but couldn't afford the coach fare or a room for two nights. My brother wasn't interested. I suggested he leave them in the break room of his work so at least they wouldn't go to waste (the tickets had set me back £150 and he and Amy had moved in to her brother's place in London a couple of months ago) but he refused to take her. I went back to my cold flat to spend my last Christmas pre-homelessness and walking unassisted in my freezing flat, drinking vodka and listening to podcasts on my MP3 player as my laptop was broken and I couldn't afford a new one. My mum later told me that they were offended that I'd written a card to him and not to them both. It had never even occurred to me to write in the name of this girl I'd never met.

That was Christmas 2016. I saw Jason again on my birthday in August 2018. I think me being homeless and needing a frame was enough for him to finally get over the damage I had done, and overcoming difficulties with her family had brought them together. I think moving away from whatever crowd he was partying with and taking on some responsibility outside of work had matured him a lot.

We've stayed in regular contact over the last year but finding out about his new engagement has allowed me to let go of the baggage I've been carrying for eight years now. If I'm to blame for his last relationship ending then I must also take credit for setting him up for this new one, right? That's how I'm looking at it anyway. He actually called to me to thank me for an engagement present I sent them whilst I was writing about his drink-driving escapade. I told him I was genuinely glad they liked it, and that I saw the engagement as a way of drawing a line under his old engagement and maybe become a bit closer. He sounded like he wanted to, but who knows? I'm just happy I can let myself off the hook.

The funny thing was, later on that same Zoom call I learned another piece of news that let me forgive myself for my part in a serious crime that I've been feeling some responsibility for. I promise I'll share that information soon, as well as the story of the most evil person I've ever met in person. I've been talking long enough.

Oh, one last thing, because I know at least one of you is very curious about the gift I got for Jason and Amy (I won't say who but I'm sure she's sitting on the edge of her seat reading this, and not just because her husband's given her bottom a well=earned spanking!) and you deserve a bit of light-heartedness for reading whatever that was. I got him this card:

 

To Jason, Congratulations on your engagement, Tankerton

and I got her this one:

To Amy, Commiserations on your engagement, Tankerton

and I put them in a box with a book that I put in one of those fancy bags Amazon uses instead of gift wrap. The book is an activity book for best friends or couples to fill out together, full of stuff like "We have these nicknames," "A moment we wish we had a photo of is," and "If we had a theme tune it would go like this." I knew they'd love it, and I wrote a sincere and thoughtful message in the front. I'm also sending this personalised candle and match set:

Also not their real names... or are they?! (No.)

My mum suggested I got some mugs with "One Lucky Mr Latch" and "Soon To Be Mrs Latch" but I wouldn't want to presume she'd take his name (Mum got the mugs for them, saying they're "very traditional!) and this is much more in line with my sensibilities. I'm really glad they liked the cards and the book, I was a little nervous after sending them but I've made a few out of character decisions since that fateful Zoom call, including starting this blog, refusing to eat the breakfast they made for me for several days in a row because no-one from the kitchen would come and discuss advice given to me by a dietician, and getting in way over my head with a feisty Canadian deviant. One final bit of mischief; on the order form for the candle I included the following special instructions:

Check me out, pulling on the old heartstrings!

As you may have guessed, they have no particular interest in the sci-fi genre, I'm hoping it'll cause a little bit of confusion and whimsy. If asked point blank if I gave any instructions I'll say I asked them to draw some hearts and flowers on there and say someone must have got carried away. I'll let you know if they helped me out, but I know if I worked packing boxes all day and someone gave me an excuse to spend five minutes doodling a bunch of UFOs, Bigfoots and Draculas then that's exactly what I'd do. Maybe even a Loch Ness Monster! 

Let me know in the comments what you'd do and if you think this was a good idea or a bad one. Second half coming soon!

Peace! ✌