I have one younger brother and one older half-brother. Said
half-brother never lived with us until he was about 13 and I was about
10. Half-brother had, at that point, a history of bad behavior
blah blah blah child-of-divorce-cakes. So he was sent by his mother to
live with us.

At first it was neat to have an older brother, someone who knew about
stuff that I didn’t know about. But then, about a year into it,
everything changed.

He sexually abused me for a period of about four months. Stopped
short of actual penetration, thankfully, but what he did do was enough
to mess me up pretty thoroughly. Add to that the whole “if you tell,
I’ll really hurt you” thing.

Up until that point, I’d been a straight-A student. After that,
well…things went awry. My parents were slightly mystified by my
rapid descent in to B and C territory, but never once asked me if
anything was wrong. At age 11, I don’t know if I would have had the
words to tell them, anyway. Half-brother moved out about a year after
all of this happened.

I dealt with it. Once I could understand exactly what had happened to
me, I learned to live with it. I never told anyone. I did, however,
harbor a great deal of rage. Rage at myself, my parents, my
half-brother, the world, you name it: I was pissed off at it. Now,
nearly 20 years on, I’m at peace with myself, more or less.

My grades improved gradually, to the point where I managed to get into
National Honor Society as a senior, and I prepared for college. I
applied and was accepted to the local state college and started work
on my financial aid stuff, only to find that I was ineligible for most
loans due to my family’s income. The loans I could get weren’t
enough, so I had to ask my parents for money.

They gave me $500 and said to me that I’d either have to move out of
the house or start paying rent. I was told that since I “threw away”
my chances at scholarships by not having “good enough” grades, I
didn’t deserve their help.

Okay, fine. I can deal with that, too. However, three years later,
when my younger brother was ready for college, guess who didn’t even
have to apply for loans? Yep. They not only put him through school,
but they let him live at home rent-free the entire time.

I waited until I could be considered an independent student (age 23!),
applied for loans, and started the arduous process of putting my bad
self through college. I’m still not done, and I’m nearly 30.

I found out this morning that now my parents are putting my younger
brother through law school, as well.

So my question is a bit knotty, but here it is: I want to ask them why
they never felt I deserved any kind of help at all. And then I want
to tell them about the abuse I suffered and the things I have had to
do in order to peacefully live with the knowledge of what happened to
me, so that they might better understand why things went haywire the
way they did.

Unfortunately, my father had a stroke some a few years ago and is
still not in the best of health. So I’m afraid that if I tell him
about it, he’ll have another stroke OR go kill my half-brother OR
both.

Should I tell? Should I NOT tell? Should I maybe have told them a
long time ago?

Signed,
Nearly Two Decades of Survival

I have a problem with my mother-in-law (MIL). It’s not a personality conflict, it’s…okay. First, a little background: my husband’s parents have been divorced for a long time. Since that time my MIL has gone from one bad relationship to another. Now, she is “dating” a married man. This really shouldn’t be a problem for me and I don’t really care, except for two or three things.

The first is, and most important is, I have a seven-year-old daughter. I am trying to teach her to make good decisions. My problem is that she adores her grandmother and as of right now, she does not know about him being married, but once she figures it out, I don’t know how to handle it. I don’t know what to tell her. I don’t want to fuck her up. I also don’t know how to bring this up with my MIL. It’s not that I am a coward, I will confront her. It’s just that I don’t know what to say.

The second problem is that I have met his wife. I have seen her on several occasions and I feel, well, icky about it. I feel like I am lying to this woman. A woman that I don’t know anything about. I don’t know much about their relationship or the whys of what he is doing.

The third problem is MIL seems happy, but in the long run how can she be? I don’t want her to get hurt.

So if you have any advice on handling any of this I would really appreciate it.

Thanks,
Trouble with a cheating grandma

I take an improv acting class. I introduced A to my classmate J a few months ago and thought they would get along. She loved him and thought they’d be perfect together. Him? Not so much. We all hung out a few weeks ago and my friend K pulled me in the bathroom and told me he’s not into her, but into me. I had never thought of him that way but started to realize that he’s a great guy…maybe I could date him. I didn’t know how to break the news to A, so I just didn’t tell her. Bad idea because she was harboring hope.

Cut to last Friday after the our improv show; we’re all out getting drinks to celebrate a great show and my acting buddies are encouraging me to ask him out and go for it…blah blah blah drama-cakes. So around 1 AM I kinda got to talking to him and started seeing if he was interested in me. I asked him out and he turned me down (he had his heart broken not too long ago). A overhears this AND FREAKS THE FUCK RIGHT OUT. She storms out of the bar, and I go rushing after her. She tells me I’m not her friend, how could I do this to her, she can’t even look at me, I absolutely disgust her, “get out of this cab” and “I can’t believe you did this” screaming at the top of her lungs ridiculousness et cetera.

And I haven’t talked to her since.

My mom says I don’t have to worry about it, because as soon as she needs someone to listen to her complain she’ll call me. (“She’s a user and a loser.”) I’m feeling guilty. I know I was in the wrong for approaching the guy she was interested in but it’s not like they were dating. I should have told her all those weeks ago that he wasn’t interested. Why all the drama? Does this make me a shitty friend? I should have been more sensitive to her feelings but coulda shoulda woulda.

Any help appreciated,
Shoulda saved the drama for my mama

I love your writing, and I think you’re kick-ass, as does my boyfriend, especially with regards to certain “I’m the funny one” people we know, as you characterized so nicely and precisely in your essay about the Jerry Seinfeld documentary.

My problem is with my roommate/best friend. B’s the sweetest girl you’ll ever meet; never says “boo” to anyone, apologizes (actually, ad nauseum a little) for everything, but all in all, that’s a function of her just being incredibly nice. However, in conjunction with the otherworldly niceness, you get all sorts of fucked-up-edness that pop psychology would tell you stems from her mom dying when she was little and her ensuing crazy home life. But all in all, she is absolutely beloved by everyone we know, because she’s just so damn nice.

B’s boyfriend of more than a year, G, recently broke up with her. I’m good friends with G; he introduced me to my boyfriend and he and my boyfriend are very close friends. Obviously, I’m not as close with him as I am with B, but I like him a lot. So it was difficult to know what to do when B told me that she cheated on G over the summer, and that she thought she was in love with the new boy. At the time, I advised her to break up with G, because they hadn’t really been seeing eye-to-eye lately anyway, and being in love with someone else usually doesn’t bode well for the relationship. However, B didn’t take my advice, and she stayed with G for five more months. He never found out that she cheated on him, but broke up with her because she was emotionally distant and never made time for him. And as much as I love B, I would have dumped her long before if she had treated me the way she treated G. In fact, I told G that he would be well within his rights to break up with her, as did other people, including my boyfriend.

So break up with her he did. And I was expecting that B would be mostly okay; she knew they’d been having problems, plus she was still in regular contact with her summer boy (ahem). However, when B came home that night, she threw up twice, and stopped eating and sleeping for about two and a half weeks. She dropped 10 pounds and even got herself put into the infirmary for dehydration (in conjunction with a stomach virus, but still…). Almost a month after they’ve broken up, she still cries at the drop of a hat.

But this weekend, B’s summer boy is flying cross-country to meet her in New York. But when I said something about how this might make the whole getting-over-G thing a little bit easier, she started to cry. I’ve tried to broach this subject about three times now, and every time, I get 30 seconds into it, and the waterworks kick in.

And Sars? It’s really getting old. I know it sucks to get dumped, but honestly, she deserved it in any number of ways. She treated G — my friend, mind you — like complete ass, ignored him, and cheated on him — more than once (there was a kiss in a club in Paris over Thanksgiving, too). I don’t know how he stuck it out that long.

So the problem is this: Am I allowed to say something, straight out, along the lines of “I really don’t want to hear you cry about G anymore when I bring up the fact that you are going to see your summer boy for a romantic weekend on Friday, because, hey, man, you cheated on him with this guy”? Because I’ll say that, and she’ll cry, and I’ll feel like shit, because she’s so emotionally delicate. Should I not care? Should I just refuse to talk about the situation at all? (However, she does engage me; she’ll ask if I’ve seen him or spoken to him, whether he’s dating, et cetera.) It just pisses me off that because she’s got this “delicate” thing going on (literally, with the puking and the weight loss and the infirmary), she’s allowed to be all despondent over G, while having the summer boy she was “in love with” and cheated on G with at her side (at least temporarily).

Am I within my rights to tell her to can it with the “poor me” thing? Should I ignore her? Continue to be supportive because that’s what friends do, even when they think you’re being a huge immature assclown?

Oh, help.

Signed,
Her Tears Irritate the Ever-Loving Hell Out of Me

I don’t know if you’ll recall a contest winner from the most recent TN contest who won a copy of Garner and was really excited about it, but that was me. Hi! Anyway, that book changed my life. Well, not really, but I’m about to take a big step related to the Garner; I’m feeling a little in over my head and hoping you can offer me some perspective.

I got my undergraduate degree eight years ago now (in a scientific field), went straight into a grad program I wasn’t really suited for, quit before I finished it because I didn’t want a career in that field, started another grad program in another field, then quit because I couldn’t really handle the requirements. The upshot of this CV is that I’m almost 30, but have relatively little actual work experience.

While in college, I began a part-time job (teaching-related) that travelled well when I went off to grad school, and almost a year ago, that part-time gig turned into my first real (read: salary and benefits) job. It’s kind of a sucky job, sadly — while I adore my co-workers and they really appreciate my work (which is gratifying and hard to give up), the job is extremely demanding and stressful, and offers little potential for ever becoming less stressful for me or making me any real money. I’ve been complaining about my job for months and months to my family and friends — how I can’t sleep at night without dreaming about miserable job stuff, how I feel sick from job anxiety all the time, how I’m underpaid, how I have too little free time…the list goes on.

Meanwhile, I’ve thought off and on for years about trying to finding a way to get paid for editing other people’s writing. It’s work I think I’d both enjoy and be good at, based on my lifelong love of reading, my mad grammar skillz, and my almost obsessive need to make any writing I produce or correct for others (which I do sometimes without being asked) accurate, precise, and aesthetically pleasing (if not concise…heh).

What’s stopped me so far from seriously looking for a job involving work of that kind is my strong desire not to freelance combined with my lack of credentials, a portfolio, or enough knowledge of publishing not to require extensive on-the-job training — basically, I’ve felt convinced that while I could probably find a job right now fetching coffee and filing for an editor at a publishing house, no one would hire me full-time to do anything more involved without experience, or pay me more to do the fetch-and-carry stuff than I am already being paid to do my current job, which does have its share of responsibility and moments of satisfaction.

A couple of days ago, I discovered a certificate program in publishing (at a prestigious New York school) that seems like it would surmount all of those (perceived) obstacles to a career change at once, as well as get me out of my current job without leaving me unemployed and eating bon-bons on the couch all day. It’s a six-week, extremely intensive crash course in the publishing industry, designed to both allow students to develop portfolios and help them find jobs in the industry (with a very high placement rate). Sure, it costs an arm and a leg (at least for someone on my salary), but my family has offered to help me out and I may be eligible for some financial aid as well; sure, I’d have to live in another city for six weeks, but while I’d miss my husband, we’d survive just fine (and hell, it’s New York!).

I’m going to go for it. I’ve already told my manager and his manager that I’m applying for this program (I’ve asked them to write the two letters of recommendation required for the application), so whether I’m accepted or not, I’ll likely be leaving my job once I train a replacement, because they’ll need to hire someone before I’m likely to know whether I’m accepted or not in order for me to have time to train someone in my job.

As cool as it all sounds, applying for this program is a big step that might not work out the way I hope it will, and I’m not sure how to handle that uncertainty. I might not even be accepted into the program, and if I’m not, I’ll feel as though I left a sure thing for nothing. I might turn out not to be as good at editing as I think I have the potential to be, and frankly, I don’t feel as though I’m terribly good at anything else, so this feels a little like my last chance for a career (although I know that it isn’t). If this doesn’t work out, I’m afraid I’ll feel deeply foolish around the people who are so excited for me right now (this is a popular decision with my family and friends). I’m worried about all of those things, but I’m going ahead with my application anyway.

So I guess if you’re going to answer this in The Vine, I should ask an actual question or two: First, does it sound to you as though I’m taking a crazy risk in suddenly trying to start a brand-new career, at my age and with so little prior success with post-graduate educational endeavors? If I am, what am I missing? Second, what can I do now — either by way of practical preparation or by adjusting the way I’m looking at My Future — to make this move more likely to work out well for me?

Signed,
Still wish I’d been fast enough on the draw to claim the evening of beer and baseball