I Blocked My Little Brother
And I feel like I failed him
I am the oldest of eight. I have one younger sister and six younger brothers. Growing up, I babysat my brothers a lot and came to see myself as almost a parental figure to them. I still feel protective of them. This makes it very difficult when they grow up to be assholes.
One of my brothers — I’ll call him M — has been going down a rabbit hole of hatred and bigotry for several years now: misogyny, homophobia, racism, transphobia.
It all came to a head today when I called him out for a transphobic comment he made on Facebook. No matter what I said, he doubled and tripled down on his bigotry. And I realized that I had been nurturing a tiny flame of hope inside me that he would eventually see the error of his ways. But that’s not going to happen.
I helped raise my little brothers. So I can’t help wondering what I did wrong. How did he get like this? I know I can’t change him now, but was there something I could have — should have — done years ago to prevent this?
He says he’s “taken the red pill”, but he’s really dug himself so deep into the hole that he can’t see. I feel like I’ve failed since I can’t save him. But only he can save himself now.
So I blocked him.