So this is my brother, Dad and friend.

I hadn't really placed any of these people on a pedestal as much as I had felt sympathy for them, I suppose. I had noticed their poor behaviour but I felt sorry for them because I felt they couldn't help it due to what I perceived to be vulnerabilities that they had. My friend and my brother, for instance, both have very poor emotional control and I didn't think they could help it. My father has very low empathy and poor social ability - we assumed autistic spectrum for a while but I'm not so sure if that's right. So basically, although I felt their behaviour did not reach the standards that mine did, I felt that this was only because I was more capable of reaching those standards. Which, I guess is kinda patronising really, but this was like something that was so unconscious that I really never thought it through.

Anyway, with each one of them their came a point where I found out they had no remorse for the way they had treated me and that's when I stopped talking to them. With my brother, his behaviour worsened. He was criticising me a lot and then during a holiday we took together he spent six days relentlessly - and I mean relentlessly - tearing me apart and telling me that everyone we knew talks about how weird I am behind my back, how no one really considers me to count as a "real person" so no one has to treat me with the same respect they do others etc. Although I reprimanded him a few times, I mostly ignored him because I felt that if I made it clear how he was behaving and the consequences of that behaviour he would become in intolerable pain. This is why I never told anyone how they harmed me - I didn't think they could cope with it!

Eventually, I told him how he was treating me was unacceptable and that he would need to change his behaviour or just not have a sister. He said he felt that I should stay around (because he didn't want the rejection) but that I should take whatever he said because I deserve it and he showed no remorse for the harm he had done.

If I were to explain how my friend and Dad reacted then I'd just be retelling the same story. I just don't talk to these people anymore as much as I can and it was rather revealing that when I stopped having them in my life I really didn't miss them at all.

I've basically learned that I tend to see other people as far, far more vulnerable than they actually are and feel that I ought to take care of them like I would a child, but that I actually have no such responsibility. Other people will not fall apart if they suffer the reasonable consequences of their behaviour, and I'm no one's Mum (yet).