The Other Son by Victor Augello (phonics reader .txt) 📕

hard and has it tough.” I had often wondered if a choice of any other job or occupation in his life had been ripped from him and left him without any other direction other than the one he had? It was as if he reveled in his inability to have a career change and loved to remind everyone what a tough unforgiving career he had. I am quite certain that for a multitude of years my own father did not know what the title of my job was at the time or what I even did because my own brothers’ occupation was so omnipresent. I congratulate him and any other person who remained at a job for more than 20 years. That was neither my forte nor my direction. I stayed in industries for many years but felt free to pursue better opportunities as they came up to enhance my families’ position as best I could, which sometimes worked and at other times didn’t!

Hearing as often as I did about his poor career made me wonder on occasion if life was too easy for me? I suffered through countless white collar shenanigans and non union follies in my career but took them all with the right measure of angst and appreciation. When the time came to move on, I did so. With three children to feed, our family of five struggled for years to make ends meet. A small vacation was enough to get us all excited. I always forged ahead and never stopped thinking about how I could make my life better. Despair rarely took hold of me though I did have some dark moments as we all do at jobs that weren’t a great fit for my strengths and personality.

By the mid 2000’s, things really came to a boiling point when one spring Florida evening my wife suggested we call my brother for an outing on the town. After a week of traveling, which I did a lot of on my job, I suggested to my brother that we meet at a midpoint so it would save me some time from traveling an additional 15-20 minutes to pick him up then head back in the opposite direction for dinner, then head back to drop him off and go home. I was a bit tired and this made all the sense to me. Is there anyone who doesn’t do that for convenience sake or just common sense on occasion when meeting friends or family? This infuriated my brother.

What followed was a rant and rave about how I made him meet me half way and how ridiculous that was and then this verbal tirade continued on with how horribly I treated my parents too by making them do the same! I was stunned. This really came out of left field and didn’t relate at all to the conversation, but he allowed himself the opportunity to rip me apart about my shabby treatment of my parents and how I was causing him the discomfort of meeting half way and not picking him up. As anger flowed all over my once calm, tired body, I became infuriated with him and hung the phone up after cursing him. Later we spoke to clear the air but the topics that came up were not necessarily timely; they were twenty years old and had to do with relationships and events of times gone by. A therapist would have had a field day with it and it was at that time that I realized that what my brother held against me wasn’t just from this reunion move back here but from decades ago and more perceived slights to his gigantic chest of armor.


We tried once again after another year of poor communication to reunite for “Mom’s sake”, which I thought was a poor reason to be brothers again, but on this occasion I had to let go of any hopes of reconciliation because of what was on his mind. With his usual largesse, he said to me he would forgive my wife and me for everything and we could start over. I had to muster all my patience and diplomacy to not get up and scream from the top of my lungs. “Forgive us for what?” What in the world had we done, except to not give him the extraordinary attention he needed as a human being, or to puff up his neediness to be the center of the world, especially with my Mother? All I could do was shake my head; I don’t know if it went up and down or sideways, but I shook it and said, “OK”. It was over in every sense of the word and when I had seen my Mother again I told her that her son wanted to forgive my wife and me for all we did. In no uncertain words to her, I told her what he could do to himself. My Mother, of course, could not understand my thoughts on the matter, as my brother always played to her as the victim, an immature and irresponsible stand to take as a fifty some odd year old man. I had taken responsibility in my part in all of this but it was never enough. I always felt like I was the initiator of any and all the trouble, but that was far from the truth.

There was rarely an occasion when my parents and I got together over the last five years that my brother was NOT the central part of our conversation. It was downright unbearable and the more I asked that this stop, the more it went on. It went so far beyond obsession that my own therapist later on had suggested I write it down and publish it. It astounded him as well. The more we tried, the worse it became until finally all relations with my brother were cut and that drove him to the edge as he could not command the situation anymore because no situation would exist again. His attacks became more verbal and abusive to me when he did see me and he began to do childish things behind my parents back, like make faces and give me the finger, all while I ignored him and laughed it off. It was extraordinarily worrisome to me and very sad to see.

And so the descent into Hell began. The second child versus the first. The inner circle versus the interloper. It didn’t get better and the deep mistrust of his motives for his unhappiness with us and uneasiness especially with my wife eventually would lead to an entire fracturing of our family. My youngest daughter was already chastened for a breach in faith with my brother, which in turn fractured her relationship with my parents. Connected at every turn as always. Through it all was my Mother, the lynchpin to this train that was getting more and more out of control, making excuses for my brother at every turn and chiding my wife more and more for not being friendlier to a guy who was already hostile to her. The question was why? I have no doubt the answer was jealousy. The green monster reared its head and was systematically crushing the other son, the second child.


Therapy, for me, has always been a wonderful thing. It is a meeting of minds between you and a professional that helps forge an understanding of a situation and/ or the dynamics of a relationship that you would possibly not have understood previously and once understood, clarified often to the point of major ah-ha moments. Since my personality profiles have “Communicator” as one of my strengths, this was a perfect fit for me to understand life through a pair of disconnected ears and eyes.

I had sought out therapy several times before in my life. It occurred twice as I was processing through a divorce, both with and without my ex, and then afterwards as a single to try to understand the many unanswered questions that plagued me up to that time in my life. The first two therapists were women who did a fine job but the third was a Vietnam vet, a helicopter pilot, who I developed a great bond with. Man to man, we were able to discern the many insecurities I had in my life, including being a second child and my feelings about my relationships especially with my Mother. I came to a great conclusion then which literally reshaped how I thought of myself and how I viewed my Mother. The conclusion was I was a person who had much to offer, who was a good person with strong character traits and that no matter what happened, there were some things that I could not change, namely other people! I fell in love with myself and in turn, was able to give it freely. The ah-ha moments started flowing freely.

This was an acceptance of my very being that I hadn’t had before. My Mother was her own package, with her own strengths and faults, and I was ME, and that was a good thing. However, my Mother didn’t need to protect me or keep secrets about me since I was out of the circle of trust. That necessity didn’t exist.
This was a mid-forties revelation and it could not have come any sooner and was expanded quite a lot later on when, while I was in the depths of processing through this emotional Florida merry-go-round with my family once again and trying to figure out why so much hostility existed towards us. I sought out a therapist again and it was another revelation that helped me understand the onion-like layers of insecurities and secrets that permeated my family. Intertwined with all of these never ending unfolding dramas which I was more a spectator to rather than a participant to, was a gambling component. I did not know that aside from being a family therapist, my therapist was also a gambling counselor. That was a consistent undercurrent in the relationships of the southern family here and one that was very destructive to that inner circle. It ruled in many ways, their psyche and actions.

Not only was it destructive but it helped insulate them from the rest of the world by cementing secrets. Secrets and lies that came back to me in the way of, “Oh you don’t understand”or“It’s so terrible that I can’t even begin to tell you.” I was blown away by how closed lipped and secretive the inner circle had become and how I had penetrated it enough to see the enormous dysfunctionality of it firsthand. Gambling was a hobby shared between both my parents and my brother and his wife. It drove how they celebrated vacations and how they spent their spare time. At times, it was even to the detriment of my Father’s precarious health, which amazed me entirely. The more I commented on it, the more excuses were given to me.
Therapy opened my eyes to this unbelievable dynamic and helped me understand further that I was just an outside observer looking into an inner circle who was keeping the veil of secrecy up. I was one who was able to view only so much and that in order for the inner circle to stay closed; the secrets had to be maintained. What secrets could be so horrible that I could not be privy to them fully?

Addictions, failed relationships, iron-fisted leadership, money problems, stealing, lies and sexual choices. I thought only these things existed in soap operas, not in my family. But there they were and with each and every revelation, I was more and more amazed. I was dumbfounded that my very intelligent, very together parents had become virtual strangers to me by virtue of keeping secrets. On occasion the only