One of the interesting things I've noticed on reflection is that me and my two brothers all spectacularly failed at living up to patriarcal ideals and fucked ourselves over, but all in different ways. My older brother and me grew up with a single mum who is a beautiful person full of compassion. Our father was largely abscent and we saw him one weekend per month, which he demanded as a way to control my mother. We weren't outright mistreated there, but he didn't really care for us. My younger brother is my fathers third child and 7 years younger than me. He was raised by his mother and my father until they split when he was in his teens. The below is mostly a reflection on the nature of broken spirit.

My older brother was first out, he was relentlessly bullied and essentially shut himself off from the outside world and retreated into the world fiction. He has only recently started to make friends in his mid 30s.

I was second, determined to be "normal" as to not put burden on my mother who I saw get affected by the way my brother was feeling. So I hid all my issues and put up a front of the well adjusted male. I too was bullied but as my football coaches told me, I could take it and it was good that the other kids had someone they could "mess with" in order to affirm their own masculinity. I would keep putting myself into situations where I was uncomfortable in order so that I would seem outwardly normal. I got very good at numbing my emotions and hiding my feelings to the point where it has made me question if I'm even human truly human anymore at several points. Had a lot of self loathing though. Still do. But I was very good at masking it until I started trying to figure it out in my late 20s. Mum was very surprised to hear that I was depressed, so mission achieved I guess.

My younger brother essentially had me as his role model up until I left for university as he was entering his teens and we lost contact. At that point he rapidly got caught up in being a drug mule and other petty crime in order to prove his masculinity with his peers. I still have a fairly patchy relationship with him as he is hard to get a hold of as he is on the shit list of a lot of gangs and thus keeps going off grid and "losing his phone". When I do talk to him he is idolising my father as some kind of saint, possibly because he died before shit really started to go down for him. Makes it feel extra messed up when one of my fathers deathbed confessions was that he was at least happy that he didn't "mess it up" with me and my older brother. I don't think I have ever hated a person with more passion than I did the shriveled cancerous husk of my father at that moment. It is tough to talk with a man that is almost 30 who is crying and regressing to childhood since I am his last link to the days where he used to be happy. He is outwardly the one out of us who lives up to the patriarchal ideal and I know he has done some pretty heinous shit. But he is still essentially the child I left behind on the inside, I can't stop feeling like I failed him.

I'll end it there to keep it brief, but the book has certainly gotten my noggin working through some stuff. Will have some more detailed thoughts once we get the more specific chapters.