I (23M) grew up in an extremely abusive household. My older brother learned to imitate the violence and lack of remorse my father modeled, while I hid in my room for most of my childhood and slowly deprogrammed until I learned to trust safe people and assert my needs and boundaries. Now that I know what safe people are like, I also know what they absolutely fucking aren't.
I think most people would consider my brother a psychopath. He beat his girlfriend's cat to death, brandished a knife at my father in a screaming fit of rage for insulting him, strangled a bird and displayed its corpse hanging in a tree, fantasizes about mass murdering "liberals," said without hesitation that he would kill me in a "civil war," spoke extensively about his desire to break women down and control them, drives recklessly and amasses unpaid speeding tickets, and, most importantly to this discussion, insists that he will have to "take care of me" and "force me to live with him" after my father dies, because I will supposedly be too incompetent to take care of myself. He also has an extremely fragile ego, and any perceived slight or defiance can trigger a violent rage that he admits causes him to lose control of himself (hence the cat's fate for "misbehaving").
Suffice it to say, I don't want to be kidnapped. None of the money or outside communication I have will do much good if he takes away my access to them. What can I realistically do if he makes me live in the middle of nowhere with no phone, no money, and no transportation? It may be a fate worse than death.
I've been in therapy for half a year and reached the point where I am no longer stuck in a perpetual freeze response and can assert my needs and boundaries. This caused subconscious shifts in my behavior that my narcissistic parents have reacted with hostility towards, calling me "crazy" or "aggressive" for asking to be treated with respect and standing my ground. My mother finally snapped and said she wouldn't do anything for me anymore... I was frightened at first, but my life barely changed once she withdrew her support, because I was doing most things by myself already without realizing. I don't feel so helpless and dependent anymore because now I know my family was bullshitting me the whole time, and now it's even more clear that my brother has predatory intentions when he paints me as incapable of taking care of myself.
I've been working on a flexible plan to make a clean break from this situation. I can run away tomorrow and my brother won't be able to find me. But there's one problem that prevents me from truly disappearing: he has access to my full name, date of birth, and social security number, if not because he knows it, then because my mother will readily tell him.
Getting a job and a place to live can leave a paper trail that links my name and SSN to my new location, allowing me to be found no matter where I live in the U.S., and emigrating out of the country isn't a realistic option. It's also worth noting that my brother travels a lot and regularly takes road trips spanning several states, so it's not like geographical distance will deter him.
Is self-defense going to have to be a part of the solution here? Or making it almost impossible for him to get away with whatever he might pull if I tell him no? I would really prefer a solution where I could just disappear off the map and live my life separately; I would hate for the situation to have to come to this.
It's worth noting that I have not explored legal avenues yet because I don't want my brother to be notified of any actions I take against him, which I fear will escalate the situation.
I expect that no matter what, I will have to make some difficult decisions here. I spend every day in constant anxiety so severe that I am afraid to get food or use the bathroom for fear of encountering my brother. But I have to face reality and accept that hiding in my room isn't going to protect me from him. I think staying and trying to seek stable employment or education under such extreme threat is an unworkable solution.
I plan on visiting my local library soon, where I will be able to make phone calls without anyone in my family hearing.
Any ideas? I think having a trusted contact to stay with might be a decent temporary solution that will help me get my bearings, but I'm going to have to deal with the discoverability issues eventually. I would also need some way to find people I can trust in a limited time window, which seems inherently risky. But does that really compare to the risk of doing nothing? Staying at any shelter that will allow me to stay might also be a temporary solution, but given the finite number of shelters, I run the risk of being discovered eventually.
As u/IWW4 sagely stated, get as far away from them as you can.
When you DO land somewhere else, and start with a new job and a bank account - firstly, find a single branch bank to use.
No large corporate bank.
When you open the account - do NOT - have it accessible online. NEVER make an online account for it. Have that noted ON the account so if your bank is discovered (this is why you use a small bank - it's just harder for family to find..) no one can get into the account. This removes the possibility of it being accessed from afar, even if the person HAS your personal info. You do all your banking in person.
Secondly, pivot to using a secondary account at the bank, and that is what you tie a debit card to and you go in and top it off as you need. If you have credit, lock it down.
Get a new phone number and keep any pictures of yourself in that new location off the net. Consider also witholding where you are from family or friends that brother and parents may also know. Just make the cleanest of breaks and shut or lock down anything in your name that the relatives may try and access.
Good luck.
Thank you! I'll keep this in mind.
Yeah, I'm definitely gonna have to cut off the whole family tree. Even if they weren't in cahoots with my parents and brother, the generational trauma fucked them all up too, so they could certainly hurt more than they help anyway.
I already was a pretty anonymous person on the Internet. I never posted my face once, so at least I have that going for me.
What do you think about transferring from a big bank to a small one? Do I have to do that manually and smuggle a wad of $100 bills to transfer my emergency fund to the new bank? Even if I space out the deposits, I wonder if it would trigger investigations from the bank (to investigate the influx of cash) or IRS (to see if I have an income source I'm not claiming.)
You don't need to worry about the IRS. You're transferring money they already know about from one account to a new account. Do it all at once, through an intermediary they cannot access.
I’ve transferred banks a few times. They will give you a bank cashier’s check that you give to the new bank. They usually ask why so they can try and keep you. Each time I’ve done so was because I was moving states and that bank did not operate where I was. It was hassle free.
To add to what foodandart said, I would use a local credit Union over a local bank. A lot of people forget about credit unions altogether, but a lot of them offer all the same services, and often with better customer service.
As for transferring money from the old institution to the new one, maybe you could use an intermediary PayPal or Venmo account tied to your current number as an intermediary. Just make sure you close it down once the money has cleared to the new institution.
Depending on how much money you are transferring between one institution and another, if it's under $10,000 it won't trigger money laundering checks. But adding to that, trying to circumvent those checks by breaking the amount into multiple transactions (e.g. two transactions of $9,999) is not a good idea. I think they consider that 'structuring' or something.
Nowadays I would also add the requirement to choose a place of residency that does not have Flock in the neighborhood, the amount of danger this thing creates is a completely new aspect to staying under the radar.