A week or so ago, I read an article that was written about a study of only children. It claimed that only children are not any more messed up than children who have siblings and even went on to state that children who have siblings sometimes grow up to be overly competitive and insecure and even develop anger issues.

I can confirm this as fact.

My brother is the biggest prick I've ever met. He wants you to give him stuff and take care of him and he's fully convinced that he's smart and a hard worker. He's neither. But if you ask him for 5 minutes of his time, he's ready to rip your head off. You're probably wondering, though, why I don't just worry about myself right about now. I'm told to ignore everyone else rather often but see, when my brother effs up, I'm the one who has to clean up after him. I'm smarter than him and my Mom and all my Dad has on me is life experience so when it comes to fixing computers or doing homework or figuring stuff out, most of the time I'm called upon so just ignoring him usually is not an option.

He has been gaming for 14 hours a day, every day, for almost 3 months. My Mom keeps coming up with every excuse she can think of for why he can't get a job yet or why he won't be able to get one but oh no, no, it's not his fault! Being uneducated and stupid and unable to communicate has nothing to do with it! He's a great son!

Mom blames Dad. Dad blames Mom. What parents!

The truth is, they are both at fault. Mom babies him and treats him like Jesus Christ thereby making herself the biggest hypocrite in the family, hands down. She makes fun of my great uncle for not doing anything but defends my brother being exactly like him and it makes me sick.

Dad, on the other hand, has the power to shut them both up but won't do it. It's his credit card, his $15 that pays for this brat's account every month. It's pretty simple – cancel it.

Well finally, the dam has broken and I've made some progress.

Tonight was my first night raiding ICC. It's a pretty big deal for some people, they go totally nuts. Go to YouTube and type in "World of warcraft vent rage" and you'll get the picture.

Yeah, total psychos.

I have anxiety problems. I obsess over stuff and my thoughts tend to circle until I've made myself sick or even cry at times. It's irrational but that's sort of what an anxiety disorder is…

My brother has raided ICC dozens of times so I asked him to please, please be with me when I go just in case I do something terribly stupid. But this was an inconvenience for him. He was watching Wild Hogs on tv for the 15th time this year, he couldn't be bothered.

Mom didn't want to watch Wild Hogs, she said he's seen it a million times and we own the DVD and she wanted to watch something else. So he began arguing with her…

"You always watch the same things over and over, Mom!"
"So what? You play the same stupid game every day."
"No, I don't, I have loads of games, just go look in my room!"

This is where I slipped in…

"Actually, you have been playing the same two games for a while now."
"What games?"
"WoW and Fallout 3."

Note that a silence followed this statement because it was correct.

Yes, my Mom watches the same shit every day. Yes, I think she needs a new hobby. But I leave her alone. I watch my own tv because I don't feel like arguing with her and she's practically tethered to her damn tv anymore. But my brother will argue and argue and argue like the cocky son of a bitch that he is because he is so much smarter than any dumb female.

And yet I'm the mouthy one. I have the attitude and I'm apparently a mentally ill bitch.

Eventually, I just said fine. Don't help me but I want my iPod back for good this time, you can buy your own. So my brother, Donald Trump, responded, "I don't care, I'll buy my own." WITHOUT A JOB!!!!! Bwahaha!

The whole situation got even worse from there. We wound up calling each other names with him screaming "B!TCH" and "WH0RE" at the top of his lungs at me. I walked off downstairs and promptly removed my iPod from his account so he no longer has an Authenticator protecting his account from theft. I briefly thought about restricting his game time or even going so far as to cancel his account but I left it be.

But then things got even more interesting. My brother and my Mom got in a fight. Mom told him that he can't walk around acting like "the cock of the walk" when he isn't independent and asks people for stuff. It was a backhanded statement though – she equated it to basically being a slave to someone. Neither she nor my brother are nearly intelligent enough to understand that sentient, higher beings like we humans – or at least that's what we claim to be – usually help one another out. Not because we feel indebted and irritable but because you, oh, I don't know…care?

Anyways, he ended up punching the counter repeatedly, screaming at the top of his lungs, and generally being very violent. Mom got so pissed off that she opened up the phone book and actually wrote down references for my brother and told him, "There, now you can apply for a job, you need to get a job." I had told him 3 times how to get references but he kept blaming Dad saying, "I asked him for references but he wouldn't give me any, he was too busy!" But my Dad has always given me the same two or three names and all he needed to do was look them up in the phone book! He just didn't care enough to do it!

But it didn't stop there – I called Dad. I said, "This gaming thing is getting out of hand. He plays 14 hours a day, clear until 4:00 in the morning-" This is where my brother began mouthing off in the background… "Hear him? He's back there yelling, he's developed a crappy attitude, he plays for 14 hours a day, he won't apply for a job, he blames you for not having any references, and he still hasn't fixed that computer he's using. He used your credit card to renew the anti-virus software on it after I pushed for it but he never finished putting it on. I think we should either cancel the game entirely or restrict how many hours he can be on it by using the parental controls on the game."

Dad agreed and told me that it was between my Mom and I to take care of it and that he was aware that his gaming habits were a problem. I decided to cut Mom out entirely because her opinion is basically OMG MY SON IS THE BEST SON EVER AND HE'S PERFECT JUST THE WAY HE IS.

My brother is now restricted to gaming only 5 hours a day. After 5 hours, he will be removed from the game. If my brother wants an Authenticator to protect his account, he'll have to go through my Dad and now that Dad is filled in on the situation and I've decided to act – and he's standing right behind me the whole way – that's unlikely to happen. So if he gets hacked and loses his stuff, that's fine. He said that he can afford his own so he can go buy it. Too bad he doesn't have a high enough income for the bank to give him a credit card. *tear*

What still bugs me though is that my Mom and brother write me off as "crazy". This is where the only child versus child with siblings thing comes in – this has been building for years and years and years. I was always, always wrote off as the bad kid. My brother was always babied and protected. Not one year went by without him causing problems in school. He nearly flunked literaly, truly, pathetically every single grade from Kindergarten to his senior year and actually did flunk First Grade although my Mom maintains that he passed and was merely held back which I very much doubt.

It was because he was immature. Then his teacher was bullying him (which was a lie, I had her 3 years prior and she was stern, not a bully). Then kids were bullying him. And he was sick every week, so sick that he had to stay home and play video games. Then kids were bullying him again and they kept bullying him. Blah, blah, blah, blah. It was always something, every year, for 14 years.

But that's okay! He's a good kid! Even though he mouths off to Mom like she's some moron and he's so much smarter, even though he's out of shape, even though he has no job, even though he failed to ever get anywhere near a 3.0 GPA the entire time he was in school, even though his only hobby is playing video games, even though he doesn't give a damn about anyone but himself, and even though he hates people and is anti-social.

This Get out of Responsibility Free card that he was born with has created a great deal of animosity in me. I always feel like I am being treated unfairly and I get sick of people telling me, "Well, that's because your parents believe in you!" No. No, it is not. It's because the males in my family have always gotten away with being bums. My Dad's cousin popped out a kid and doesn't want him. The kid is now about 15 or so and spends most of his time being passed around and being picked up by the cops. My great uncle graduated from high school and, as it's been put around here, "went straight into retirement." My brother is on the same path and my older half brother got to choose his own path in life as well. My Mom and I are the only two who have people interfering in our business and setting expectations for us. We don't get excuses, we get blame. But my Mom is so protective of my brother that she has put him up on a pedestal, far, far away, out of the reach of we lowly mortals.

Not only has the constant spoiling caused animosity but so have the constant negative comparisons to my Dad and being told constantly that I'm mean and hateful and a jerk, the bad kid in short. My parents just have no idea what they are doing. None at all. These people have no business raising kids but at least I'm functional. I may have issues but I feel for others (unlike my brother and to some extent, my Mom), I can communicate with other people, work, and manage to pass my classes and love someone other than myself. I don't know how I pulled any of that off. -_-