Angry in Memories.....or lack thereof...

It’s so odd to feel this way. I’m 41 now and for the first time that I remember, I’m angry about what happened to me. It changed tonight. Yesterday I didn’t have any feelings toward my brother about what he did. Thinking about the missing years and what’s been told to me about it is like reading about it in a newspaper. It sounds terrible but I’m not connected to it personally. Tonight though I was talking to my daughter who teased me about being Old. I replied in a serious way ” I know your just being silly but I want you to know I’m working on not having that be such a bad thing. I never thought I’d be this age, I thought I wouldn’t live past 18 so every wrinkle is actually a bag of honor” and she agreed and we continued on in our game we were playing. But in my head things were rolling around. From the moment i realised i had no memories of the black years i have always been able to remember having this overarching feeling that I would not be alive after 18. Not in a suicidal way, or a doomsday rapture thing but just a 100% certainty that one day I would be killed. I remember the feeling of not being able to even imagine being 18 or 19 because I was so sure I wouldn’t live that long. I remember being shocked on my 18th birthday that I was still alive and thinking frequently that year that surely I wouldn’t make it to 19. Even to this day at least a few times each year I think ” wow I can’t believe I’m still alive this long after 18”. I’ve always wondered about this because, remember, for a very long time I had no knowledge whatsoever of what happened in the black years. Once I was told that I was a very depressed, difficult child I began chocking it up to depression. But that has never sat quite right, like it didn’t fit. Then tonight, as we played and it rolled around my brain it clicked. I didn’t think I would live past 18 because I thought my brother would kill me first! Once my older sister and I mended our relationship we started talking about things people wouldn’t tell me before, so now I know more about what happened and I know that my brother wasn’t just abusive to me he was cruel. I’ve been told he would do things just to see me cry or scared, like lock me in very small spaces in the dark until I passed out ( this is from VERY young ages like 2,3,4 etc). My oldest sister told me she remembers a time when I was 3 and he walked past the back of the couch I was apparently sitting on and he grabbed my pony tail and flipped me over the back of the couch just because he could. Even now thinking about these as I wrote them elicits no emotional response. I’m not angry, sad, scared or even horrified about this specific event even though I know I should be. I told my oldest daughter about this event and she gasped and was horrified and I realized I was never even shocked I’m so detached from it. I have known for a while now that he was abusive to me during the black years and that’s why I don’t remember, but I have just kind of thought ” yeah he was abusive, so what” like it has nothing to do with me or I’m so used to abusive behaviour that it’s Like saying humans walk on two feet....tell me something I don’t know. But tonight it’s like my brain said ” he wasn’t JUST abusive, he was cruel, he was dangerous, he literally put you at risk of severe injury or death” and I got angry. He had no right. I can’t even put it into words but I’m finally angry at him. I don’t want to speak to him on the phone, I don’t want to know him. He had no right. That’s the only thing I can think of, I keep hyperfixating on it....HE HAD NO RIGHT! It’s so weird to feel angry, like I know I have a right to be angry but also I feel weird being angry about something that was done, revealed, prosecuted and he served his, literally decades ago. It’s also odd to have an emotional connection of any sort with him or what happened. This is all just....weird. if you’ve got this far…thank you for listening to me ramble!