I love my baby brother (he’s 45), and I love my gorgeous nephews!

I had a pleasant but nevertheless stressful afternoon with my dad and his drinking buddies – they are lovely these two we were with, but I do find it hard work following the conversation for three hours as they cross talk a lot and their speech gets less clear. I don’t often drink, which makes it harder to deal with.

ANYWAY, I check that my brother is home and available, and upon hearing that he’d love me to drop round for a cuppa, around I zipped!

The youngest was mewling: the poor thing had caught a cold from his pre-school. He’d only got quiet when he was being cuddled by his dad.

The conversation between us was mostly lovely, until it got to the subjects of immigrants and trans rights – funny how people will have a problem with one so often have a problem with the other.

He was quoting a figure at me of “12,000 illegal immigrants arrived in one day”, which is difficult to dispute on the fly, but felt a little crazy (afterwards I was able to do the maths – I think that’s nearly 4.3 million people in a year, or roughly 1.5 times the population of Wales, which really doesn’t sound plausible).

I have tried to investigate his figures when I got home, in 2024 36,816 people came in small boats. If we take all routes, that’s 43,630 total pr year – still way under what he said. If we take legals as well as illegals I find 685,000 NET per annum – which approx 3.5k (rounded up) – still not enough to justify his figure. That’s a lot of people, but hardly 4.3 million. The only thing I can find is something about US border crossings, which have been quoted on social media at 12,000 per day – perhaps he’s confused the figures … perhaps he’s read a social media post that has confused the figures.

He spouted a whole load of Islamaphobia. I put a counter of how my assumptions about people of faith have repeatedly been challenged – including my own prejudice against Muslims by a wonderful event in Turkey, where the Muslim tour guide arranged a surprise engagement party for my husband and me!

Later his girlfriend then began talking about trans women not being women. I tried to explain that trans rights and feminism have always gone hand in hand because of the challenges they make to the biological determinism of “traditional western gender roles for women”. I’m not sure that I did a good job.

I was absolutely horrified when I heard that my brother gets his information from X and GB News.

I felt physically sick when I heard this. I am less afraid of migrants than I am of men in suits with money.

Is my brother being radicalised by right wing news?

Why is it that some people have lost trust in respected institutions like the BBC and now rely entirely on social media? In that regard, perhaps we aren’t so different: I filter through a left-wing lens, he through a right-wing one. We both believe that we are fact-checking, however the difference is that I still placed some trust in organisations that can be held to account.

Fortunately, whatever his preferred news sources happen to be, he had the good sense to say “let’s put that to one side and focus on just being together and loving the boys,” so I left it at that … but it left me with a very bad feeling – firstly, am I letting something go that I shouldn’t? Secondly whether he is likely to support a political party who persecute any members of the LGBTQ+ community.

I do not feel good right now.

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When I got home, which was much later than usual, my husband wasn’t there. I looked around the house for him (not hard: downstairs is open plan and there are only three rooms upstairs). That was extremely unusual.

I had some tea of bread and pate, and as I finished, I heard the front door open. This was about 8pm.

He’d been to Bournemouth for the day. “Did you have fun?” I asked when he told me where he’d been. “What do you mean?!” he asked. “I mean ‘did you enjoy yourself’” I replied. I suppose I have used the question to mean “have you had sex with anyone?” in the past, so I can forgive his confusion. He’d enjoyed his day out.

I told him a little about the time with my dad and his friends. He understand why that was draining.

Then I’ll told him about my brother, and he understood why that was upsetting for me.

We were talking!

I told him that Cicero had invited me over to stay in a little under a fortnight’s time. I said that initially it had just been a day trip, but he’d pushed and with the things the way we were between us that it felt that it might be a good idea for me to take him up on a weekend stay.

“Just to get away – no jiggy,” I said.

Then I walked the dog.

When I got back home, my husband was visibly upset, so I held him.

Then he said “since our last couples counselling, you haven’t asked how I am and we don’t talk.”

“It doesn’t seem that talking actually helps,” I replied.

Then he started talking. I suppose that it was good that he talked, but I was already burnt out after the day: I wasn’t always patient with him and was occasionally going myself irritated.

I also struggled because I wasn’t prepared for talking (as in I hadn’t got my brain in gear).

He talked about how things that I’ve said hit him (and here he hit his chest with his fist).

He asked again how of have felt if situation had been reversed. I said that it would have hurt because of how I understood the rules of our relationship to work, but because the situation was closer to how I felt anyway that I would have adapted much more easily.

He talked about coersion – doing things to please me. That frustratesme because “no” is an acceptable answer when one is asked to do something that one doesn’t want to do.

He said that I knew that he didn’t want to visit the sauna and that he only did it to please me. I said that had only become clear on the way to the gay sauna. I also said that I hadn’t done anything in the sauna because I wasn’t ready to – and (as my counsellor pointed out) he’d really gone to town. He didn’t have to do anything there.

I recognised his anxiety: it is obvious and always very concerning. I said that mine comes out in migraines; I am getting several a week. “Why don’t you talk to the doctor?” He asked. “Because she and I both know what’s causing them: marital stress!” It’s not that I am not upset about how things between us have turned out, it just manifests differently in me.

“When I’m stressed,” I said, “I turn even more to routine.”

“That’s always been the case,” he said, meaning that I liked my routine.

“I know, but the need for routine becomes even stronger at those times,” my daily routines become a crucial way in which I have survived the terrible things that have happened in our lives. Hospitalisations after his overdoses (more than I can recall). The truth is that unless I’d focused on what I needed to do to just stay sane, that I would have fallen apart – and I have fallen apart at times!

He talked about me not supporting him. I did everything in my power to help him – but I struggle with his emotional and communication needs: I am simply not equipped for them. It takes me ages to work out how I feel about something; admittedly, in the past, I wasn’t willing to put in the effort to work out how I felt, but having understood how my brain works two weeks to answer a question it’s too much for him. I neglected to say that it’s even harder when I’m trying to navigate his feelings as well as my own.

I cannot remember exactly what led us to talk about his abuses towards me – ah! I remember! I said that I’d “stick with him through thick and thin” and he wanted to know what that meant. So I told him. Again. He was angered that they’d come up again. I said that he had asked a question to which they were the true response.

In my own head, sometimes we haven’t been very good towards each other and it just doesn’t serve us to keep banging on about things. “Six of one and half-a-dozen of the other,” as my dad would say: we both have said and done things that hurt the other. Where I let him off is that he was ill: I do not have that explanation – my bad behaviour was done from a dry and “sane” place (ie I was neither drunk nor in some psychotic episode).

I remember saying that sometimes I got his anger because I was the one who was there. It didn’t always belong with me.

We stopped talking at about half-nine. I was beyond tired. Motorway driving leaves my synapses vibrating, time with my dad is draining, and the conversation with my brother had been deeply upsetting. Ending the day with a conversation that I hoped I would never have again had left me fizzing.

I went to bed at ten and read for an hour in an attempt to unwind. It’s work tomorrow and I need to get to sleep.

How the hell do I turn my brain off? At 3am I give in and write as much of this up as I can reconstruct from my scrambled brain.