▸ Column · Contemporary — Diana Prince, Amazon emissary, operating in Man's World
WONDER WOMAN replies.
Replied to by Wonder Woman, with a rebuttal from Raphael.
The letter
My younger brother has been living in my parents' home for nearly three years, contributing nothing financially while my parents slowly drain their savings to cover his groceries, car, and leisure. I left home young and worked night shifts to earn my nursing credential — I still chip in when I visit, because that's how I was raised. Last year my father had to borrow money from me for a household repair. Two weeks later I noticed my brother had made a significant personal purchase. When I raised the disparity with my mother, she told me I was the capable one and that my brother was "going through something" — though no one will say what. My competence seems to have quietly made me the family's financial fallback while my brother receives indefinite grace. How do I speak plainly with my parents about this without being cast as the one causing harm?
Wonder Woman replies
Friend, I know what it is to be handed a weight and told your strength is the reason it belongs to you. I have heard that argument from generals, from gods, from men who needed something moved and preferred not to move it themselves. Your mother is not the first person to mean it as praise while using it as an excuse.
She is not wrong that you are capable. She is wrong to let that word stand as an exemption from asking the same of anyone else in the house.
Here is the honest thing, and it is not about your brother: it is about your father, who borrowed four hundred dollars from you while that other room filled with new things. That was your father telling you, in the only language he could reach for, that something is genuinely broken at home. Go back to that. Ask him — not about the money, not about your brother — whether he and your mother are actually all right. Not the heat repair. Them. If he is willing to answer that question honestly, the rest surfaces on its own, because there is no version of that conversation that leaves the larger thing unnamed.
Your brother may be going through something real. Mercy belongs to him. But secrecy is not the same as protection, and what your parents are taking from you they never asked permission to take.
You will not escape the villain label by being careful enough. Speak the truth anyway. That is what honor looks like from this side of it.
— Wonder Woman
Raphael weighs in
Yeah, she's right about your dad. But she's being gentle about the rest of it, so I won't be.
Your parents built this system. Your brother didn't install himself in that basement — they decided to keep him there. And every time you chip in at family dinners while they're also borrowing your emergency money, you're helping fund the exact thing you're furious about. That's worth sitting with.
I know what it is to protect someone so hard you stop asking whether they need protecting or just need to be pushed. Your parents learned that move too. It feels like love. It isn't always.
The anger you've got aimed at Derek? It belongs about three feet to the left.
— Raphael
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