I've been meaning to talk about it for a while because it's kind of eating me up, but:

My dad disowned me a couple of weeks ago. I was always happy to tell people I had a good relationship with him. Not perfect, but good.

The problem is my brother. I haven't spoken with my brother for a few years now. I cut him out because he became a white supremacist. He always had some bad tendencies, but they fully came out under Trump in 2016.

I don't want to get too into it, but my brother is a man who stopped being able to bring up The Jews at every family event.

Who would say he only supported for Trump because the alternative was Hillary (even though he had MAGA merch) as a sort of annoying plausible deniability, because he knew I was disgusted with him doing that.

Who owns many, many guns and many pieces of attire with Punisher skulls.

My brother is a man who, in one breath, would talk about how he "just thinks borders exist for a reason, not everybody can get alone", and in the next, warn me against supporting Democrats because they want to make America "like Europe" where "they're being out-bred by the Muslims", as if I can't put two and two together and tell what he thinks should be done about that.

In the end, I'm embarrassed I tolerated him for so long.

Anyways, when Trump doubled down on making transgender discrimination in healthcare legal once more late in his term, that's when I decided I had enough and cut off all contact with my brother and his family. He knew I was queer and I had been married to my transgender wife, but still didn't show any signs of backing down.

In his last communication with me, he had the nerve to talk about me being unreasonable.

Complaining that I was making assumptions about his political opinions without talking to him about them, and how he had nothing but love for me, and simply didn't understand why we couldn't just have a civil discussion about it.

Like there's any civil discussion to be had with someone that could see what was happening to his own sibling and their wife and still go "yes, more of this administration, please."

Gutter trash.

My dad, though, didn't take kindly to this. Over the past few years, every time I go see him, he's been needling me about making up with my brother. About the importance of family. And he kept getting more and more aggressive about it. I told him multiple times what my issues with my brother were about and why this was not just a "matter of opinion", but he never saw it that way. He just sees his two sons not getting along and that bothered him.

Multiple times, my dad tried to make me unwittingly bump into my brother. Inviting both of us over on the same day and not telling me. (He didn't think I would turn around and leave when I saw my brother's car.)

I was always hoping he would just let it go, but now I know that my dad continuing to have a relationship with me was always contingent on the idea that I'd... I don't know. "Grow up" and start breaking bread with my brother again.

So I come over there one day to see him and drop off a car payment, right?

That's a story unto itself. Four years ago, when I told him I was moving out, without my consent, he suddenly paid off the entire remaining amount of my car payment balance for me, making it so I now owed him instead of the bank.

I always suspected this is because he wanted to control me with debt once he couldn't control me by living in his house. I think I was right.

While I'm there, I spend some time with his dog, Sassy. She's getting very old and sick frequently, and had a risky surgery coming up. Sassy's important to my dad because she's kind of the last living memento of my late mother that my dad's still holding on to. I give him his car payment. It's nearly paid off. We chat for a while about other stuff, he gets more annoyed than usual that I'm not talking to my brother, I change the subject...

The very day after, he's urging me to come over and see her again since it's a day before her surgery. I decline, though; I just saw her, after all, and like, it's an hour-long drive and an hour-long drive back home.

I learned that it's because he was trying, once again, to get me to bump into my brother, hoping that bonding over this old dog would suddenly make me okay with my brother being a fucking nazi.

He then texts me a bunch of frankly disturbing and aggressive attempts to shame me into compliance, invoking not just Sassy, but my own late mother, against me to coerce me into making up with my brother, who I *HAVE* to love no matter the politics. He says he loves me after yelling at me with all this.

I tell him I love him too, but he has to start respecting my boundaries on not wanting to talk about my brother with him anymore.