It was painful and deep, it tore open old wounds and brought me back to an awful place. My brother, with whom I have been estranged for most of my life, wanted me in his life, and refused to accept my awful decision to say no.

And it was an awful decision.

My family is like a plane wreck, scattered all over the earth, a trail of debris and wounds and anger and disconnection. At the beginning there was only my sister and me, and now, there is only my sister and me. For all my problems with it, family is fascinating, compelling, insoluble, in some ways inescapable.

It is not, for me, the romantic pablum of the movies. I am not alone in that. For many people, family is a rocky ride, from beginning to end.

A blog reader send me this quote from Francis Mallman,  the Argentine chef and author responding to his friend’s concern that he no longer wished to spend time with him.  It struck a deep and familiar chord with me and my troubles about family:

“I can’t spend time with people I don’t enjoy. I can’t do it anymore as theater. I make choices, and that’s a beautiful thing about growing up, learning to say no, in a nice way, just say no. I have this friend…we just went different ways in life. Once he came to me and said, “Francis, you don’t like me anymore.” and I said “No, it’s not that I don’t like you, we’ve chosen different styles of life. I still have beautiful souvenirs of all the things we did together and how close we were, but the truth is it’s not that you bore me, but I don’t enjoy talking to you anymore and I don’t want to fight with you but there’s nothing in common between your life and mine nowadays.” I would have never said that but he asked me. So what could I say? I said the truth. Growing up has a bit to do with that, to be able to tell the truth, to show who you are, even if it hurts.”

How awful to turn your own brother away, how shocking and awful that would be to so many people, including him. I’ve  tried a hundred times to talk to my brother, and it always ends the same way. He has no idea what I am talking about and I have no idea what he is talking about.

When I finally told him my deepest and darkest and most awful secret, the one I have talked about a hundred times with my sister, but told no one but an analyst in New York, not even Maria.

This was a dramatic moment for me, it felt to me like one of those movie moments, I call it the Holy Jew Hollywood Moment, when a shrink, usually Jewish, breaks through to a troubled patient and is healed and whole once more.(think Good Will Hunting with Robin Williams, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck).

You see the Holy Jew Moment in almost every movie about trouble relationships in the family. (In Hollywood movies, all shrinks are Jewish.) The moment is part of the great American myth about family.

When I blurted out this secret, mostly in anger and desperation – I really did want him to understand what happened to our family, I was desperate for him to understand me  – there was no text message for a while (he will only talk to me by text message: “Maybe we can meet face to face some day and talk about it,  somebody you might feel like doing it.”

I wanted to scream, and if I had been on the phone I would have: “I have always wanted to talk about it!”

My sister and I have always been close, we are always close, no matter how often we speak to each other. We are close in only the way someone could be who was there, we know, we saw, we understand. My brother and I have never been close, he never was there, never wanted to be there, until suddenly, now.

I knew he wouldn’t hear it, that we had never had an honest face to face talk with me in  our lives. And I knew now, saw clearly, that we never would. I did, of course, have all those family voices in my head: he’s your brother, he’s family, suck it up, work it out, he’s the only brother you will ever have.

Or perhaps he is the only brother I never really had.

I wanted to say I have always felt like sharing this secret, the truth of my early life, and I have always tried to do it with my brother of all people.  I always fantasized about having a big brother.

He never wanted to hear it, we never had that conversation, we are not going to have it now, not ever.  But something in me turned, and was released. He complained about my turning away from, he said he wanted me in his life.

I wanted to be free of it, and I feel like I am free of it, whether he hears it or wants to hear it or not. I am lighter, looking nowhere but forward. You cannot bully somebody into your life.

I thought precisely what Francis Mallman felt, and I got a chill along my spine when i read it. I said it’s time for both of us to grow up and tell the truth. What could I do but tell the truth?  He asked.

I don’t want to be  in his life, I have never been in his life, he has never been in mine. My life is not a movie, there are not Hollywood endings for me, there is no Holy Jew moment  waiting for the end this story. I’m off script. Family is not always the most important thing, above all other things,  sometimes it cannot stand up to the truth.

Several online shrinks diagnosed me and messaged me and told me I wasn’t really angry at my brother at all, I was angry at my parents for the troubles I had and that my sister had. I smiled at that. I wish it was true. No, my friends, I was plenty angry at my parents, and I am angry at my brother.

I was in therapy for 30 years, I had plenty of time and help to work it out.

I told my brother that I am sure he is a good man who means well, and I wish him well. And I really do.  As we slide towards the end of our lives, I wish I had a different answer for  him. But I couldn’t. It would have been a lie. We can’t wave some wand and walk through a magic passage and into each other’s lives.

I told him that growing has a lot to do with my being honest from him, and ending the illusion or fantasy that we could suddenly enter one another’s life and nourish one another, be the brothers we never had and never were. He needed to look elsewhere for that. I don’t seek that anymore.

I told  him he has no right to demand that I enter his life, and demand that I explain again and again why I can’t and I won’t. If he loved me, of course, he would hear that and respect it.  I told him we were not good for each other.  I don’t need to explain that any more.

What we both must accept is that we cannot really talk to one another, we have nothing in common with one another. That is why don’t understand each other. Because we can’t.

I carry in my wallet a quote from Dostoevsky, in the Brothers Karamazov:

“Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to  himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within  him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect, he ceases to love.”

I have learned to be honest, and tell the truth, not because I am noble or virtuous, but because I know it is my salvation. I want to respect myself, I want to be able to love.

I would rather do almost anything than lie. Even hurt.