I (23M) am a broke online college student living with my parents. I have an abusive brother (25M) who also lives under the same roof.
My brother is a narcissist. He believes that he is the most important person in the universe. Boundaries and respect do not matter to him. He will hijack every conversation into being either constant self-aggrandizing or personal attacks and force me to repeat it back to him. He is physically violent when provoked and he has killed multiple animals by beating them to death with his bare hands. Unfortunately, he seems to consider “no” to be a provocation. He searches through all my stuff without permission and I’ve had to start being careful about what things I leave lying around.
My parents do not care about this. My father doesn’t because he’s the OG narcissist who passed it down to my brother and actively cheers for my suffering, and my mother doesn’t because she is the enabler who chose to stay married to my father and told me I had to suffer the abuse endlessly like she does.
I don’t have any irl friends because I have medical conditions that make it difficult for me to be outside on my own for extended periods of time. I also can’t drive because of that. It sucks. This isn’t to say it’s impossible for me to go out, but it’s hard and kind of risky (my condition can cause me to faint).
I have constantly been told to give up on being treated like a human being, but I have begun to recognize that my family is feeding me false narratives of hopelessness to keep me complacent and submissive. I surely have power, but my internalization of their narratives is obscuring the ways to exercise it.
What would you do in such a situation, or if you have been in a similar situation, what did you do?
EDIT: I live in the U.S.
Your best bet might be to try and pivot to in-person college/university if possible. You didn’t say where you are in the world, but in the US, most schools will have on-campus housing you’d be able to stay in for most of the year. The financial part is always the limiting factor of course, but considering how violent your brother can get, it may be worth it. It’s a lot easier to recover from student loan debt than being dead.
Not OP.
Here’s the thing tho. Sometimes you just get so depressed you also can’t handle living separately and doing everything by yourself, and also have to deal with roommates.
I tried doing the living on campus thing and I couldn’t do it. I withdrew from college.
Idk if OP can either. Trauma messes with your brain a lot.
I have weird separation anxiety issues with my parents that I kinda love and hate simultaneously.
i wonder if some other state uni/Universities have some off campus aparments they rent out, which can be paid with the grants/loans scholarships. in the west coast i went to a state university that dint have a dorm in the traditional sense, but more or less a small apartments to be rented out to students(the school is basically a landlord of apartment buildings/houses that the school owns).