Feeling hurt and misunderstood

My parents and brother are driving me insane. They have been for some time but it’s getting harder and harder to endure. My parents distinguish between what is allowed for me and what is allowed for them. They criticize me and everything I do all the time. But I’m not allowed to defend myself against unfounded criticism. I’m not allowed to criticize them or my brother either. Whenever I say anything about their behaviour I’m told to keep my mouth shut and keep my criticism to myself.

They differentiate between my brother and me as well. He can ridicule me as much as he wants while my parents are in the same room without them doing anything about it. They just let him and keep quit. But when I say to him in response that he should grow up, or that’s he’s acting extremely mature for his age they’re like: “Hilde, stop that!” Yesterday we were having dinner and my brother said something about a subject that I knew wasn’t correct. So I told him that he was wrong and explained to him why. “How do you know?! You always seem to know everything better! You’re so arrogant!” When I tried to reply my parents told me not to. I became angry and half asked, half shouted why I wasn’t even allowed to say anything in return to defend myself. My mother replied: “Because you are arrogant.”

At that point I went upstairs to my room and just cried. And than of course I felt stupid for crying and letting them get to me. I’ve been spending way too much time in my room crying lately anyway. They are getting to me and the things they say hurt, but they don’t seem to care. Which makes it even worse.

They don’t seem to understand that being arrogant is not the same as actually knowing better about a subject. I do not think I’m superior to them or that my opinion is more important than theirs. I just enjoy having knowledge about various subjects, so sometimes I actually do know things better because I’m better informed. They mistake it for arrogance. Especially my brother, who is ignorant about many things and because of that, can say the most idiotic things. The only way he seems to be able to deal with his own ignorance and lack of knowledge is to attack me. He’s a very selfish human being who will never acknowledge he might have some blame in a certain situation, so I can understand his actions and his behaviour. I can not understand my parents’ though.

I’m clinging to the fact that in a year’s time I will have moved out and left all this crap behind. Sometimes I just wish it was a year later already...