"I hear something. It's the voice of God."

Trauma, siblinghood and the quiet echoes of csa

(English isn't my mother tongue, I apologize if I don't make sense.)

When I first watched Mysterious Skin and I saw Brian on screen, I saw myself.

There's something brilliant in the way Araki and Scott unpack the idea of escapism in trauma survivors.

On one side, there's the mind burying unbearable memories, using fantasy as a shield. Reshaping the abuse into something alien, literally. A terrain where memory is unreliable and a made-up story is safer than facing the truth head-on.

Then there’s self-destruction. Hypersexuality as a survival mechanism, walking willingly into the wound, replaying the trauma through a reckless life, using sex as both a form of control and a way to stay tethered to what scarred you.

"And somehow, amidst the brutality,

there is beauty."

I’ve never had that easy, warm sibling bond I saw in my friends’ homes. My parents would say, “I’ve never seen two siblings fight like you two.” And I convinced myself it was just a rough dynamic, the kind you grow out of. But there was something that shifted back and forth between my brother being my playmate and someone I feared. At night, my brother would reappear in my dreams as the villain I had to run from.

It's just how brothers are.

No matter how much my mother insists he loves me, I’ve never felt loved by him. I’ve felt small. Stupid. Like my existence itself was somehow wrong.

And beneath all that, something heavier lingers. Like that day, years ago, when boundaries were crossed on a couch in a house that should have felt safe. I was barely seven; he was already living in a world seven years ahead of mine.

Like the film and novel, my life feels caught between silence and confrontation, between wanting to move on and not knowing how to. Watching Brian repress and reframe, I felt seen.

I’ve spent years unsure of how intimacy is supposed to feel. Unsure if my fear of closeness is just about discomfort with my body or something else. I’ve questioned my sexuality, confused by whether I’m interested in women or afraid of men. Maybe I don't want anyone to be that close to me. Every attempt at intimacy feels hollow, heavy with a sense of wrongness I can’t quite shake.

Despite it all, my brother is still part of my life. There’s a contradiction in knowing he’s hurt me but still feeling a complicated kind of care. When he says he knows I hate him, it only confuses me more.

Mysterious Skin made me sit with these feelings and realize that they will linger quietly for the rest of my life.