I love my brother. I say that not to emphasize it to you, the reader, but rather to remind myself. I'm starting to believe this entire situation with him is an exercise in patience. At least, I hope there's a reason for all this drama. I wrote about a week ago that my sister-in-law is on the brink of pulling the trigger on ending their marriage, but that she had yet to share this decision with many people. She wanted to be sure and she wanted to wait until a certain point in the year to file (this has everything to do with his job). I'm not sure exactly how many people she told but one of them has a big mouth because my brother found out about her plan and has started lashing out big time. I don't know if it's because he genuinely wants to fix things (which they've tried twice already) or because he just wants to be an ass but it's getting a little scary. He's not threatening them or himself in any way. He's blaming everyone but himself for the situation he now finds himself in.
It was suggested I should be the one to try and talk him down today, make him realize that all he has to do is actually show some effort and she'll probably put the brakes on the divorce stuff. But our talk didn't go well. At. All. Rather than hear me out, he went on a rant about me being the cause of all his troubles. How, you ask? Hell, if I know. I let him vent, hoping it would prompt an epiphany or maybe he'd even just punch me and that would be enough to get out his frustrations and he'd move on. I know I wanted to hit him (on many occasions over the past year, actually). But nobody hit anybody and I'm still not sure that wouldn't have been more helpful that what did go down. He went on and on about how he's never been able to be out of my shadow and that it's my fault he's not close to his kids, how I've tried to steal his life and so on. It was ridiculous. Yes, he's the younger sibling but he has never been in my shadow. I have no idea where that came from. I know he's not close to his kids but that has nothing to do with me. His son, for reasons I will never understand, still worships the ground he walks on but gets very little in return. I'm not sure his daughter even knows who he is, he's been absent most of her life. If he wants to have relationships with them, HE needs to be the one to reach out and commit. I'm a decent consolation prize for his kids but I'm not their father and I can't imagine how it feels to have your father be around but not be present.
*sigh* I would clock him in a second if I knew it would fix everything. I don't know what will fix anything at this point. Last year he said he wanted to fix stuff and he committed for about 5 minutes before losing interest. It's almost as if he expects the world to wait on him. Like he thinks he can put down his marriage and family and pick them back up whenever it suits him. Everybody's attempted to talk sense into him, he avoids the speeches and throws himself into his work and ignores everybody. And honestly, his job is a large part of the problem. If you're never home, you can't work on your marriage. He left his last job swearing he was gonna work less, even take a year off, so they could start repairing their life together. That fell by the wayside and now here we are. And it really is ALL of us now since we're helping my sister-in-law with the kids. I'm at the point now where I have nothing else to say to him about it because I'm tired of repeating myself, especially when I know he's not listening anyway.
In this corner <--- is my savior complex (not nearly as bad as it used to be) wanting to find some way, any way, to bail him out and make everything better. In this corner ---> is the realist in me, knowing there is nothing else I can do. He has to make the effort and, if things keep going the way they are, she has to file to end it and do what's best for her and the kids. And the scrapper in me just wants to find a gym, grab some boxing gloves and suggest we beat each other senseless so we both get all our frustrations out. And still another part of me thinks he can talk sense into him. Which makes no sense.
