My brother is selfish. My brother likes to play the victim. My brother blames me for things that go wrong in his life, even if they are nightmares of his own making. And yet, inside of all of this, I still love him. Because that's what loving unconditionally entails - loving someone flaws and all. I believe you can still love someone even if you don't like them very much. And that's where I find myself right now, not liking who my brother has become at all but still loving him. If only love could get him out of the mess he's made.
Yesterday was what I commonly refer to as a 'throwaway day', meaning almost everything that could've gone wrong did. The say started out well and even ended pretty darn good but everything in between sucked. I hate days like that (who doesn't, I know), mostly because they put me in a terrible mood for quite sometime after. The exact cause of this particular throwaway day? Stress. Exacerbated by my brother's neverending pain in the assness. He called my sister's house yesterday afternoon but I was the one who answered (had I known it was him on the other end of the line, I probably wouldn't have picked up). Almost immediately he got an attitude and was first pissed off that he had to talk to me at all, then because no one had told him I was in town. He made a comment about how fucked up it is that his family doesn't even want to talk to him anymore. I made a comment about his "accident", which pissed him off even more. He started pushing every single one of my buttons and I took the bait. It got loud in a hurry. The entire exchange only lasted about ten minutes but that was more than enough time for all kinds of nasty stuff to be tossed around. What I should've done was hang up and not even engaged. But I didn't and I ended up getting hurt. He hung up on me, I slammed the phone down as if it still meant something and I quietly stewed the rest of the day. It was awful.
I'm no less pissed off about our fight now than when it happened. And I'm still LIVID about his (alleged) suicide attempt. But I think what's really bothering me is that I just don't understand how we got here. We had the same upbringing with the same people, raised by the same ridiculously amazing mother who taught us to always take responsibility for our own actions. So how did my brother end up with such a strong victim mentality? It's like he doesn't grasp that nobody is immune from tragedy. His birth mother died while having him and his father took off and I get that. But he could've had it a lot worse had our mom not stepped up. I get that not knowing his birth parents had an effect on him but he can't use that as an excuse for everything. Your tragedies may have a hand in making you who you are but you can't let them define you. My mom never got to meet her father because he died before she was born. Crazy Aunt's entry into the world was full of all kindsa controversy (affairs, wifebeaters and drunks, oh my). My uncle became a single father five minutes after his son was born because his junkie girlfriend took off. All of this stuff had an effect on these people but they moved on from it and are better for that. I don't understand why my brother can't do the same.
I know a large part of my brother's problem is that he's never wanted the life he has. He never wanted to get married and he never wanted to have children. But he also never had the balls to tell his then-girlfriend (now-wife, though I'm not sure for how much longer) that he didn't want those things because he knew she did want them. So they never had that conversation about what they wanted long-term. And they were parents at 19, married at 25 and no longer really speaking by 27 when they had their second child. And now...who knows what happens next. But it can't be about him anymore. Like it or not, he has two kids and a wife and he needs to either exit that scenario or get himself together. But he doesn't seem interested in doing any of that right now. He just wants sympathy for the messes he's created and continues to create for himself and he's upset that no one will give it to him anymore. The ball is pretty much in his court now in terms of getting out of his fog and deciding what to do about his life. So I'm gonna try to not worry about it as much. I still love him and I always will but I can't help him anymore, especially since he doesn't want my help.
