I’ve just come back from a family funeral and once again, messed up in the head by my brother.
I will never understand what I’ve done wrong and it makes me so sad. I feel like I have to grieve for the loss of him over and over. I’ll try to keep it short with the salient points because it’s a lifetime of head fuckery.
He has borderline personal disorder and regularly implodes, hurting a lot of people along the way. He gets things into his head about people and then reacts like they’ve done something awful. We were messaging ok last year but then his tone changed - I could sense a change in him and I was anxious about seeing him but really hoping he would see me and realise we were cool and want to hang out with me.
He refused to see me at all during my five days there and left for without stopping by to say goodbye. Just left. I feel so hurt.
The things he’s done to me over the years:
- strangled me with a long phone cord when I was 15, his friend intervened.
- launched himself on me, trying to kiss me and touch me - I was 22 and completely headfucked and ashamed
- knowingly took my keys with him when he stayed with me in my city, leaving me locked out with no one to call for help. I was 17, it was winter, and I stayed in a police station over night because I didn’t know what else to do.
- abandoned me in France when we were out there with friends. He drove off with his friends and left me stranded with no means of getting back because we had driven there. I was 16.
I went through a long period of not having contact but in recent years, there’s a dynamic of my mum pandering to him because he’s so touchy and hard to deal with, yet she’s willing to do anything to keep a line of communication open as at times he is suicidal. When I try to casually ask about him, she says she doesn’t want to get involved because I am so annoyed by him. This is not true - we’ve had times of being ok with each other so I don’t know where this narrative comes from. I feel left out, like a pariah, because he’s able to reject me and hold me at arm’s length despite it being him that’s been horrific to me over the years.
During my stay for the funeral, I tried to casually see him - nothing heavy, just hang out. He basically avoided all interaction or simply left if I turned up where he was. The day before I was going home, I suggested to my mum that we meet up with him for lunch. He texted back to say they’d left for a trip. I just burst into tears because I can’t comprehend how you can not say goodbye to your sibling. It’s likely to be years before we meet again as he lives abroad.
I feel so hurt and let down. Like I am being made out to be the problem when I don’t think I am. I don’t think there’s any salvageable relationship with him - and I don’t even really understand why I want that after the things he’s done - but I just don’t know what to do with all these feelings. He’s done awful things to my mum over the years and so she knows what he’s capable of and yet I feel like I am treated like the trouble maker.
I don’t really know why I am posting. I just feel so hurt. I knew there was something wrong and I was putting myself out there to reach out to him in some way, but he’s completely rejected me and it feels so cruel.