Hi, I’d like to share for advice and possibly come to a decision about where my relationship stands. This is a VERY long and drawn out escapade of events as a forewarning but indeed are necessary details to understand the interplay.
This goes back roughly a year when my brother came to visit me as I am studying higher education abroad. I was not having a great time in school. I was failing exams and on the brink of a mental health crisis. One could visibly see I was not doing great — constantly catching up with school as I had accrued two failed exams (missed by marginal points on both) that could hold me back and cost another 25,000 USD. Fast forward, I planned with my brother to come visit me abroad and I’d take him around Europe for two weeks. I thought this was initially a great idea since he was my closest sibling and I really missed hanging out with him. He is also in the military so he doesn’t get a lot of time off. Alas, I planned everything up to and including the flights, places to stay etc on top of doing end of year exams, assignments and having a resit on my birthday. This is where I admittedly mess up: I sacrificed hours before one of my essay submissions to book the hotels and itinerary. I evidently stressed myself out to the point of having an anxiety attack and missed the submission deadline by 20 minutes. This is important.
Two days later, I had a resit exam on my birthday to which I stayed up all night to prepare for, no sleep and just pure adrenaline. All is said and done, and I do the 3 hr written exam sleep-deprived. Due to him arriving earlier on my birthday, my bf (25M) went to go pick him up from the airport and I rush from the exam hall to go to the city capital city with an, of course, delayed train travel and monstrous weather. Of course I’m happy to see him. However this slowly dissipates as there was no celebration of my birthday! No balloons, cake, even a dinner planned. I became visibly upset and just dissociated on the bed and went to sleep after eating some chain pizza. For the next day, we walked around the city and it was a great time — I tried to distance myself from the fact I had a late submission and the professor, to which didn’t respond to my email, was notoriously rude.
From the jump, my brother expected to be catered to and we tried our best to show him around. The next day, we had a flight to Rome, to which everything was going great. During dinner, reality hit and i received the dreaded email — my submission would not be accepted. I started to cry and asked to leave to go back to the hotel room. Everyone asked what was wrong but I choked up and couldn’t talk. I was to fail yet another course. I waited until dinner was over to ask again if we could walk to the hotel to which I was shot down by my brother who said no, he wants to see the colosseum at night. At this point, I was just crying in the streets. He got what he wanted and we went back to the room. I told both of them prior that I would also have to finish another assignment so if they could be quiet I would appreciate it. However the immediate moment I opened my laptop and was finishing up a small assignment, he turns on clash of clans at full blast volume and I lost it. I yelled at him profusely and just lost myself. I wound myself up so much that I cried myself to exhaustion and couldn’t talk. To summarize the rest of his trip, we did not get along since at this point, I did everything in my limited power to show him around and he had no respect nor understanding for my situation. We had also a sit down talk where we were mediated by my bf and we were better towards the end of the trip.
We also planned to fly back to the states together since I was to spend time with family. Once we touched soil in the US, he started to act different and distancing himself from me even at the airport. I spent two days at his house before going to the other side of the state to see my dad and stay there for four weeks. He started talking shit to his gf and her brother about the trip and how I mistreated him. They also came with us to see my dad that weekend, and they were visibly not nice to me or didn’t look me in the eyes. When all three of them left I received a text from my brother saying “Hello, I need to talk to you in private. Make time for me after work about the issues I have with you. I get off of work at 3:00 tomorrow.” To which of course I did not entertain. We fell out completely and although I was in the states for almost a month, I then did not contact him for a while nor see him again.
Roughly two weeks later, he told my dad that he will be deployed in a month. I of course wanted to say goodbye to him since I was still in the US before leaving back to Europe. He refused to see me before I left the US. I was distraught but I knew we both were still angry.
Now I flew back to Europe to start up classes again. I got in contact with him to set up a date and time to call two days before he was deployed. After practically begging him, we solidified a date and time to talk. It was nerve-wracking waiting for the time to call him and like magic, he didn’t answer. It was already 23:00 and I had an important meeting early the next day so I went to sleep. This time, I put myself first. He reached out to me an hour after our predestined call time and called again which woke me up. I rolled over from my bed and refused to answer it. In the morning, I sent him an already prepared message (I foreshadowed he wouldn’t answer) saying I wish him farewell and to have a safe deployment.
TO NOW: I wished him a happy birthday after 6-7 months of not talking as a courtesy text and to test the waters after all of this time. To this, he sends me a string of nasty messages summed up to “say you’re sorry, you did wrong, why didn’t you reach out to me, I’m your brother? ”. He even said I could’ve reached out to him since I am only doing one class a week (I’m actually done with classes and working a full time research internship and applying for PhDs). I read the messages but ghosted him again without responding.
Alas we reach the conclusion, should I respond to him (and what?) or is this too far gone? I have been under so much emotional despair from the summer that I unfollowed him on fb, instagram, archived on fb etc. However a part of me misses him but every interaction we have, it is accusatory and he takes no blame and refuses to apologize.
TLDR: sister and brother fall out. Brother gets deployed and then dumps on sister “I’m in war, how dare you unfollow me on ig/fb or not reach out to me etc”. Sister (me) now at a crossroad of either blocking or giving in to apologize (just to hold peace )