I don't need this crap

This post is one long, long rant. I just need to get this off my chest since it has been upsetting for the last 3 days and was made even worse this evening. Let the ranting begin....


How did my daughter end up with such an asshole for an uncle? I can deal with having an asshole for a brother, but I'm a grown up. She's three and completely lovable, she shouldn't have to put up with that kind of shit. My brother still has never acknowledged Reid or his death or our loss or anything close to it, (I know that the donation that was made in his memory for his 1st birthday was completely the work of my SIL.) but it appears that he is aiming to make that seem like good behaviour.

He has some long time grudge he's holding against me. No one (me or my mom) knows what it actually is just that it is old (either back to the end of high school or the beginning of university which is at least 11 years ago.) I will admit I wasn't very supportive of him when he went through a rough period, but at least I acknowledged his issues. And I was a typical 19-20 year old, self-absorbed and pretty shallow. And we had plenty of arguments when we were forced to share portions of a house and a car in university but there is no big unforgivable incident (at least that I can remember) . It took him a while to get it together, but he currently has a lovely (too good for him) wife and child and just a got promotion at work so it's not like his life was destroyed by whatever he thinks I did. (And I would like to think I would know if I had done something life destroying.) I thought we were getting along pretty well when I first moved here. He had lived here for a couple years at that point. He seemed to be completely in love with D for the first couple years of her life. He and SIL moved away a 2 1/2 years ago and they still came to see D when they were in the city. I don't know exactly when the grudge became the main feature of our relationship, but it's definitely there now. I would think that by having to endure the death of a child, I would have suffered enough for him to let his grudge go, but it hasn't happened. He no longer has any patience for D and doesn't make an effort to call her or spend time with her.

There is a family wedding in their city this summer and I (stupidly, apparently) assumed that both us and my parents would be staying with my brother and SIL. After SIL came to visit last week and we talked about plans for that weekend, he got quite worked up about my heinous assumption (and other ridiculous suggestions for the weekend like getting a babysitter for D and my niece so we could all stay later at the reception.) In a very mature move, he chose to complain to my mom about it instead just calling me. My mom is overly sensitive about sibling stress because of her family history and over course she wants me to do whatever it takes to placate him. Since, I did assume we could stay there without actually asking I agreed to call him and apologize and ask nicely, mostly for my mom's sake. I still think she should have told him that if had had a problem with me he should tell me himself but that didn't happen.(but really is it crazy to assume that we would stay with my brother when attending a family wedding? They have plenty of space in their house for us and my parents to stay there.) Of course my mom picked a day when I was having a very rough time and was very emotional to call about this so it resulted in at least an hour of crying on my part.

I waited until a time (this evening) when I was calm and could restrain from making sarcastic comments about how he handled this. I also waited for a time on the weekend when I thought he wouldn't be too tired (grouchy) from being at work all day. I asked about his daughter and his day and then apologized for assuming we could stay with them and asked if we could. His reply. "Mom and Dad have already asked and T(a cousin, who has plenty of friends in the city) have asked." No, "I'm sorry" or "I wish we had more space". I tried to calmly inform him that he would be disappointing both my parents and D and that D missed him. His reply, "What do you want me say?". I said I would like it if he said he was sorry or felt bad that we wouldn't be staying there, but since that clearly wasn't the case I was going to say goodbye because I was getting upset.

So now I know why he got all worked up. He didn't want us to stay with them. You know, if it was just me and D.G., I could handle it. (In fact I might prefer it.) But how am I supposed to tell D, that she can't stay with her cousin and her uncle and auntie and grandparents? How do I explain to here that her uncle is mad at mommy for something that happened long before she was born? And how many times I am supposed to humiliate myself in the name of family harmony before my mom stops expecting me to "be the bigger person"? Why is it okay that he has never acknowledged Reid, because "it's probably hard for him" while I attended his daughter's baptism at the same time I was effectively miscarrying a baby we spent 10 months trying to conceive.


If you read all this, thank you. The only person who I feel can really vent about my brother to is my mom and she doesn't like it so I'm left with all this crap stuck inside my head.