Troubledsister, believe me I know how hard it is to be the better person. My last vent sure demonstrates that! Thank God for SR, or else I would have lost my perimenopausal mind ages ago.
My sister repeatedly bullied me in childhood, and pulled the cruelest pranks for an awful time. She actually apologized to me once last year, and then she continued on her delusional path.
There's one prank in particular that really makes me sad, however. For a month or two, she told me that she was having sex with multiple partners when she was in seventh grade. Then she told me she was pregnant and begged me not to tell my parents. I was two years older but I was so stressed out about what to do and what to say. I didn't know how to take care of it. I didn't know how to fix it. And just when I was ready to spill the beans, she rounded up her classmates and they all taunted me: she was only joking and I was stupid enough to believe her.
Here's the catch though. This was around the time that my cousin started to sexually assault her. I think she was being cruel to me because she was lonely, lost and confused and she didn't know what to do. She was so desperate to unload that misery and I was her closest target.
Just knowing that helps me put her behavior in context. It helps me to know that when she takes me down, it's not ME she's trying to take down. It's the emptiness and misery inside her. It's the jealousy that she feels towards me and her former friends.
Your brother is obviously unhappy. And he's lashing out at anyone within range and you're suspecting that he's lacerating your character to shreds. Is it right? No. Is it fair? No. But if he's anything like my sister, it's not really YOU he's taking down. He is battling his demons and blindly flailing away. You just happen to be close by. You can't take it personally, as hard as that is to do. And when he rounds up his troops to support him, keep in mind that he's deceiving them too, and they are his victims as well.
I tell myself repeatedly that I have a choice: I can handle this with grace or I can handle this like a schmuck. Saying that to myself keeps me in line when I really want to fly off the handle. Which can be often.
I wish your family: Mazel Tov!