Awful

My husband is up north, sorting things out with our house there. My brother came around, and due to my innate inability to read signals, I didn't get that it was going to go wrong. We were having such a great time at first. Bit of booze going down but that was fine. Then he told me he didn't want to live with pain anymore (emotional I think) and we again got round it; that is, we talked a little and then he moved on fast. I made room for him to speak but he didn't take it. He kept telling me there was an argument he wanted to have with me about Mens Rights.

He also told me tonight that he was an alcoholic. Great.

And then he blew. He had taken out of context and misquoted various things I have said in the past as meaning that I was a manhater and a bigot, screamed at me in my own garden, frightened my cats and probably terrified my neighbours. Then things got physical, alarming at the time, and finally he brought up my ultimate crime: about 27 years ago, in a game of D&D one of the players fell in love with me and vice versa. We were together for 10 years after that. My brother translated this as me 'whoring myself' in his precious game.

I got him out of the house and called the police, because he was sitting on the doorstep. By the time they turned up he had gone.

He has a key to this house, and I must say, it has been a bit spooky, I've been hearing weird creakings everywhere. Came downstairs, the kitchen floor was covered in water. I mopped it.

The house stinks of his cigarettes. I watched him turn into a mini-Dad, all the rage and alcoholism and absolutely insane pointless fury, completely detached from anything real. I have had my cry, and my disbelief is done. He is not ever going to get physical like that with me again, he did not hurt me but he certainly came pretty close. He is never going to get the chance to hurl so much hateful abuse at me again. This was the biggest row I have had in over 17 years. I will write this here, so that in time to come, when people remind me that he is my little brother and I should help, I will remember this night and remember the damage he is fine with trying to cause. I will keep in mind that he recalls everything, but none of it with clarity or accuracy, that his anger, like Dad's and perhaps like mine was long ago, is an inner seething poison, a distorted lens.I get that I have been lucky, but I also worked hard to sort out my own form of the poison. All he has done is drink and collapse into it, and try to shame me.

What I really want to do is go live somewhere else, another country not imprinted with an ugly combination of our family's history and surrounding unkindness from people around us. It freaks me out that I come from this utterly shit background of alcoholism and mental illness and emotional trauma and that somehow it isn't gone with Dad's death. Ugh. I thought we could all be happy together. Am I not one of the most radiantly stupid people to have walked the surface of the planet?