Hi everyone.
Sorry I have abandoned my daily and haven't been around. There is a lot going on and I haven't felt very positive or like sharing with anyone. Honestly I feel defeated and sad and out of mojo.

The situation with my brother has deteriorated a lot. I missed Christmas last year as my son-in-law (who lives with us) had a bad cough and my elderly parents didn't want to risk potentially getting covid. So this year I was really excited to go to family Christmas and see my family.
My daughter was working on Christmas day (she recently landed a very cool job, yay I am excited for her) and my parents live a couple of hours away so mum and I hatched a scheme where daughter would come with me to a family dinner on Christmas Eve, then daughter would leave me there, drive my car 2 hours home and drive to work the next day. (We are poor folk so my car is the family vehicle). The plan was I'd sleep over, help mum with Christmas lunch the next day, and daughter would pick me up from the train station on Christmas day afternoon after she finished work. With me so far? It was the perfect plan.

My brother was drunk when we arrived on Christmas Eve. He and I have always been very close, but in the last few years we've stopped talking as i set a boundary that I would not talk to him when he is drunk or on drugs, and he is always drunk and/or on drugs.
He fixated on me from the minute I arrived. All boundaries went out the window as I tried to grapple with my parents distress and my love and concern for my baby brother. He would not  leave me alone and the entire night was ruined as no-one was allowed to speak, he demanded i just listen to him go on and on and on and f%^ing on with his drunk raving and conspiracy theories. If anyone tried to stop him he'd throw a rage about no-one listening to him. It was awful. I was a long way from home with no car and public transport was switched off for the night so I was trapped.
My parents went to bed and I was left to deal with him. He didn't sleep, hence neither did I. It was an all night misery-fest and I was in a seriously crap mood. I have no patience for drunk people now. None. 

The next day I blearily helped mum with the family lunch but J f*^%ed it up spectacularly. He was in his element and everyone was stressed and uncomfortable. No-one was allowed to talk, we were just to listen to Jim's angry musings and drunk anecdotes. Lunch was a disaster.

When I finally got home, i contacted my other siblings and we agreed that next year we are all going to a chinese restaurant for Christmas Yum Cha and our gift to our parents and each other will be paying for it. Drunk brother is not invited. He can't drive or anything so unless my parents decide to bring him, we might get to enjoy all getting together for once. Maybe.

I just talked to my mother and she told me he's ruining her life and destroying their marriage. I already knew that. They wont remove him from their home as they are worried he will die if left homeless. I suggested again that they try al-anon and she said "well we tried that and it was no good. It was all about him". 
I urged her to persevere and she said she would but I doubt it will amount to anything. I love my brother and I hate my parents for anabling him to the point where he's in his mid 30s and has no idea how to care for himself or deal with the consequences of his actions. I hate my brother for being as selfish as he is and for this comment....

In the middle of one of his rants, my step-dad tried to calm him down. J held his arms out wide and said to the family- "see? this is why I don't pay them to live here. It's total bullsh*t".

The rest of us are out there doing it hard, living our lives. We have our own struggles- my brother P and I have both faced addiction and rock bottom and we both came out on top because we worked damn hard. To hear J say he wont even pay our parents to treat their house like freaking Nakatomi Plaza 365 days a year made me very angry. Our parents deserve to live their lives free from abuse and J doesn't deserve to treat the entire famioly as a prop in his ongoing selfish drama.

I'm really angry. 

Oh I left out the best bit. On Christmas night, my mother messaged me at 2am and said "I've locked my bedroom door but he's still standing in the hall talking to me, on and on and on. It's like a horror movie".