Growing up, I had to be friends with my older brother's friends because whenever I brought my own friends to our home he would initiate and escalate an argument to the point of getting in a physical altercation with them. So, note: My brother is shitty to my friends.

Then, two or three years ago, we got into our own physical altercation for the first time.

Context for the fight: He went through a rough patch after breaking up with his girlfriend, becoming a bit paranoid from smoking too much marijuana, and being frustrated with his college degree and job prospects. He would harass me nearly every day about his interests or things he was trying to learn on his own because he was probably feeling alone. All understandable; even though the constant sharing was a little wearisome because I can't honestly say I remember him ever coming up to me once and being like, "You want to do something?" It was all about him trying to prove himself. Understandable given the likely depression... but wearisome in ways, like I said.

Then one day after harassing me every week for about half a year to play guitar with him - after repeatedly telling him I don't want to re-learn my guitar and bass for a few years - he made an unprovoked jab at my friends who played local shows.

He said something like, "Oh, you don't want to play guitar with me, but you would ask your shit friends for lessons. They're so fucking awful. You know that, right?" So problem #1 was obviously that - after explicitly telling him I don't want to play instruments for a while - I have no idea what the hell he was talking about me taking lessons for. I believe he was dramatizing me visiting music shops which my friends played at on open mic nights to get coupons. (They used the coupons to buy their instruments - all very slowly. But some of the local talent was quite fun to watch, along with them.)

However, continuing the problem: after stating rather plainly how I found my friends to be rather solid musicians (particularly singing. Nice voices.) as far as young guys writing songs go, he tried resuming his disparagement. I simply stopped talking with a request: "Please, for the love of fucking God, shut up leave me alone. Leave the room. Please." (I had been putting up with him almost 24/7 that week.)

His response: "What the fuck are you going to do about it?" Al before calling me a small slew of demeaning words that basically implied he could and would kick my ass.

So I got up and split his eyebrow and gave him a black eye before things turned into a wrestling match on the ground in which my friend - who was homeless and who I was trying to give a place to stay - broke us up.

That's basically sums it up. I'm not happy, because in all honesty I'm not sure if his mental state (or ego, to be even more blunt) has ever really improved even after he finally became employed and stopped smoking weed.

But I also struggle with the vague sense of guilt that I don't feel bad about resorting to violence once words had ceased making a difference after almost a year. I don't like talking about it. I don't like that it happened. But encapsulating it all is this strange sense of me not really feeling any desire to reach out to him after realizing that it's been a pretty consistent factor in my life that he treats my friends (and his own friends. He burns bridges.) like shit and making things all about himself. I don't know what I even want to do about having a person like that in my life.