shrug
I use “WTF” to indicate extreme surprise, not a negative reaction – didn’t realize this was so idiosyncratic a usage.
’punha – “welcome back!” and “yes, exactly.”
lissener – a handsome offer, sir. Thanks for the (genuine) smile.
twickster–your brother’s remark is nothing more than simple humanity. Try to accept kindness, when someone offers it.
Have you had difficulty accepting kindnesses in the past?
Today’s horoscope:
Hm.
Calling out of the blue to make sure you’re okay. Sounds like a normal brotherly phone call to me. 
twickster, I think your post is beyond bizarre and quite inappropriate and disrespectful to anyone let alone a blood relative. I live 1700+ to 3000+ plus miles from most of my family and I go years without speaking to most of them. However, we all know we are still family and are always there to help. I found out two weeks ago that a female cousin, now grown but 9 years younger than me, is struggling with some serious issues that I have too.
I told my aunt that I will just call my cousin soon and she thought that would be great even after all these years. I did the same to another female cousin 5 years ago and it brought her back into our side of the family because she was young when her father killed himself so contact was mostly lost. Now she is a close member of the family to both me and my mother.
I have no idea whatsoever why you would think there would be another motive. He probably loves you but just wasn’t good at holding such a long-distance relationship together but many people will have that problem. God, who get skeeved out by a nice gestured phone call from a blood family member on Christmas? It make the Grinch look like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.
twickster, FWIW, I have a mostly Christmas-and-birthday-phone-call relationship with my siblings as well, and I’d have been wierded out by a phone call like that, too.
I’ve got that brother. Very sporadic contact. He calls once or twice a year, and tells us he loves us. When he calls, I am always taken aback. Not animosity or anything like that. Just very surprising.
This is close to a personal insult, so let’s have everybody cool off.
Second, as explained earlier, twickster referred to two calls in the OP, not one. There was a call at Christmas, which was the first time she heard from her brother in three years, and there was one that “just” happened. It’s the second one that had her flabbergasted and prompted this year.
I have that brother too. He only calls or visits at Christmas and that’s IF my parents are staying with me. He’s got some imagined slights going around in his head, and if he called me now to say what your brother said, I wouldn’t believe his motives were loving, but more schadenfreude than anything else.
So, yes there are siblings who on the face of it are nice and civil but harbor feelings which aren’t necessarily nice.
(hope whatever it is that you’ve got going on passes quickly)
Sorry, it wasn’t supposed to be close to a personal insult. It is just that my family experience is both the same and completely different at the same time. I made up my mind a long time ago that I don’t expect anything from most of my family at all but, if one of them calls, I take it as a gift because I know that there are no malintentions behind it. That includes my father and one of my brothers. I have my own website so it is easy to find me via Goggle. All kinds of people write me from decades ago and I am always thrilled. It is all the same to me. I have done the flip-side myself.
The logical problem I see in the OP is that the only way out of this is to disown your brother for life which seems a little extreme given the details in the OP. Unless you want to give an official do not call order EVER, I don’t understand what the point is. Come to think of it, I will probably call my cousin tonight. She lives in Colorado and I live in Massachusetts. It won’t be awkward at all.
Hey Twix what’s up? (please forgive the informality )
I say good on him, and Go Bro!
What people seem to have missed is this part:
So he heard from someone that you were experiencing suckitude and he decided to call and see if he could help. Yeah unexpected, but in a good way I’d think. So IS there anything he can do to help?
Does your Brother drink?
My brother once called me just to talk. He was away from his family and had had two glasses of wine which is actually a lot for him (or was at the time).
It’s also possible that he has some experience with the type of suckiness you are experiencing (I have no idea what that is so I may be way off base on that) and knows what you are going through more intimately than with other phases in your life.
BTW, Sorry your life is sucking. Did you not get what you wanted for Christmas?
I find your post very, very, very weird and your brothers phone call perfectly normal, funny that.
Sounds like no matter what your relationship is like, or how far apart you to are, he’s still your brother. I think it’s sweet.
It sounds very, very weird in the nicest possible way. I would also be delighted, and I don’t think twicky is saying differently. She’s startled, not angry or upset.
I’d also be asking my mom/dad/mutual friends if they had communicated with my brother lately.
I didn’t attribute any bad intentions to my brother in the OP. I’ve tried to clarify that I’m not seeing any bad intentions on his part. I had a phone call from him that came as a total surprise, and expressed my surprise. Why are you guys all so intent on telling me that I hate my brother and assume he’s trying to fuck with me?
And who is going to take that last line and twist it to make me look paranoid, ungrateful, or otherwise filled with evil emotions?
Yeah, since the last time my brother called was to say he had had a heart attack, and the the few calls after he recovered and got out of the hospital were to say he felt like killing himself, something would probably be up. He’s much better now. And he’s off most substances because of the heart attack so I don’t get any sentimental tipsy calls either.
I can imagine that if he heard something upsetting about me from my parents, that he might call, but other than that we exchange occasionally emails only.
Not me–I took the WTF as “what just happened?”
I read the OP as being surprised that her brother would know that she’d been going through some suckitude, and that this is why the call surprised her – not that he called, but that he knew stuff that she didn’t think he knew.
Since that apparently isn’t the case, I assume he learned from another family member that Twickster could use some support, and he called. I think that’s pretty cool.
One evening my mother called me to ask how I was doing. We chatted for a while, but then my blood turned cold when I realized the call was coming from inside her house!