right airpod won't charge or connect

last night I was trying to listen to music on my laptop with my airpods, and the sound was only coming from the left one. I thought that the right one might be dead, but I knew my case had a full charge and my airpods had been in there for at least 2 hours, so it was really weird. still, I wasn't too concerned, because this has happened before, and usually after resetting and reconnecting my airpods the sound works fine on both sides. but it wouldn't let me reset for some reason, when i held down the button the indicator just kept blinking white and it never turned red. then i thought maybe the problem was with of my laptop, so i connected to my phone and played something. it still didn't work, and on the battery screen where i saw how much charge my airpods had, it only showed the left airpod and the case, there was nothing at all for the right airpod. normally when you take your airpods out of the case, the charging indicator blinks once or something like that, and it did that with my left airpod. but when i put my right airpod in and took it back out, the case didn't respond at all. at this point i kind of started freaking out. i checked to make sure everything was charged and tried resetting the airpods again. it didn't help, and my mac was still showing that my left airpod had 100% charge and my right airpod had 0%. so i checked the case to see if maybe there was some debris in it that was stopping my airpod from charging. there was a little bit, so i cleaned my case with a q-tip and a very tiny bit of rubbing alcohol, but it didn't change anything. then i went to clean my airpod from the bottom, and i saw that there were really tiny scratches that looked kind of orange on the silver part of the airpod. the left airpod (which is working) also had a few, but not as obvious. they've got to be old, because i can't remember the last time i've dropped my airpods or anything. if this is what's causing the problem, why didn't it stop working sooner? i don't know if it's the reason, but it's the only thing i can think of. i would attach a picture but it's coming out way too unclear and you can't see the scratches. could it be rust or something? whatever it is, is there any way for me to fix it without having to go to the apple store? it's been more than a year since i got them, so the warranty won't help, and i don't think it has apple care. there's no way my parents are going to spend $69 to get them fixed, and i don't have my own money to do it. i use my airpods for literally everything, so having one that doesn't work is a pretty big problem. i have online school and can't find any of my wired headphones, so i need to fix these ASAP.

thank you if you read through that whole thing, i know it's pretty long but i really don't know what to do so i just wanted to give all of the information in case you guys caught something i missed. thanks in advance for your help!