12.7.11 — brother brother.
I think my brother may have separation anxiety.
Just kidding. If you know my brother, he’s the least likely of anyone to get separation anxiety. It’s almost like he doesn’t care if you’re gone or not. That’s what he likes to let on, but I guess me going to college and him being the temporary only child changed things up a little, and that’s what I’ve been noticing the past couple weeks.
We used to be really close when we were younger, but as we got older and the gender divide solidified (for lack of a better description) we became more and more distant. It got to a point where we would exchange words once a week, I didn’t know anything about his social, school, or spiritual life, and he didn’t know any of mine. Any glimpse of his life would come from a third party, and it was infuriating because somewhere in their story-telling, there was an accusation that I wasn’t an involved sister. Believe me, I tried, but you have to understand that brother-sister relationships are a two-way street. There was a massive roadblock (probably called “puberty”) that I couldn’t get out of the way. It lasted like this all through high school.
I remember I would get jealous of my friends having such close relationships with their siblings, and I remember wishing that I had something like that. But the thing is that they all had sisters. I can’t talk about girl problems to a brother who’s having guy problems of his own; we can’t relate to each other. The only times we were on common ground were when our parents yelled at us (and there’s not much bonding to be done then, either).
Then college came. This is when our lives were truly separate; we didn’t live in the same place, our friend circle’s became completely separated, and we had different goals in mind. To top it off, we weren’t FB friends, so our sibling-ship was the epitome of…not sibling-ship.
I guess the distance did us good. We aren’t having 3 hour-long, heartfelt, MOI-ish conversations, we don’t hang out every single waking moment (oh lawdy, that would be annoying), and we don’t share the same interests. But we can carry on a conversation for a 15 minute car ride, we don’t care that we have to sit next to each other on the couch to watch Avatar, and he’s willing to be a little more open to my questions about his life.
There’s still a long ways to go, but I can tell that God has worked in our sibling-ship this year. I don’t have to be here to see it, but God’s done good things already. God is good, all the time. All the time, God is good :]
