Laughing Only Hurts More

People say an older brother is a girl’s first best friend. I never believed it until I got older. Even through all the fighting we did as children he was my first best friend, confidant and my escape. Growing up Tyler and I were inseparable, well except when we got separated for bickering. We would play games on rainy days, bundle up in our warm clothes to go sledding on snowy days, he even made up the game “speed bump.” Tyler would have me lay in the middle of our snow hill and come down in an inflatable tube and run me over. It was surprisingly fun, however I think it was just his way of tormenting his little sister. We did not always see eye to eye but I never worried because I always knew he would be in my corner no matter how old we get. As we grew older though we started to drift apart, he got too old to play my “little girl” games and he would tell me I was too young to play his computer games. Our teen years came and the distance between us grew larger. 

The summer before my 8th-grade year we moved to Sabattus and I would be starting at Oak Hill, but Tyler only had two years of high school left and he wanted to graduate with the class he grew up with. So he lived with my grandparents in Freeport to finish out High school. At first I became very lonely with him not around to share everything about my life with, but I soon started to feel like an only child. I went through many stages of emotional and physical loneliness. I felt like I never had anyone to watch movies and eat popcorn with, no one to walk the dogs with and no one to spill all of my feelings too at the end of the day. I had my parents but it was not the same. We did not have game nights, or movie nights or do fun teenage activities together. This was especially hard where I was the new kid at school and had not made many friends to hang out with. 

 After Tyler graduated he decided he wanted to go into the Navy so he signed up and shipped off to bootcamp in Illinois. He had no form of communication except for letters and that made the mental and physical distance between us grow larger. Although he was allowed to write letters home we did not receive many. Tyler sent 1 or 2 at the beginning letting us know that he got there safely and a little about what his days were like. Being able to read about the meals they had, the daily life of training and experiences he was having brought some peace to me knowing he was safe. Then one night we got a call saying he was being sent home but we could have no contact with him. I was devastated and my mom and I broke into tears because we longed to call him and check in with him. It was one of the worst feelings in the world being halfway across the country from my older brother and being denied access to talk to him. The date we were given as to when he would be home was wrong and it would be weeks before he returned home.

 When he finally came home I thought we would spend hours catching up and building our relationship back up. I had a vision in my head of him missing me as much as I did him. In my imagination, he would come home and I would never lose my brother ever again. I thought he would be overjoyed to see me again and he would never leave the house again. However, he moved in with friends and they became more of a priority to him and it felt like he still never had time for me. Whenever I would call him and ask if he wanted to hang out he already had made plans with friends, anytime I wanted to share stories of the time we missed out on each other’s lives, he was too busy telling those stories to his friends. When I wanted to see him on his birthday, he was already out with friends. I felt like he was totally shutting me out without realizing it.   I never wanted to admit the way I was feeling or admit that it was actually happening so any time anyone asked me how things with Tyler were going, I would just laugh it off. I would joke about it saying things like “we always fought anyway” or “I’m just his sister so why would he make time for me.” after a couple years of us growing apart and living our separate lives I realized that laughing it off only made it worse because I could never tell him how I really felt. 

I realized that nothing was going to change or get better between us if I did not try to do something about it. So I began texting him  more, asking to hang out or grab dinner once in a while. We soon began hanging out more, talking frequently and we finally began having a mature, healthy relationship again. It became clear to me that instead of laughing it off I should have told him how I felt a long time ago and not let us miss out on all the years of each other’s lives. Our relationship grows slowly every day and we are learning how to be young adults, have our own lives but still remain apart of the others. We have even made plans for him to take me to get my first tattoo. This experience has truly taught me that I will always have my big brother and he is here for me whenever I need him.

Photo by clappstar on Foter.com / CC BY-NC