Open Letter to My Brother

To my brother...

There was a time we used to be close. A time when I meant something to you. Okay, so I was a senior in high school with a job who also avoided being home at all costs, but I did show up at some point during a majority of the nights I lived there. If it was before your "bedtime," we could play music and act like fools for whatever reason our sleep deprived selves could come up with. If I came home closer to midnight, I would chill in your dark room and we would talk about random shit for awhile, nearly silently to protect you from your mom and step dad, or my dad and step mom, I don't even know.

Believe it or not, I miss making your crazy ass YouTube videos and somehow getting exposure from like half the middle schoolers in Renton, many of whom I knew from volunteering, serving, or youth group. Even if I complained and bitched at you 90% of the time, I miss that. Child, you are amazing with all those green screens and fancy photography lights.

Believe it or not, I was cool with you roasting the crap out of my life. Most people do that to me cause I'm just that easy of a target. I don't care, but I do deserve it. I was okay with you roasting me.

Oh, and believe it or not, even though I was always irritated, I thought it was funny how you literally fell in love with my interests, especially Aviation. Good Lord, because of you I have NEVER lost an argument with people about airplanes, which surprisingly happens more often than expected when you're obsessed with airplanes and the only girl in year two of high school physics. For real though, I never thought I would EVER have so many incredibly heated debates about airline logistics and aviation manufacturing, until you became an avgeek too. And oh my gosh, you're so stubborn and argumentative that it suddenly became a CHALLENGE to make conversation about the things I literally talked about every day: Airbus, Boeing, Southwest, Delta, Alaska, ya know, all the airplane things. I love you for that too.

And then the time I decided to let your annoying ass take the lead because you wouldn't shut up about how you knew exactly where we were, immediately before you got us on the wrong bus and caused us to do a circle around the Landing? Yeah, that was just one of our interesting bus adventures. I miss that too.

But my heart started hurting long ago. Even though I loved you, I liked hanging out with you, even though I rejected you as a STEP brother and only made you my brother, I knew I had limited time to be on good terms. I knew that manipulation and corruption was seeping into your heart years ago. I knew that you would soon be brainwashed into thinking I was an enemy and that you would want nothing to do with me. And what hurt the most was knowing that it wasn't your fault, and once again, I was powerless to do anything.

You started to get more easily pissed off at me about half way through my senior year. You started to believe every lie your parents spoke about me. You also started to treat me like the trash you began to believe I was without even knowing it. You got more and more fake with me and you began to use me. It wasn't your fault. It's a pattern that you were following, a pattern that I saw coming long before it began.

Then it all went EXTREMELY wrong. I fucked up and made a fatal error. I committed to something that I couldn't follow through on and ever since that day, you cut me out of your life and began to truly hate me. This mistake reaffirmed your view and beliefs about who I am. I won't live it down, and I know it won't work out. I've come to a point where I accept that and try to move past it. I can't change it, because even if you forgave me and wanted me back in your life, it will never be the same. I can't spend hella time with you anymore now that you live 45 minutes away and I have a busy life of my own to try to reassemble. I can't talk to you like a brother, because you were already taught a lie and I know you won't be open to learning the truth.

I know I will never get to be a sister, not to you, not to my other brothers, who will only hear stories and never actually get to grow up with me. But you will always be my brother, nothing less.