You know, I think that most siblings born within ten years of each other go through this decade long phase of arguing with each other incessantly over absolutely nothing. This period serves several purposes:
1. It proves which sibling is better.
2. It drives parents, cousins, friends, pets, furniture crazy.
3. It gets useless arguing out of your system.
Sometimes, siblings just don't have this sort of "rivalry" while growing up together. Lots of factors can influence this--your parents' marital status, your school life, your extended family, the growing availability of internet, etc. In the instance of my brother and I, all of the above factors kept a sort of distance between us that bred fondness for the others' company, a fondness that is rare between younger siblings.
But we aren't young anymore, now, are we?
Don't get me wrong. My bro is my favorite dude on the planet. Literally. He's amazing. And so when we decided, hey, we should live together, it seemed like THE. BEST. IDEA.
Hindsight is 20/20.
There is no one I would rather live with, and I mean that, honest. But I'm starting to think that maybe because we missed that nice little decade worth of horrible fighting and bickering and hair-pulling and going na-na-na-nu boo- boo at one another, we are swiftly reentering a second childhood where proximity has forced us into an uncomfortable tense phase of "relearning" who and what we are, and what we mean to each other.
This has been rewarding in a lot of ways. One, I'm really learning what it means to have someone in my ADULT life related to me by blood who I trust implicitly and know will take care of me and love me no matter what. I've really got this horrible fear that all the love I experience with the exception of my best friend, dad, and mom, is conditional. Finding this awesome dude who has orbited my life but rarely directly influenced it has been an amazing experience over the past few years. We've lived together now for three months and all the pluses are great. Some of the minuses though can be rough. Admittedly, it's mostly my fault. I tend to nit pick with the bro for no reason at all. He is tolerant of it. But sometimes, he intentionally antagonizes me to combat my bitchy, cynical nature. The below comics are demonstrations of actual events. Enjoy.
"If you give me snacks I'll reward you by no longer invading your personal space!" -Teej
Attack! def:
The act of maliciously, humorously, and other adverbs too, having good natured fun with the mundane, and things we wish were much simpler. Like relationships, technology, and rhetoric. Enjoy us.
I remain deeply concerned by the possibilty of the house lacking snacks when I return. In fact, I lay awake at night, dreading getting home, in a fit of starvation, and finding nothing but tubes of caramel and fresh pineapple slices. (The horror!)
ReplyDeleteAlso, I miss you bunches, little sis.
-T