If you love something, let it go. If it comes back to you, it’s yours forever, if it doesn’t, then it was never meant to be.

The only person you can change is you.

When people show you who they are, believe them.

Brother #1 and I have not been getting along for years. We clash regularly and although I’m older by seven years, my so-called maturity doesn’t show when fighting with him. I almost always apologize to him after our fights, not because my point isn’t valid but because of the way I tried to make my point, because I resorted to yelling and screaming. He has never dignified my apologies with a response.

Until today, I didn’t realize that as far as he’s concerned, we have been in the middle of one big fight for all these years. I try not to hold grudges as a general philosophy, and when we’re not fighting I always thought things were fine between us because I didn’t sense any tension. Of course I realized that our fights touched on the same themes, but I really didn’t think things between us were that bad, to the point where he wants nothing to do with me. He’s told me before that he doesn’t care for me, that I’m nothing to him, even that he hates me, but I thought they were words spoken in anger. Maybe they are, but what I realized as I responded to his text message today is that I had reached my limit too: my heart is broken that he does not care for me as his sister, as a human, even though I’d die for him. But I don’t have to fix him; I can’t fix him (I’ve tried in different ways over the years to reach out to him). My job now is to do what I need to do to fix me.

I hate the feeling of being estranged from people, especially if I didn’t do anything to cause it. I hate the feeling that someone hates me “just because”, but I have to accept that this happens and I cannot control it. My family is incredibly close, but over the years Brother #1 has made it clear that he does not want to be close to us and that’s painful. He makes an effort to miss milestones of family members. He’s one sixth of our family and always will be, but he wants out. He’s decided the other family members are bearable in small doses but he’s made sure to let me know that I’m the one he has the least use for. That hurts.

But this experience is not at all unique: lots of families deal with estrangement. In my reply to his text message, I told him I’ll honour his desire to no longer interact. Maybe this tactic will work, maybe it won’t, but right now I have to try to take the focus off fixing him and turn my attention to myself and my flaws. My hope is that with the professional help I’m seeking, I’ll learn how to interact with my family, including Brother #1, without feeling sick to my stomach about our non-relationship. I know that good things will come from this move to seek help. I’ll pray too that things change between us for the better, but I’m looking forward to learning how to find some peace or sense of “okayness”, even if things remain like this.

Filed under: Family by jummy