Dirty blonde hair, round hazel eyes, rough tan skin. My brother is everything I'm not in the best ways possible; He’s the epitome of everything I'm not. It’s March of 2015, I'm seven years old and pacing back and forth in the narrow, white-walled hallway upstairs on the dirty tan carpet between mine and my mother’s room. She’s using the pregnancy test my dad bought 20 minutes ago. During childhood, anxiety was constantly a silent issue that hit me like a million bullets at once. It was a struggle not to cry, not to bite my nails, not to scream whenever I got random butterflies in my stomach; Waiting for my mother’s test results was no different. I go into my small purple room to find something to do because my nails are too short to bite, my fingers too raw, and the urge to vomit is too overwhelming. It’s not that I didn’t want a sibling, I had begged my mom for one because of how lonely I had felt all seven years of my life; It was the fear of accepting another in our house and wondering if he would like me or not. I throw up my purple comforter and take out a puzzle I had done a 100 times before from under my twin bed. As I sit on the floor surrounded by the spilled contents of the puzzle box, time feels so slow, and the room feels too stuffy as I pick at the edges of the cardboard puzzle pieces trying to relax. Suddenly my dad calls me from their room to announce I'll be having a sibling soon.
Month by month, day by day I watch and observe as my mother’s stomach grows and my father's workdays get longer. Every day was different with her emotions, I never really knew what to expect. It made me laugh a little bit to see how easily pregnancy can change you, but also showed me the importance of sympathy. While everyone laughed at her or made faces, my job was to understand and be there for her in any way I could. It didn’t matter if she was crying because fish had been baked instead of grilled, or if she wanted to explore every museum in LA to show her excitement for life. Doctors' appointments, lots of food, lots of sleep were repeated monthly until the final week of the 9-month mark. My mothers’ due date is so close that excitement is spilling out of me, I can’t contain it. Finally, the day to welcome my baby brother is here. I wait and pace for my brother to enter the world to be displayed to me. I can’t wait to see him, to meet him. How can you have a connection with something you’ve only touched through layers? How can you love something you don’t even know? But I did know him, I dreamed of him; I have always been ready to love and care for him. A bloody, crying baby enters the room next to my sweaty mother. He's beautiful, he reminds me of the sun bringing a warm feeling of light to me. So small, so magnificent, the true embodiment of innocence.
My moment of amazement is soon interrupted by the baby’s cry. Throughout the months following, the baby would continue to cry all day and all night. My other family would taunt us by saying he had strong vocal cords; My neighbors would laugh at us saying we had strong minds for being able to fight through that soon enough for his nickname to become chucky. The truth is, we didn’t. Too many sleepless nights passed, too many showers filled with tears, nails too bitten down because the baby would not stop crying. My brother was so hard to soothe, so hard to understand that I grew so unsure of myself as a sister or daughter because whatever I did would only make him cry. I couldn’t help him, I couldn’t help my parents, was I even fit to help myself and be useful? The constant worry surrounded me for weeks, I couldn’t stop thinking of myself as a burden to everyone around me. Two years have passed, he's about two and a half; He is learning to speak. He still cries but not as often, although that didn’t reduce the hanging feeling of burden from me. One day, he finds me sitting on the floor, crying in my room over trivial things too little to remember. He wobbles over to me, “Why are you crying?” “I don't know” I answered, because I couldn’t find the words to express the emotions gnawing at me. “You don’t have to cry, you are okay” he responds as he sits and hugs me tight enough to smell his easing strawberry shampoo. He said nothing else as he sat and observed the small purple room while comforting me. He had no reason and could've left me, but he didn't. A little boy understood sympathy and lack of judgment so young, it amazed me. It made me feel so loved. As I got older, my sympathy for others or ability to understand people faded while his only grew, and being able to watch that happen pushed me to learn about interactions and people more. Making people happy soon made me happy, learning the best ways to approach people made me feel better about myself because I see how effortlessly he does it for himself. My anxiety soon started to fade as my confidence rose, he changed me.
His easy kindness and welcoming smile at nine years old has always invited people instead of intimidating others into judgment, it is beautiful. I wanted to have that for myself as well, to glisten as brightly as he did in any room. Now with his dirty blonde hair, round hazel eyes, rough tan skin, my brother is everything I'm not in the best ways possible. He is the epitome of everything I wish to learn and become, my sun boy.
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