To my brother:

You may be wondering why I’m doing this. To be honest, I don’t really know either. Maybe I’m using this as an outlet to let my feelings and thoughts out, or maybe this is just an unorthodox apology letter that will most likely never reach you. That’s okay though. I don’t really want you to read this because I’m really scared on what you might think; you’ll probably laugh at me. Since there is a 15% chance that you’ll see this anyway, let’s just talk for a little while.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry for being mean in the past. When we were young, I used to act like I hated you for some reason. I just had to somehow express some sort of deep dislike for you that was never really there. I honestly don’t know why I acted that way. It could be because I wanted to be like the people on TV; the siblings who never got along. I thought that was normal, so I guess I just went with it. Jealousy also played a factor. I mean, who wouldn’t be jealous of you? You were creative and kind and honest to others. You were also pretty funny and smart and you liked sports. Everyone pretty much gravitated towards you. It’s either those two reasons, or I was just a brat. I remember I would tell you that I hated you almost every day. I would steal some of your favorite things, and eat that super rare chocolate you got from your teacher, and draw all over your pictures just to see your reaction to it. I’d bother you so many times, it probably annoyed you like crazy. The other day, our mom told me a story about us. I used to say that “I wish you weren’t my brother,” and you would play along a say that you “wish I wasn’t your sister.” I’d get angry and shout that I didn’t care. I did.

Of course, there were times where we had out fun with each other. We’d make up our own games and play them when our parents were at work. We called the first game “Roll”; we would wrap ourselves up in a thick blanket and actually roll down the stairs. After that, we created so many other games, but a guess we weren’t really creative so we just kept calling each one “Roll 2” and “Roll 3” and so on. We took care of each other too. Like that one time I felt sick and cold, and you just threw a ton of blankets on me. There was also another time where you were the one who felt sick, and I made you ramen and a sandwich. Anyway, we got along sometimes. Yet, I still tried to act tough and act like I despised your guts most of the time. My younger self was just stubborn like that.

I think the first time I realized that I shouldn’t act the way I did was when you were in 5th grade and I was in 3rd. You were going on a 3-day field trip to Tybee Island, and I was ecstatic! My thoughts at the time were: “Oh, I don’t have to see your face for 3 days? Sounds awesome!” and so on. On the first day, that’s exactly what I felt. I was over the moon. I felt like I was on cloud 9. However, I can’t really fly so I have to come back down somehow, right? That describes the next 2 days. Needless to say, those 2 days were boring and just plain uneventful. I’d realized that before the trip, my source of entertainment was talking to you. Since you were gone, it just felt empty without you. So in those last 48 hours without you, I reflected. I thought that despite all my actions of maliciousness, you were still patient with me. You were still so annoyingly nice to me, and that made me either more angry or more riddled with guilt. The anger I felt would mostly be directed towards myself. All in all, I missed you. I wrote this down in a diary like the prepubescent girl I was and embarrassingly enough, you found it a few weeks after your trip. Reading someone’s diary was kind of rude, don’t you think? But so is harassing people so I guess it was somewhat acceptable. My point is, after that trip of yours we started to become close. We would play our games more than fight and soon enough our fighting days were a thing of the past. If we time skip to where we are now, we don’t fight at all. Maybe the playful ones, but that’s it. We don’t have any ill-intentions towards each other, and I’m happy about that. We even share the same interests; we like the same music, the same shows, the same games, etc. We’d share conversations about them like “hey, did you watch the new episode of this?” or “did you hear this group’s new song?” Believe it or not, I enjoy spending time with you.

Call me selfish, but even now I wish we talked more. You’re a senior now and you have to leave for college next year. I won’t be able to talk to you or laugh with you for almost an entire year, and I’m scared that I’ll feel lonely. Of course I will. I’d miss you tons. Lately, all you do is hang out with your friends. It’s gotten to the point where we share about 10-15 words on a daily average. Most of them are just greetings too.  We still joke around with each other every now and then, and we still talk about our interests sometimes. But those conversations last about 3 minutes each. When we see each other in the hallway, sometime we interact and sometimes we just ignore each other’s presence all together. That kind of sucks, I guess. If you’re reading this, try to spend more time with family. Our mom misses you too.

I feel like changing my thoughts and actions towards you was significant. Kind of because I don’t act like a total jerk anymore. Thank god that bitterness didn’t stick onto my personality. It’s mainly important because I made a friend I could talk to. Because you’re family, there are things that I can discuss with you that I can’t with my friends that I talk to outside of our house. I’m really glad that we’re closer now compared to how we were when we were younger. I hope we don’t drift apart like the siblings from the movies. Your only choices are either keeping our current closeness or being more attached but not uncomfortably attached in the future.

I love you, bro.
 

   Your sister,

            Mackensie V