Growing Pains
I have always struggled with the idea of growing up. I had always wanted to be older than I was, but the older I got, the more I wanted to turn back the clock. There are a plethora of reasons a lot of us struggle with the topic of time and life moving forward. For me, a lot of it has to do with my brother.
When we were younger, we were on an equal slate, with no sense of reality that separated us. Both in preschool, kindergarten, middle school, and so on, at the same time. But even while doing life at the same pace, under the same roof, and with the same rules, our lives looked completely different. When I would run around the playground making friends and coming up with song and dance numbers, my brother sat and ate lunch with his aids. One of us would be invited to playdates and the other would have therapy 5 times a week. One of us got to have sleepovers, go to parties, have drunken nights, and drive a car, and the other stayed at home with our parents. One of us was able to stay up until 2 in the morning texting our high school crush and the other did not have typical conversations with typical kids. It wasn’t necessarily my brother’s choice to not do these things- his inability to do so were the cards he was dealt.
I have always wished I could trade places, and give him the life I have lived and will be able to live in the future. Everytime I walk out of the house to go to a friends and turn on my car engine, I see my brother inside the house waving goodbye to me and it instantly pains me- that for some reason chosen by the universe that we will never know, my brother will never be able to do the things I am fortunate enough to do. I live with the constant guilt of being able to do the things he is not. As we get older it worsens. I am planning on going to college, and moving out of the house in a few months. I am planning on studying abroad, and traveling the world. One day I will get married, have kids, and a house of my own. All are things we tend to take for granted because we don’t always realize that there are people in this world, like my brother, who will never experience these simple, yet precious milestones that life has to offer. I have always wondered if he resents me for it. But that mindset drives me absolutely insane.
The one thing that brings me back down to reality is looking at his own life, and realizing how much pure and undivided love surrounds him. My friends are as equally mine as they are his. He gets to eat whatever he wants, and spend as much time on his ipad as would like to. He goes on drives with me, with the windows down, and gets to blast old Lady Gaga and Kesha songs. He gets reminded of how much he is loved every single day. He may not have the finer things in life, but he sure has the most important things in life- a family who loves him with their whole being, a roof over his head, and is taken care of. As I grow older, I want to experience so much of the goodness life has to offer and oftentimes get caught up in it. But every now and then, when I catch a glimpse of my brother saying goodbye to me as I get in my car, I remember that the simple things in life are all I will ever truly need, no matter how much time goes by.
