Absence makes the heart grow fonder - but it sure makes the rest of you lonely
22:30
3pm, Monday afternoon. It's a rainy, cloudy, dull day and I'm sitting in my bed with the electric blanket on, in my hoodie and the bed next to me is unoccupied for the first time and for the first time in eighteen years, I have peace and quiet. I have my own space, I have the room to myself, I have no one constantly yapping in my ear - and it is so horribly weird and disorienting that I can't stand a second of it.
The weekend gone marks the day that my brother moved away from home. And it feels crazy sad that I'm actually writing this because holy shit he's left home. The little boy that I shared my childhood with, fought and bickered with, confided and traded stories with, has moved out for five long years and I can't even process that thought, let alone cope with the avalanche of feelings it's crushing me with. Saying goodbye to him, coming home without him and coming back to a blindingly empty room, was hands down one of the hardest things I have ever had to do.
I remember when I was three and a half years old and I went into the hospital hand-in-hand with my aunty only to run back out crying because I had seen the face of a little boy peeking up at me from my mother's arms when all I had ever wanted was a little sister. Fast forward eighteen years, and now I'm crying because that little boy has left home. For me, home isn't home without him. In part because it's only ever been the two of us, and in part because circumstances forced us to share a bedroom for our whole lives. That's sixteen years of sharing a room with my kid brother, four lilac walls that have heard more secrets, stories and inside jokes than time can tell. There are memories that span our lifetime that have made him more friend than brother.
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| My photo buddy, football buddy, and life buddy |
There are the nights we'd stay up late in secret listening to Champions League football on a little gold radio we had stashed away in a drawer and we'd strain our ears to hear for a Liverpool goal in the quiet of the night because we had no Sky Sports and a curfew of 9pm and my dad working night shifts, coming home at ten, would have a fit if he saw or even heard us awake. There are the midnight talks when the lights were off and we'd whisper our ramblings, school stories, and secrets into the silent darkness. There are the Harry Potter marathons we constantly do when one of us says "I feel like watching a Harry Potter movie today"; there are the quotes and scenes we re-enact all the damn time and reference in our daily life because it's like our not-so-secret language. There are the random scattered moments that we remember from our childhood that crack us up but no one else gets because only the two of us experienced it. Like spilling ice cream in the back of my uncle's car literally a second after he said "don't get the car dirty because it's brand new", and making my cousin so angry at the cinema that he brought us straight home after we couldn't decide which movie to watch and all my brother could care about was sharing a pack of flying saucers by "taking one and passing it around".
It's weekends spent cross legged on the bed in our Liverpool shirts watching a lagging stream on the laptop (we still don't have Sky Sports) while munching our way through a bowl of popcorn. It's spending revision periods together, with the room enshrouded in utter silence aside from our hushed mutterings as we memorise nonsensical crap, punctuated by a random joke, a mini rant, or an undeserved social break. It's coming home from work after a long day and having him just there, grinning from his twin single bed as I enter the room, annoying the hell out of me from the second he opens his mouth and yet it feels like my day just got ten times better. It's the snide jokes and inappropriate banter, the ranting and complaints, the mutual feeling of failing miserably at adulting, the darkly humorous way we look at life, being on the same wavelength pretty much all the time - so much so that we end up saying the same thing at the same time more times than we'd like to admit. I like to call it our twin telepathy that's not so twin-like. It's taking selfies and ganging up on the parents during dinner time debates. It's arguing and bickering and teasing, yet being unable to function without each other; it's not eating until the other comes down to sit at the dinner table, or not going out with the parents unless the other is coming. It's singing silly duets in the kitchen and having breakfast together on weekend mornings and sharing the highs and lows of life as they come.
It's the small things. It's the company and constant conversation and the simple matter of his presence that's just...gone. The bed's been stripped, the shelves have been wiped clean and now his side of the room is completely bare. The eerie emptiness of my room and the deafening silence and suffocating loneliness is too much to bear. It's like losing a limb and not being able to work out how to function without it. I have people telling me that it won't be so bad because I'll see him at weekends and in the holidays - but it's not the same. I'm losing the safe knowledge that when I come home, there's always somebody who'll listen, understand, and be on my side. I'm losing the back-and-forth banter, the random bouts of silliness, the constant that's been in my life for eighteen years. And the worst part is that when (actually, if) he comes back home, I'll be 27 and God everything is going to be so different. It's a huge chunk of time that will forever mark a "before" and "after".
It is killing me. It feels like I'm an only child again and Jesus Christ it is slowly killing me from the inside out. It's like my life has just undergone a paradigm shift and it all feels so imbalanced and...wrong. I am falling to pieces and sometimes, it's a struggle just to hold it together. I have everyone telling me that it gets easier, so much easier that soon I won't even notice he's gone and all I can think is, is that what I want? Because I don't want our relationship to change. It's selfish and maybe unreasonable, but I wish for nothing more than for us to remain as close as we are now.
I hate it. I hate that he had to move away and I hate that I hate it. But for what it's worth, I'm happy for him and so incredibly proud. It may sound crazy, but he's my inspiration for so much in life. I look up to him in so many ways and for all his quick wit, sharp tongue and smart mind, I know he's going to make us all a thousand times prouder in five years time.
Godspeed little one. Godspeed.
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