My brother and I have been fighting since he was born. When my mom had my baby brother, I immediately had a vendetta against him. I was set on still being an only child. When Zachary was younger, I was the devil child of the two of us. I always had to be the center of attention so if he got in the way, I let him have it. Even though my behavior was very questionable when he was younger, it didn’t stay that way. The roles flipped when I became older and less focused on my parents’ attention. While I was mean in his young days, he was downright rude in my middle school days.
Regardless of who was mean and when, we both started fighting matches and wrestling sessions to take it out on each other. Even after I left for college, the arguments stayed and thrived. I hated it, to be honest. I wanted to be close to him. I felt like it was necessary—I mean he is still my brother, asshole or not.
At the end of Christmas break, after the stage of kind exchanges in the beginning and the nasty part in the middle, I walked into his gaming room to talk. I apologized for a fight we had earlier and started asking him about his relationships and how school was going. He filled me in and actually opened up about his love life. I did, too, and we had a lovely conversation. He also told me that he had joined DECA, a competitive business club.
While I was completely content with our rekindling at the end of Christmas break, I was more than pleasantly surprised when he called me a week after I went back to college. He called me, bursting with excitement, with great news. He had passed his driving test and also won first place in the DECA competition. I was so happy to hear the news from him and not just through the grapevine.
We’ve been texting now and then and keeping each other up to date. From sending silly pictures of each other to sharing the latest impulsive decision in our lives, we have talked a lot more. My favorite part of our new conversations so far is when he sent a picture of the girl he was currently seeing. He gushed about how cute she was, and it made my heart swell.
I’m so happy to be included more in Zach’s life. I hope that no matter how much we irritate each other, we will always keep in touch.
I love his goofy ass no matter how much he annoys me at times.