1 Big Brother

Do you know what it feels like to be a big brother? In my youngest years, I was simply a child. A year after I was born my little sister was also birthed.

A year later our little sister was born. We then had the three of us. I don't remember any of it.

Then there was the fourth.

It was a little boy… our baby brother.

We were so close back then, but I guess that's cause we were children. I technically had no real responsibilities. I didn't and still don't understand what it truly means to be the big brother.

At that time I felt like I wasn't a brother to my siblings.

...I was the enforcer.

I took out my anger onto them because I was always so mad back then.

I assume you could say I hated the world.

The people around me… I don't know. I think they tried to brainwash me. With the idea, my mother was terrible at what she did. But over time I've understood that my mother was my greatest gift.

I am an older brother.

But I still don't understand it.

No one told me what it means.

And my father wasn't there to teach me.

A couple of years later I had another little brother.

I don't remember taking care of him.

I suppose I was still young.

For a year or so he still had his father with him. But his father ended up in prison so he couldn't teach what I needed. Though I did at some point learned to be more responsible. Then years later there was another brother to be born.

At this point, I didn't want more siblings and yet it happened. Such a beautiful little smile was born from my mother. But that didn't mean all was well. Because that child was born, a connection to the man who is unfit to be the father of such purity.

At that time truly started to pick up the meaning of older brother.

Leader, Caretaker, Responsibility, a Safeguard.

That meant I was also ended maturing a lot out of necessity. To protect my siblings and my mother - from drunken human-shaped cancer.

Now when I say this I don't mean he was always drunk and violent. Though that did not mean he did not cause trauma upon my siblings as well as I and my mother. Being near him put me on edge - I always feel the need to be on guard against him.

Like I was slowly being pushed to the edge of something and close to falling off. I felt threatened and I hated the feeling- my heart racing with rage, fear, and confusion. I was close to falling off a cliff that held my sanity.

That is what Big Brother meant to me. At least when he was around me.

Touching the next couple of years there have been many fights against him.