Older Siblings

            I had a huge fight with my younger brother a few years ago. He was seventeen and about to graduate high school. He was in that place that seventeen year olds often are, where he couldn’t wait to get out of our parents’ house and into the world he was going to conquer, never looking back at our hometown. The fight was about his driving and how reckless I thought he was being. I tried during that fight to emphasize that I was reacting the way I did because I worry about him. I was afraid that with his attitude that the world was going to chew him up and spit him out.

That day his reaction to my concern was to tell me that I needed to stop being a condescending asshole and he was tired of me acting like I’m his third parent, and I needed to stop treating him like he was a total idiot. I realized halfway through the conversation that there was nothing I could say that he wouldn’t interpret as me being exactly what he had just accused me of being. So I left. I walked out and went home.

It hit me harder than I expected. The accusations he hurled at me and the realization of how he viewed me stung. I never thought he was a moron. I thought he acted like one sometimes, but he was a seventeen year old male, that’s their job. He was, and still is, an incredibly intelligent young man, which made it all the more frustrating when he did stupid things.

            He wanted me to stop acting like his third parent. The problem there is that we are nearly eight years apart. I remember the day he came home from the hospital. I changed his diapers. A friend of mind told me to keep in mind that no matter how much I feel like a third parent I’m not. She mentioned that maybe he wants a more typical sibling relationship. I don’t know what that means. What the hell is a typical sibling relationship? I know that I’m not really his third parent; I’m his older sibling.

To all of the younger siblings out there I have this to say; this is our job. We worry about you and we don’t want to see you go through the shit that we did. We grew up with the same parents and can offer advice on how to deal with them. It might not work for you, but it’s more than we had. We had no precedent to deal with these people.

            This is why older siblings are so annoying, especially if we are significantly older than you. We remember when you were an infant; a helpless little, fragile infant. We were often more excited to have you than our parents, because they had done the new baby thing once and they were prepared. We had no idea what you were. Some of us wanted you for a long time. We were excited when we knew you were coming. We would have someone else to share life with. You completely disrupted our worlds. You were our sibling. We felt protective the second we saw you. We watched you as you started to walk and talk and we watched you learn.

            Then you grow up, and things get weird. You don’t need us anymore. Many of us go through more anxiety about you becoming an adult than our parents, because, again they’ve done this already and are prepared. We know that you aren’t that fragile infant anymore. We know that you’re strong and smart and ready to be an adult. But a lifetime of protective instinct is hard to suppress. And to be honest a lot of us just miss the kid who didn’t think we could do anything wrong.

I’m not saying it’s right. I’m not saying that older siblings are sages who always have or know the right answer. We will give you bad advice and we will drive you crazy. But we love you. We care for you more than we can possibly express. The fact that maybe you don’t need us is terrifying. The thought that we’ll have a relationship like our dysfunctional aunts and uncles have is mortifying.

We know you may have spent your life being referred to as our sibling. We know that must be irritating. We know you are a different person. You don’t need to prove it. Just be you. Realize that we’re just going to be us too. Let’s meet in the middle and maybe we’ll survive each other. If we’re lucky and open to listening to each other maybe we’ll even reach a place where we have a good, thriving relationship as adults.