My Big Big Brother

I have a brother, his name is Jonas. He is four years older than me, tall and blond, while I am small and dark. It seems that most people in this world, or at least country or town knows my brother. I would often just tell people that I'm the sister of Jonas and they would then often seem surprised or act as though they admire me for it. My junior high school teacher, that was obviously disappointed in me, told me once that it had to be something great about me as well, since I had a brother like Jonas. I have always thought the same thing... even though I felt he meant that the only thing that were great about me were my brother... I would guess now today, that there is something great about everyone, even the once that dont have a brother like Jonas.

It has always been hard to be bad next to my brother. It is, because I've always admired him and looked up to him. They say that my kindness is harder to know, my talents are more difficult to see. Some say though that it's easier to appreciate my greater sides than my brother's, maybe it is, because my brother is always nice, always fair, always committed and he is always very correct on almost all matters.

In many ways I always used to be jealous on my brother and I guess a part of me still is. He is outgoing, charming and make easily new friends. He is very kind and soft, smart, talented and willing. He seem to be good at almost everything he puts himself into. My parents have a hundred reasons to be proud of my brother for and it's difficult to find something negative to say about him.

I have always been shy, insecure and have never had many friends. I'm a quite difficult person, temperamental and moody. I hated school and I've found most tasks very difficult to handle. I have never been very willing either and have been more stubborn than what is good for me. I feel I have failed more than I have accomplished. My parents have had a hundred problems that has to do with me. All in all It's quite easy to find something negative to say about me, even though our parents have never expressed it much. They have always said that they like us for what we are in ourselfs.

The only things I were good at in school were drawing and writing essays. I wrote really long essays with a million grammatical errors. I wanted to be a writer when I became an adult, I wanted to write the best literature the world had ever seen. When I were little I started typing on many different types of books on the old typing machine we had. It was everything from mystery to politics, generally subjects I didn't know anything about. So I usually gave them up quite fast and thought I'd leave it until I was older and knew more about the things I wanted to write about. I wrote a lot of poetry though. Now later on when my parents have found some of my old poetry works from I was little and I have read them, I have found them to be quite interesting and good actually. I do belive I had a great insight into many things when I were little. I remember that I used to share some of my written work with my first teacher, she usually were very stunned at my headwork when she read it. I was this really shy girl that never spoke much, but in the poetry that I wrote as a child I belive I expressed much more than what was expected. Now they were not very great in a specific poetic way, if you think of the rules of poetry, but they were great to have been written by someone like me.

When I were born my brother had expected that I would be just as old as him, a boy that he could play with. So it wasn't so strange that he were a little disapointed, when he discovered that I were just a small baby girl.

My brother were somewhat hyperactive as a child. He buzzed around like a bee all the time. In the classes his teachers would tell my parents that he used to do small stage shows, almost every day. It meant that he would show everyone how they walked in the military and he would make long speeches about absolutely nothing. He went to the
toilets around a million times and had a problems with his concentration. No matter what, my brother have always been very special, in my eyes. He used to cry if someone would speak harshly to him, while I would just get mad. When some of the older boys in our neighbourhood hit him, my mother told him to not accept it, to fight back a little or walk away, but my brother would always say he didn't wanted to hurt or ignore anyone. I was never teased in any specific way when I grew up, but if I were I would usually be a lot more expressive than my brother.

Many people say that my brother is much like our grandmother, the mother of our mother. She also had this sweet carefree personality that lighted up any gloomy situation. My grandmother practically knew the whole town and she had many friends. The more I think about it the more I feel she lives trough my brother.

I have heard that I'm more like my granddad. He were stubborn, temperamental, had few friends and were often quite sad. He had a very shifting mood and was a difficult person to get to know. I feel I never knew him, I only remember that I were scared of him. My mother have said that he was the nicest and most interesting person to know, if you managed to get close to him. So later on I've felt sad about not knowing him. I would have like to know the person they say reminds me of me.

No matter what, my brother and I have always been quite good friends. Despite of our big differences, we would play together when we were kids, we would share and look after eatch other. I remember we both had a pig sticker on the doors to our rooms. My pig was pink and my brother's were blue. I would climb onto a chair in his room while he were at school, when I were too young to go there, I would take his sticker and go put it on my door. I remember I didn't always wanted to go trough with all the hassle of getting up on the chair again, when I placed it on my door, so I just stretched my little arm and glued it on in my height level. Often I didn't get it up in the right position, so I would pull it off and put it on again. When my brother came home he would see the emty spot where his blue pig used to sit and go mad. He would tear it off my door and put it back where it used to be. I would then go and have a look at his door and think to myself -"ah, he put it back in that high postion where it used to be, I will have to stand on a chair again tomorrow then". The next day I would pull a chair from his room over to the door, as quietly I could manage and get the sticker down again. Sometimes my mum would hear me messing around with the chair and come in and ask me if I was going to steal his pig sticker again. I would say no. Other times she would surprise me when I had the blue sticker in my hand. I would still claim I wasn't going to steal it then. If my mum wouldn't make me go out of my brother's room or take the sticker away from me and put it back up, I would run over to my room and glue it up on my door. My brother would always take it back and I would steal it again and again, if I hadn't been busy with something else. The blue pig sticker would eventually not be a sticker anymore, it would turn into a dusty hairy curled blue pig plastic thing, that wouldn't stick to anything. I guess my brother threw it. See, my brother had so many stickers on his door, generally because he had lived longer than me. I wanted to have that many door stickers too and I guess I was too young to understand the ethics of stealing. It wasn't really about competition though, I just wanted to be on his level. I thought he would like me more then.

When he were at school I would do all sorts of bad things in his room. One of the bad things I would do was pulling out the film in his music cassettes, because it was fun to touch the film, pull it out and trow it around. Afterwards when I realized I couldn't put the film back in, I knew I had been bad again and wanted to make it better by putting the destroyed cassettes furthest into his drawers, behind all the other things. The film would stick out of the closed drawer and I would strave trying to hide it inside for a long time. I hoped he wasn't going to notice or miss his cassettes and that he would never pull out the drawer in his night table again. Of course he noticed almost at once that I had been in his room again. I wasn't scared of my brother as I knew he was nice, I just didn't want to upset him. I wanted him to like me. Somehow I always managed to be bad though, a little badness here and there and I would soon hear him yell for my mum and tell her about my nasty ways. Sometimes when I tried to do nice things for my brother, they would very often turn into bad things and the good motives never seemed to shine trough. He didn't have a large amount of patience with me when we were little, while I could sit for hours and listen to his nonsense. I guess this is how it often is with younger and older siblings.

My brother wore diapers longer than me, when his friends came over he would stick his head out of the door and tell them to wait a minute. He would then pull out his diaper and go out. He were scared of the toilet and when he started to use it on a regular basis our dad would take a picture of him sitting on the toilet looking brave and mature. He usually played with cars and toy guns, he sucked his lip, peed in bed, walked and talked in his sleep and he read comic books while he avoided the text bubbles. Often he and his cowboy and Indian boy friends would nail my dolls to the trees. That was a sad thing and at that time I never understood the bad ways of boys when they were in a group together. My first friend; a boy that lived across the street, were very nice and sweet when I spent time with him alone. When the older boys and my brother came home from school, my friend would suddenly change and go get his toy guns. Of course girls were not allowed to play with guns. Often I would play alone then or watch them from the distance. There wasn't many girls living in our neighbourhood.

My brother have traveled all around the world. He have studied in the USA, Scottland and France. He reads Psychology, Anthropology and Sociology. He have produced music that he have never given out. I belive it could have sold billions. He have written a book. He is a great cook. He rhymes and write fantastic poetry. He is also very good at drawing. Today he lives in France with his French girlfriend. The thing I like the most about my brother though, is that he is not self-centered, he is not greedy and he seem to care more about the small things than about high materialistic goals. My brother is the one in the family that I feel deserves to have all these greats talents, generally because he is the one that will always use them for something good.

So. I've always been a little jealous on my brother and I have hated myself for it. I have shifted from admiring my brother for being my brother, to hating that people outside the family sometimes seem to see me trough him. I've felt invisible next to him. It's not right of me to feel that way, because me and my brother have been treated equal by my parents. It shouldn't matter what other people think, I have always felt special underneath it all, but you cant think or feel right all the time. I dont want to have to defend myself for being me, to make exuses for not managing to be more like my brother. It's not a good thing. Sometimes I have had an evil wish that my brother wouldn't be good a drawing or writing. I'm the creative one in this family and I were the one that cared about drawing or writing when we grew up. My brother is good with people, I am not. My brother is good with most things, I am not. I want to be good at something too, something that not only my parents will love me for. I know it's a human feeling, and I'm older now. I want to just be me more than ever. I just wish that most people would try to see the great things in everyone. That teachers wouldn't just look up to the outgoing and the successful once.

Why do I write this? I write this because I care. I care about my brother and I do belive he have taught me a lot. Not because it's so easy to admire him, but because we are so different and yet we have always been very good friends. My brother seem to be on a whole different level than me, but he is probably one of the people I like most of all to spend time with. It's sure nice to know someone that are different from yourself, someone that can tell you about things you never knew about yourself. I have found now that I'm older, that my brother have admired me for many things too. It's a great thing for someone like me to know, as I have never felt as productive as him. I could write a lot more about my brother, but I would go on forever here then.

...It's a good thing to appreciate differences in one another and that was really what I wanted to say with this entry.