“Hey Gab, does this outfit match?” my brother asks me as he bursts into my room unannounced. I stare at him, speechless, as I want nothing to do with him now that he has just disregarded my privacy and entered my safe space without so much as a knock. 

“No. Now, can you get out?” I respond abruptly waiting for him to leave. I don’t mean to be rude, but I simply don’t understand how he can’t even do the bare minimum before entering my room. All I ask for is a knock.

In the moment, my blood boils, my voice raises, and my patience diminishes at an exponential rate.  I spew the anger I feel right at him, but this doesn’t get rid of the annoyance; it just encourages it. Then, I go right back to whatever I was busy doing and after a few minutes, the regret begins to crawl to the surface. Why did I yell at him? Why did I disregard his feelings? I should be happy he wants my opinion on things. I should be happy he wants to spend time with me. Thoughts like these race through my head as my guilt eats away at me from the inside. 

As a result of my brother wanting to spend time with me, I’m mad, he’s mad, yet neither of us will say a word to one another until we somehow manage to come to the unspoken agreement of acting like nothing ever happened. I don’t think this is the best way to solve our issues, but it seems to work, well enough at least.

Sometimes my mom even tries to get involved in these little mishaps of ours; telling him he needs to learn how to knock and telling me I need to understand that all he is looking for is time with his big sister. 

Time is a funny thing. It can go by so fast at times yet so slow at others. As time goes by, so do people. They come and go throughout our lives, but no matter what disagreement, argument, or fight we entail, it will always be my brother and me.