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Somethings always stay

I wrote this for you when you were leaving last year but never shared it with you. Given that today is Siblings Day, I felt like it was an appropriate time to share it.

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Letting you go was extremely hard. Not because I will never see you again, but because I will never see you again like this. We have lived a certain life of dependency for the last two and a half decades now. Just our little, three people unit. Right from the time when protecting you against pain and bitterness was my only priority, to the time when you became the reason mom and I felt safe at night, it has been a tumultuous journey. We have had moments of disagreement, anger, disappointment. But there has always been the knowledge that no matter what, we have each other. 

The next time I meet you, it will be different. It will be your home, your friends, your context, and I will be a visitor. Perhaps we may live together again. But things will change. 

I long for the moments of insecurity and loneliness that made us so dependent upon each other. I long for the few dinners that we took with just each other. Even if we had nothing to talk about, the silence was always enough. I long for all the movies we went for, all the last minute rushing and fighting. I long for the consistent change that was our life. Moving homes, moving friends, moving lives. But always having us. I long for all of that. 

Can I ever explain to you how deeply I feel for you? So intense is the feeling that everything else pales in comparison. I don’t always express myself and most often I get perceived as cold and detached for it. But I wish I could explain to you exactly what I feel. How I long to always protect you from the world. How I wish that our few car rides with rockstar on full blast would never end. How I feel like hurting someone back that even brings the smallest of pain to you. How you are, and will always be my little brother - the one that didn’t understand anything because I shielded him from the harshness of life. 

Life has brought us full circle. Now it is you who shields me from all that life holds - from my inabilities to be social, from my feelings of loneliness, from my own self. 

I miss you, and a part of me will always pine for a moment of just you and me - playing chess in Europe, driving from hundreds of places to back home, goa, at home in our various rooms, in school buses, racing our cars on our way to college….our memories are endless, just like our love.

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