Two Best Friends

At this moment, I am sitting in the corner of my dining room on our eMac computer. The room is filled with the smell of yoghurt and there is a slight draft coming in the cracks of the window beside me. It’s 20.37 and I am in one of the worst moods I have been in a long time. In my living room across the hall I can hear my mum watching the results of ‘Dancing On Ice’ – a programme where celebrities are challenged to compete each week in ice dancing. She laughs loudly every so often to the murmur of the presenter’s voice. My dad is in the kitchen, clearing away the remainders of his home-cooked dinner. My younger brother is sitting in his room upstairs, on his computer, the place where he is every spare moment of his life. He has started to develop a bit of an attitude. He doesn’t even say hi anymore but just mumbles and complains. We fight a lot more now than we used to and we’ve become two very different people. I don’t know him anymore. Every time I try to have a conversation with him he just tells me to ‘shut up’ or ‘stop laughing’ and starts screaming at me until he gets so angry that he has to physically attack me before he can calm down. Just this morning I was laughing at something. He was sitting beside me on his computer with his headphones in his ears. He started saying to me:
“Shut up Rebecca!” 
“No-one likes you”,
“I’m serious, I don’t know a single person who says they like you, all my friends hate you”
I know that is an exaggeration and it didn’t hurt, it surprised me more than anything. I hadn’t done anything to him, I was laughing at something that I saw on the television and he comes at me like I’ve just pinched his scone! He’s done worse I suppose. I can hear it in the way he speaks, disrespect and selfishness. I have let my parents know what he does to me and how he’s the only person in this world that makes me flip. My parent’s love us both and they have to treat us equally, which I understand, but yet he still does it. Half the time I don’t say anything to my parents, as I know it won’t get me anywhere. But, to have to live with someone, who makes me angrier than anything else in the world, reduces me to tears, makes me feel so small and weak (even though I’m older) is so rude and disrespectful towards me and who is going to be my ‘brother’ for the rest of my life infuriates me so much that I can’t even bear to think about it. Things would be so much better if there was a camera in the room every time Yet, I always seem to give in when he’s in one of his ‘good moods’. But not a day goes by without even the smallest clash of words. Today, for example, I was studying in this exact room as the view from window relaxes me and makes me feel at ease. My brother had gone out to play about the streets with some friends. He phones my mum to ask if he can bring them home and if they can go on the play station and computer – which are in the same room as me. My mum says no to him as I am studying in that room. An hour later he brings them home anyway, regardless of what my mum just told him and with no respect to any of us. I end up having to finish off an English essay with them all shouting and screaming in my ear. Before my brother left the house at lunchtime he was sitting at his computer (yet again!) and my mum came in to sit down after an incredibly stressful week. My brother announces he’s hungry and says “I want some food” but doesn’t show the slightest care about getting it himself. I look at my mum and she sighs and asks what he wants for his lunch. He just sits there, demanding all these things and my mum, the hero that she is, doesn’t seem the slightest bit bothered, she just stands up and gets on with it. I sit staring at my brother, wondering why he treats people so badly. Apparently, it’s just a phase he’s going through and he will eventually grow out of it. I don’t know if I can wait that long as the number of days until I crack are narrowing. My mum once told me that I was similar to that when I was younger. I can remember being a really horrible person and a bully but I was so much younger then and I have matured. My brother is a lot worse and the hours he spends on his computer are having an effect on his mind. If he does ever grow out of it I don’t think I’ll ever forget what he’s done. He has made me so miserable and angry (at the worst times) that I don’t think forgiveness is even an answer. He’s meant to be a genius, he can read three books in a day, is doing the same maths as the year above him and uses words I’ve never even heard of. I feel that he is much smarter and wiser than me when it comes to school but I am much when it comes to life. That can be a good thing as life lasts longer than school. 
I just hope that one day my brother opens his eyes and tries to fix all the damage he has left behind him. I don’t know what’s going to happen when I leave home but I’m certainly not thinking of missing him.