"Somewhere in me, there is strength" - Relient K

This is hard. Here is this man that I have known all of my life, and all of my life he has been a stranger. I knew him every other weekend, and in the summer. Then he moved in with us, but a stranger, he remained. When he moved out, he all but disappeared and I saw him at Christmas and then for two minutes at thanksgiving when we took him a plate at work, and then at Christmas again. And now, here he is, living in the same house as me, and it is hard. It is difficult to share memories with a stranger. He still looks at me as a child, when I am the one who has done the growing up. He is everything I am not or would ever be. I love him and pity him at the same time. How does this work now? Do I still pretend I do not know what you do when you leave the house? Should I ignore all the bad things that you do?

And it is difficult to learn to live with someone knew, and this I have experience with. My younger brother and I were the only ones to ever come upstairs, so everything was just the way I wanted it, most of the time. But now he is here and there are a zillion things that he does that irritates me. I had finally gotten the other brother civilized, and now this. For instance, the clothes in the hallway, music loud with the door open, smoking in every room, squeezing the toothpaste from the top, leaving all kinds of random junk on the counter, not flushing the toilet. . . And OH MY GOSH, to top it all, he took my new handtowel from the bathroom sink, MY handtowel, the only one not located in my room, and he soils it by um. . . well anyway, I threw it away. Well, you better believe that I am not putting the other handtowel in the bathroom. I'll just wait until I get into my room to dry my hands now. Im so mad and disgusted. Out of all the towels in the whole house. . .

And his friend was here today. I put on my company face and said all the nice things one is supposed to say to strangers and smiled. They left together. I think he is staying all night with his friend again. Good. Very, very good.

I don't like boys.

Sarah Jo