Prednisone

I've never really spoken much to my friends about my brother, except in jest or to relay some silly anecdote about something hilarious that happened involving him/he did. I always try to make light of the situation, painting him in a very silly light, laughing at times at him. Sometimes it's to the point that I suspect my friends think of him as a mere joke, because all I tell are the funniest stories. Fact is, making fun of things is the coping strategy my family decided to adopt when it was revealed that my younger brother suffered from severe autism. That and perhaps my Dad was always a joker, even before any of us were born.

Brought up in a large, supportive, extended family I had always been relatively sheltered from the day to day minutiae of bringing up my brother. I never had to take care of him, and as a result never really saw him as a real sibling. He was just an irritant when I was younger, destroying my toys, stealing my food, and taking my parents away from me. Just a creature that I shared a house and DNA with, but with no real affection. It was hard after all, for me to understand why my younger brother was the way he was, especially since as a child I was already questioning everything. It was hard to accept the answer "he just is like that", as an explanation for the millions of things he did that upset me. Then when it came to things he destroyed, because he wandered into my room, I would get scolded in turn because I should have "known better than to leave things lying around".

There was a time too I remember, when he got into a drawing and biting mode. I was, and still am an incredibly chaotic and messy person with my belongings. There were times where my textbooks would get chewed up to the extent that pages and covers would fall off. Then there was a flower drawing phrase, where every paper-like object would get flowers scrawled all over it, including my homework. One time, after my brother destroyed my math homework, I recopied it out without the working. My parents wrote a note to the teacher, who I was already terrified of. She took the note, accepted my new clean homework. When she gave them back however, she forgot completely about the note my parents had written and instead mocked me in front of the whole class for having such 'neat' homework that I didn't need to do any workings, implying heavily that I had copied all my work from someone. Strange how little things like that stay with you.

It wasn't till I was about 12 that my attitude towards my brother started to change slowly. I was growing older, more used perhaps, to things. It wasn't a rapid change, but an incredibly slow one. I had always been rather protective of him when I was younger, even though I wasn't a huge fan of him, so that didn't really change. What changed however was that I started to see him more as a living, breathing person, rather than just an It. It was then that I really started to become a sister, finally able to let him into my heart and play little silly games with him. Then, I could pick him up in my arms and swing him around until he laughed with delight. I could tickle him until he curled up into a ball. I could appreciate fully the fact that he was smiling at something I had done for him.

I'm not sure when the next turning point in my life came, though I suspect it was around the time I was 17. I say that because I remember a classmate noticing a bite mark on my wrist in class one day, and me not being unduly upset about the bite to make a big fuss of it to my friends. It's like I finally understood, "it just is". This was where I finally transitioned from sister into quasi-caregiver. These were a hard few years, with my brother finally hitting puberty. He rapidly outgrew me and most of the family in height, increased in muscle strength, became more defiant. It was harder to control him now from behaving badly in public. Plus physical force, like dragging him away from something, no longer worked. I still played with him, but I could no longer lift him up even though he'd pull my arms around his waist like before. He also became less ticklish. I started helping out a bit more, disciplining, bringing him to and from classes.

Almost exactly a year ago, my brother threw a massive tantrum and was completely freaking out. My parents barricaded themselves in their room, waiting for him to calm down. I had been preparing to go out clubbing with friends, and so even though knew something was happening, didn't quite know the extent or root cause. In my distracted mind, I decided the best way to get him to calm down and go to sleep would be to stick to the routine. I took his toothbrush, put toothpaste on it and called for him a few times to come and brush his teeth. Instead, he got more frustrated and lunged at me, grabbing me by the shoulders while digging his fingers into my skin and leaned over to try and bite me as I screamed and screamed for help. My parents ran out of the room to help, and I went back to my room to cry because I was so shaken by the incident. I had never been so scared of my brother before.

The first time I really brought my brother out alone before was just last week. I was going for a walk to clear my head of R, and decided to ask my brother along since he looked so bored. We walked to a park about 15 minutes away from home in the sweltering heat, and I watched my 17-year-old-but-still-a-baby brother squeeze himself into the playground set, some 50cm too tall for everything. Still, he was happy there, never having grown up in his mind. Getting home proved a bit tricker, since he didn't want to leave. Later in the week, as I left the house on Thursday to meet Jiayun in Holland Village for lunch, my brother ran to the door, hoping I'd take him out. It made me sad to have to tell him I couldn't, as he looked at me with those large eyes of his.

Today as I walked with my father and brother back to the car from an emergency trip to the doctor's, I mused how just 24 hours ago I was being a totally irresponsible youth at Mong's 21st birthday party. Now, I had just brought my brother to the doctor's, registered him, applied cream as he scratched away from a major allergic reaction afterwards (hives, just like me last time). It was but a drop in the massive ocean of responsibility my parents carried everyday, and I thought about this was how just the beginning of me one day fully taking ownership of my very special brother. I thought about the duplicity in my life, I thought about Rajan and how he'd really be the only person that'd fully understand. I thought about how I missed him the teensiest bit.

Right before I wrote this, I went to check in on my brother. From going to bed just 15 minutes earlier, he was soundly asleep. Looked like the many antihistamines we gave him before we desperately visited the doctor's finally knocked him out. It was a nice change, from just hours earlier when I was trying to sponge him with a cold towel to stop the scratching. I had seen the welts and the redness spread all over his body. I had tried to hold him hands to get him to stop scratching. I thought about how good it was that I was home this time round, so I could help out. I think now, about my future, and how I'll never really be alone in this life because my brother is wholly dependent on me. It's both a scary and a comforting thought.