Sorry

My story starts back when I was 7. I had just recently found out my mom was pregnant with my brother. I was extremely excited when I found out I was gonna be a big sister. I always found a way to involve myself with anything that had to do with him. When he was born I was always next to him. Nobody could separate us, we were like two peas in a pod. A couple of months after he was born my mom decided to move us to Chicago. I was so nervous and scared because I had to start all over again. I had to go to a new school and make new friends and when we moved it was during winter and there would always be snowstorms and it was extremely cold. I wasn’t used to that since I had been born in Miami. A year went by and everything turned out to be alright, I made new friends and had gotten used to everything, but there was something wrong. My brother wasn’t acting the same. I started noticing weird behaviors from him. When I would call out his name he wouldn’t react to it, he wouldn’t talk and he wouldn’t look at you. My mom started noticing it too but she brushed it off and thought he was just going to be a late bloomer. Another year goes by and my brother still hasn’t improved. If anything he got worse so my mom decided to start searching for help. She went to the doctors to see what they could say and they told her to try going to a neurologist. At the neurologist we got told that my brother was on the autism spectrum and that he was delayed by 2 or 3 years mentally, so instead of thinking like a two year old he still thought as a baby that was only a couple of months old. That news immediately shattered my moms heart. I would see my mom cry day and night and wonder what was wrong but she wouldn’t tell me which now I understand because I was just a kid and wouldn’t understand anything about that at the time. Days went by and my mom started educating herself about autism and started searching for help so my brother could improve. We got lucky and thankfully my brother doesn’t have a severe case of autism. In Chicago not much help is given to people who have autism so my mom worked with what she was able to find. Another year went by and my mom saw no improvements in my brother so she decided to relocate us back to Miami in search of more help. I was only 10 or 11 at the time when she decided to move us back, I didn’t understand why she wanted to move back after I was finally starting to get used to Chicago and its cold winters. I was so mad and sad that I had to start from zero again. I had to leave my best friends behind and go live with my dad. When I went back down to Miami everything was different, the way people talked, acted, and even the schools and teachers were different. I was excited because I was able to reunite with my family but I was still nervous for school. During that time I started feeling extremely lonely. I didn’t understand why though. I was happy my brother was getting the help he needed and I was surrounded by my loved ones. I soon realized it was that I was missing moms affection and attention. Everyone was so consumed with my brother and his condition that everyone left me out of things or even forgot about me. Years went by and my brother started making progress after countless therapies, countless therapists, constant changes of schools and teachers, he was finally able to talk, react when his name was called, and even hold a conversation with someone! I was so excited when I saw my brother’s progress and I was so proud of him. He grew each day more and more and I accepted him and his condition a little bit more each day. I was able to educate myself on it as I got older and was able to understand it more.  Now that I am older I thank god everyday for giving me my brother and I’m so proud of him for getting to the point where he is at now, but that feeling of loneliness never went away. I’ve realized that I just have to accept the fact that the feeling will never go away and it is always going to linger around. I wish I didn’t feel this way but it’s just something that I will have to learn to deal with and keep going.