Here I am leaving my heart exposed; here I am opening my eyes and seeing what I have been too scared to see; here I am talking to myself, writing about my greatest sin. My greatest sin involves the most important person in my life: my brother.
My brother is undoubtedly the number one on the “who I care about the most” list. Even though I am clear of that fact, I did come a long way realizing it. My brother is an introverted person who is extremely kind and vulnerable. I still do not know if that is because of me, or I bullied him because of that. Yeah, here it is, my greatest sin is not being a good brother.
Right now when I talk about my brother to other people, I always say that he is the best little brother I could ask for. Saying that makes me feel the most guilt ever, but there is no better description of him. I do not remember how it started, but I started forcing him into doing things. From small favors like grabbing stuff for me, to big problems like lying to our parents. I did this on a daily basis, and the worst part is that I did not notice anything wrong with it.
On my birthday, I accidentally hit his head with a wooden bat. Although nothing bad happened, his head was still bleeding and I was scared as I have ever been. I lock myself in the room too scared to face the blame from my parents. I eventually opened the door just to see my brother with blood all over his head begging my parents not to blame me because he knows it was an accident. Imagine going into the big brother’s room to celebrate his birthday just to get hit with a bat and tell the parents not to blame him. That is my brother. My parents still punished me heavily on my birthday and it left a scar on our relationship for a while. Recalling this moment right now, I realize how brave and forgiving my brother was.
Recalling this moment right now, I realize how brave and forgiving my brother was
And it went on, I kept on treating my brother badly, forcing him to help me. He knows that if he tells our parents, I would be more mad at him. Once my brother was with me during a school trip, we were doing tag, and he tagged me. I was so ashamed of losing to my brother that I pushed him down. I remember all of my classmates looking at me. It felt like I was surrounded by them. The look on their faces, disgusted by what I just did. To be honest, I cared about my friends more than my brother. Seeing all of my friends on my brother’s side, I was more ashamed, but even more angry.
While writing about this, I feel even worse about my behavior. As I should. What brings me to loving my brother is nothing but time and maturity. Everyday I see a bit more of the world and I know a bit more about what is truly important to me. Nowadays, everytime my brother makes me mad, I think about what I have done when we were young, and that becomes a wall to prevent me from doing what I will regret doing.
That is my greatest sin, it was me at my most vulnerable state. If people do not understand how it can be this bad to me, well, that is how much I love my brother.
I think I was very vulnerable when writing this essay. I opened up a lot of things when writing this and I think it made it very true. However, I would like to use more figurative language because it did feel a bit plain to read.