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Seventeen years ago, my mom had my brother, Eduardo. He’s just a year younger than me. Therefore, we grew up mostly at the “same time”. However, as I grew up I mentally matured quicker than him. I saw him struggle with things I have had mastered for years. My young and naïve self thought it was because my mom “babied” him. I saw him get special treatment, never get punished, never get grounded, etc. He also didn’t speak much, he just laughed or made facial expressions. I just thought he was “too babied” until he started getting into so much trouble at school. I always asked my mom about it and she just said he didn’t see things the same way I did. As every stubborn kid, I just thought she was playing favorites.

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I remember driving to his school and seeing him scream his lungs out. For no reason, I thought. He used to hate school. I didn’t get it. He began throwing his shoes out the window on the way to school so we couldn’t leave him at school. My mom is very strong and a firm believer of school so one day she just left him at school without his shoes. He cried all day. The next day he didn’t throw his shoes out the window, thank god. We thought it was all good. Until we left him at school and my mom got called in right away. Eduardo had taken his shirt and pants off because he didn’t want to be there. We spent a major part of our lives looking for a school that he could enjoy. It wasn’t easy. He said he didn’t like school because there were “too many rules” or they didn’t let him walk when he wanted to. I remember telling him: “Eduardo, every school is like that. Get used to it.”

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I had to do everything with him. I couldn’t ever leave him alone, which I didn’t understand. For example, I had to lay with him before he fell asleep because he couldn’t catch sleep alone. He was still scared of the dark. I found it so strange because we were already “big kids”. I always said he grew up in the oddest way. He didn’t speak Spanish, which is our first language, he just spoke English. Every kid’s first word is always “Mama” or “Papa” (“Mom” or “Dad”), but his first word was “cow”. Every kid is obsessed with action figures and toys, he was obsessed with books. Every kid spoke like crazy; he was quiet.

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When I entered the 1st grade, I remember asking my mom so many questions. “Why doesn’t he talk yet?” “Why is he never punished?” “We’re the same age, why do you treat us so different? It’s not fair”. I like being in the loop of what’s going on, and my younger self was no different. My mom sat me down and just said “He’s special.”, I didn’t get it. I remember her saying these exact words: “His mind goes faster than ours”. She sobbed and told me how a doctor said Eduardo would never speak, she told me the doctor even recommended sign language. That story made me realize the importance of my brother’s speech therapy, which I used to walk him to. She talked about his fast-paced mind and how that influenced his behavior. That made his constant walking/pacing make more sense. This day she told me my younger brother is autistic with an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

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With this knowledge, my parents began to expect more caring behavior from me. I thought they wanted me to act more like an adult rather than a kid, which frustrated me. By this time, I must have been around the 2nd grade. I began taking care of my brother very young. A few years later, he slowly began growing out of his fear of the dark, so I didn’t have to lay with him until he fell asleep. He stopped going to his speech therapy because he had already become communicative. Things started looking “normal” in my eyes. Consequently, I started unconsciously becoming a bit more distant. I was growing up. I was almost a teenager, and as any gullible pre-teen, you think the most of yourself. I compared myself to him and still saw some childish behavior in him, which annoyed me. Sometimes I took my annoyance out on my brother verbally. I thought he kept acting so foolish so my parents would treat him differently. I knew about his condition but didn’t understand it. I thought he could grow up as easy as I did, as quickly as any other kid.

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He’s always been in specialized schools and accompanied by us to everything. I kept telling my mom he should go out “to the real world”. I thought my brother could stand up to whoever as I did. It wasn’t until he began to come home crying that I knew he needed my help. He never showed much emotion, but around his 5th grade, he got deep into a depressive state. I think by this time he started recognizing he was “different”, as he would say. He used to come home and lock himself in his room all day. I used to go to the movies with my friends on the weekends, and my mom began to ask me to take him with me. I thought it was embarrassing. I wanted to have a life apart from being his second mom. I always tried to talk to him though, and I always asked him about his social life. When he got asked about friends, he used to say, “It doesn’t matter”. The first time he said that I didn’t think much of it until it became a repetitive thing. He showed various red flags for depression and I took it upon myself to help him out of it.

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I began taking him everywhere. I wanted him to be "normal". I introduced him to my closest friends, I took him to the movies, I tried to get him talking for at least an hour straight every day, etc. I began to look at him as one of my friends. It’s very stressful growing up with a sibling on the spectrum because you want them to be on your same mind game, you want them to be like a friend. You don’t want to be their mom. At this time, I noticed he needed a sister; so, I was there for him. I was very attentive to everything he said or any mild expression he showed. This was so difficult because he isn’t very forthcoming at all. I had to pay such close attention to everything he said. This was a turning point for me. At this time, I began to understand his daily struggles, I noticed how challenging life was for him. I began to understand his condition thoroughly.

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"Eduardo, you're such a stereotypical teenage boy"

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"Eduardo, you're such a stereotypical teenage boy"

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When he became a teenager, he began trusting me with his feelings. By this time, we still had mutual friends. I remember his first crush; it was one of my best friends. He told me just about everything, no matter how weird it was. Or awkward, like having a crush on my friend. He’s 17 now. He has his group of friends at school, he talks and laughs a lot, he’s friendly and an overall wonderful soul. I’m very overprotective of him, he even gets mad at me for it. I always tell him I’ll never back off. “You’re not getting rid of me now, dude. You’re stuck with me forever.” He always grunts and rolls his eyes at me when we talk like this, such a stereotypical teenager.

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We’ve always had a special bond. Perhaps because of our age. I think my friendship with him was the main reason I was in such denial of his condition. Growing up we always called ourselves “twins”. When we got sad my mom always sent me to check up on him, my family always trusted me when it came to him. To this day, I cry when I think about how naïve and selfish I used to act. This never bothered my brother though; he always thought the best of me. I’m so grateful to call him my brother.

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"You're unconsciously helping me grow as a person."

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"You're unconsciously helping me grow as a person."

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Thanks to Eduardo I’ve learned that one thing is to know the circumstances and another thing is to understand them. As I began understanding how much he needed my help growing up, I had his back no matter what. Recognizing his situation was the best thing that happened. We were always close because of our age, but once this shift of perspective happened everything changed. As we got closer and closer, he started calling me his best friend. This meant everything to me because I knew he had a hard time with these things. Seeing him genuinely show affection, which I know isn’t easy for him, made me feel special. To this day I cry when I look back at how arrogant I used to be. Being more caring helped me create a genuine friend-sibling relationship with my brother. I always say Eduardo is my biggest inspiration. He has helped me become more attentive to people’s feelings and he’s unconsciously helping me grow as a person.