[Mana Walker - IC Meme Response: Your relationship with your sibling(s)?]
Much like any other relationship one may have with another in the world: a mixture of tensions, attractions and the indescribable. This is not to say that the relationship is a rocky or unpleasant one, but that tensions are the feelings that remind us that we are not all a single entity, no matter how much feel we understand one another; attractions are of course what draw us to one another, but it is more complicated than that because the most attractive thing about a person can be their most ugly parts; and the indescribable is just that, but it does not stop us from trying, now does it?
Still, I may digress. I do not consider our relationship to be one that is addressed simply, especially when one or more party is dead on some level. Memories are one thing, but the dead cannot return-do not let anyone attempt to say anything different. Parts of them may return-sections and off-cuts, twisted shadows of what once was, but there is no full and pristine return. It makes the relationship itself all the more complicated when there is a ghost in the flesh of another. It adds an entirely different level to something that is already exceedingly complex.
But I wonder, is it more a question of what *was* the relationship like, perhaps? It is difficult to answer even then as it was not mine alone. It was shared and negotiated between us. That said, he was undeniably one of the most important people to me. I would have done a great deal for him, as I know he would and did for me. Yet situations change, opinions alter, visions blur, intent becomes lost and the pathways change. We had been very close in some ways, I think I have always been somewhat more distant than he, even before that time. Not cold-no, not as I am now-but detached, a little off, a bit queer; he and I both knew and he took it well enough. Fairly patient, in his way. Except for when he was not, and that was most entertaining to me. Is it not, after all, both the job of an older brother to be protector and tormentor? Perhaps I was cruel to him with my word and mind games, but he was no weakling and his tongue was as sharp as mine when he wanted it to be. It was what made it fun, you realise. Power struggles are no fun if there is no struggle.
... That makes it sound as though our dealings with one another were terribly cruel and unsavoury. They were not, simply complicated. As well they should be. I would have found him dull otherwise, no matter what relation he was to me. He and I played-together and against others, and that made him valuable to me.
Still. Let us be frank now: he is dead. And so what is my relationship to him now, I wonder. Is it to a memory or to a promise? Memories keep us immortal, but the outcome of a promise is not always what one wants, even if it is kept.
Allow me to make this convolutedly simple: he was so utterly precious and irreplaceable to me, and because of that I do, so dearly, despise him.
I do hope that helps clear matters some ♪
Still, I may digress. I do not consider our relationship to be one that is addressed simply, especially when one or more party is dead on some level. Memories are one thing, but the dead cannot return-do not let anyone attempt to say anything different. Parts of them may return-sections and off-cuts, twisted shadows of what once was, but there is no full and pristine return. It makes the relationship itself all the more complicated when there is a ghost in the flesh of another. It adds an entirely different level to something that is already exceedingly complex.
But I wonder, is it more a question of what *was* the relationship like, perhaps? It is difficult to answer even then as it was not mine alone. It was shared and negotiated between us. That said, he was undeniably one of the most important people to me. I would have done a great deal for him, as I know he would and did for me. Yet situations change, opinions alter, visions blur, intent becomes lost and the pathways change. We had been very close in some ways, I think I have always been somewhat more distant than he, even before that time. Not cold-no, not as I am now-but detached, a little off, a bit queer; he and I both knew and he took it well enough. Fairly patient, in his way. Except for when he was not, and that was most entertaining to me. Is it not, after all, both the job of an older brother to be protector and tormentor? Perhaps I was cruel to him with my word and mind games, but he was no weakling and his tongue was as sharp as mine when he wanted it to be. It was what made it fun, you realise. Power struggles are no fun if there is no struggle.
... That makes it sound as though our dealings with one another were terribly cruel and unsavoury. They were not, simply complicated. As well they should be. I would have found him dull otherwise, no matter what relation he was to me. He and I played-together and against others, and that made him valuable to me.
Still. Let us be frank now: he is dead. And so what is my relationship to him now, I wonder. Is it to a memory or to a promise? Memories keep us immortal, but the outcome of a promise is not always what one wants, even if it is kept.
Allow me to make this convolutedly simple: he was so utterly precious and irreplaceable to me, and because of that I do, so dearly, despise him.
I do hope that helps clear matters some ♪