For three years, my brother and I existed in parallel lives

Close enough to remember each other clearly, distant enough to pretend we didn’t matter. Our fallout wasn’t explosive. There were no raised voices, no dramatic ultimatums. Just a conversation that went wrong, words that landed too hard, and a silence that slowly hardened into distance. Pride did the rest. I convinced myself that cutting him out was self-respect, that blood ties didn’t excuse pain. And over time, the absence stopped feeling strange. Or so I told myself.

Life adjusted around the gap he left. Birthdays came and went without messages. Holidays grew quieter, trimmed down to what felt manageable. I built routines that didn’t include him and called it peace. Whenever his name surfaced in my thoughts, I brushed it away, reminding myself that reaching out would only reopen something already closed. The story I told myself was neat, contained, and mostly unchallenged.