No One Makes Me Laugh Harder Than My Brother

I’ve recently gotten the chance to rekindle and develop my relationship with my brother again.

What was hard about doing this before is that he and I are four and a half years apart from each other, I’m the older one.

When you have a gap like this, it can feel like one of you is always leaving to go do something else while the other stays back or is coming back from his own thing.

One of the major times this happened was when I left for college. I was gone for four years and then I decided to continue living near my school afterward for a couple of years as well. For the four years, I was in college, my brother was in high school.

So he was staying back while I was away. Now that I’m back, however, he’s about to leave again to go back to his school. It’s kind of unfortunate but it makes you appreciate the time you get with each other. That I have certainly been able to do.

. . .

I’ve realized over this summer, which is only half over, that he is the funniest person in the world to me.

When I wrote that title, I meant it.

The kid can do practically anything and it will have me doubled over in a heap, laughing my ass off. I was thinking the other day about how surreal it is for a person to be that funny to me. There’s just no one else that can even compete on that level.

I think what it comes down to is the understanding we have of each other and the shared values. What’s great is that when he or I return from school, we are always annoyed by the same things and it makes for great comedy at home.

I get to be almost an entirely different person with him than I am around others. With him, I’m loud, obnoxious, brutally honest, and ruthless with the jokes. With other people, I either don’t feel inclined to act a certain way or I don’t think things would be taken well as it would become too personal.

But I love that my brother and I can just blatantly insult each other and it’s completely fine. No hard feelings over anything. That can’t be said for anyone else in my life.

We get to put our most real and unfiltered comedy on display in a way that isn’t worried about offending and it’s just the best. In many ways, it’s an outlet for me because like I said, it’s hard to carry this kind of relationship with people who aren’t related to you. Feelings eventually get hurt, people hold onto things that you did, and problems bleed into the relationship.

In fact, something I notice in other friendships I have had is that most people are afraid to go this far in because one of these problems may quickly emerge. It’s kind of a shame in my eyes because I wish more people would take it to this length.

I find this is how very deep relationships are built and maintained, through unfiltered communication.

My brother and I don’t believe we are perfect as individuals or together as brothers. That would actually take away from its realness. We have had several phases where we couldn’t stop fighting, arguing, and almost hated each other at points.

But now that we’re both men, we’ve come full circle in realizing that our differences lie mostly in the past and we have a ton that we share with each other. One of those things that I’m especially thankful for right now is our shared sense of comedy.

I have never laughed so hard or for so long as I have with him and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

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This post was previously published on Hello, Love.

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