Headlocks and Heartstrings

The first time I decided I hated my brother, I was four.

He was barely one year old, and already a nuisance. He did nothing but wail and throw his pudgey little arms around like a malfunctioning windmill. I hated the noise, and I hated how the attention once only reserved for me was now fluttered over this squalling little pest. People used to coo over me. I was the baby. The star of the show. And then he arrived, red-faced and loud, and suddenly I was old news.

I picked up my Mr Tickle mirror and thumped him one. Finally. Silence.

Until my mother screamed.

She came running out, scooping up the thorn in my side, fussing and checking for damage, yelling at me about how I should protect him, not hurt him. Protect him? From what? He was the one who had stolen my spotlight. If anything, I needed protecting—from him.

Well, that pretty much sums up our childhood. WWE had nothing on us. We didn’t need scripts; we had instinct. When I was eight, he headbutted out my two front teeth during what was supposed to be a “friendly” wrestling match. I smiled like a hockey player for six months. When I was nine, I allowed him to climb on top of our plastic car and jumped out just as it picked up speed downhill. The crash was spectacular. Mum was less impressed.

How we both survived our childhoods I will never know. I always joked I’m only here because of plot armour.

Brogan and I grew up in a house with thin walls and even thinner patience. We fought over everything; the TV remote, shotgun in the car, the last chocolate bar, who got the bigger half of anything remotely divisible. Mum used to say we were like magnets: push us together and we’d snap into place; leave us too long and we’d flip and repel.

I was the nerd. I had good grades and tried hard at everything I did. I colour-coded my homework diary and actually read the instructions before starting a task. My little brother, on the other hand, was a wildcard. A hooligan, honestly. One time he ran naked down the corridor in school screaming about how he wanted to marry Jane, one of my friends. I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me whole. He, however, thrived on the chaos. The louder the gasp, the wider his grin.

We were opposites in almost every way. I liked quiet. He liked volume. I thought before I acted. He acted before thinking had even clocked in for the day. And yet, somehow, we orbited the same space.

When I was eleven, we went to Warwick Castle. They had a huge catapult they filled with sweets and flung across the vast fields. It was absolute mayhem. Children sprinted in every direction like sugar-fuelled ants. I remember my brother screaming in glee as he chased after them, arms pumping, legs flying everywhere at once. I flew along with him. It was sunny, the sky an impossible blue, and for once we weren’t arguing. We were just two kids racing the world.

Until I heard the familiar wail.

I spun around to see two older boys shove him to the ground and scoop up the sweets he’d already collected. He looked so small lying there, clutching nothing but grass.

Something in me snapped.

I stormed over, heart pounding in my ears. I didn’t think. I didn’t calculate odds. I just reacted. A couple of quick smacks—more shock than strength—and the boys stumbled back. I scooped up the sweets and handed some to my brother.

“Why?” he asked, staring at me like I’d just performed a magic trick.

I didn’t know. I didn’t want to unpack it.

“Nobody is allowed to bully you but me,” I blurted out after an uncomfortable silence.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mum watching. She didn’t scold me for hitting the boys. She just smiled, the kind of smile that said she understood something we didn’t yet.

By the time we were in secondary school, we had more or less figured out the art of coexistence. We insulted each other fluently but knew the invisible line not to cross. We could say “You’re annoying” or “You’re weird,” but never anything that cut too deep. It was like we had an unspoken treaty.

Sometimes, on quiet days, we’d sit next to each other and play on the Wii. Mario Kart could get aggressive—blue shells were personal betrayals—but there was comfort in the routine. Sitting shoulder to shoulder, arguing over nothing, existing in the same space without needing to prove anything.

As we grew older, the fights became less physical and more verbal. Sarcasm replaced wrestling. Eye rolls replaced headlocks. But underneath it all, the current remained.

Then the years passed quicker than I expected, and the time came for me to leave.

The house felt different that morning. Smaller somehow. Or maybe I just felt bigger, stretched between excitement and something heavier.

“Don’t miss me too much,” I said, cracking a smile—though my voice cracked along with it.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” my brother replied, but his eyes were watering. He kicked at the pavement like he suddenly found it fascinating. Then, quieter, “I’m glad you’re my sister.”

The words hung between us, fragile and real.

I rolled my eyes because that’s what I do when I’m overwhelmed. “Obviously. I’m the better sibling.”

He laughed, and it sounded younger than it had in years.

And in that moment, I understood something I hadn’t before.

The fights, the jealousy, the endless competition—they weren’t signs that we didn’t love each other. They were proof that we were close enough to clash. Close enough to matter. Close enough that losing each other would leave a space too big to ignore.

Now, if someone asked me who I’d call at 2 a.m., who knows my history without explanation, who remembers the exact shade of blue in our childhood bedroom—I wouldn’t hesitate.

It would be him.

Love doesn’t always look gentle.

Sometimes it looks like slammed doors and sarcastic insults. Sometimes it sounds like “You’re the worst” when what you mean is “You’re mine.” Sometimes it’s defending someone in a field full of strangers, even when you spent the morning fighting over cereal.

Mum was wrong. We aren’t like magnets.

We’re more like gravity.

No matter how far we drift, something invisible pulls us back.

And I guess that’s what love looks like when it grows up alongside you—messy, loud, stubborn, and unbreakable.