My symbiotic twin

For once, I thought I'd devote my blackboard on the web to a very important person: my brother.

Robert is two years younger than me, which in one way enforces all the big-sister-instincts I possess, but because he is autistic, he is forever in what you might call 'an age all his own'. As much as my family and I want to protect him, he's profoundly independent because he is very selective about who gets to communicate with him. No respect paid to if you're older, cooler or anything '-er' than he is. I flatter myself with thinking that I've been deemed worthy... ;)

I identify very deeply with Robert, even if it's a difficult thing to do with someone whose attention span is the size of a kitten (and as likely to wander off). If anyone speaks ill of my brother or makes him feel bad, I'm the one who starts crying. When he zones out, I have no idea where he is but I feel like I'm there too. Perhaps it feels that way because I can actually ask him to come back to earth where I am, and he'll do it.

I'm convinced that my brother has had a significant influence on my upbringing, personality and idea of right and wrong. I know we resemble each other in many ways. It's been said that neither Rob nor I look like mom or dad, but we look very much like each other. I kind of like that, because (silly as it may sound) I've often had the privilege of being his 'interpreter' towards our parents, and admittedly we've teamed up on them once or twice... Usually there was candy involved in the picture...

Both Rob and I have strong 'audio memory', meaning that we easliy remember melodies, lyrics, tones of voice and film dialogue (to the point of the voices needing to be pitch-perfect to be 'right'). He communicates frequently using film dialogue, and since we watched so much TV together as kids, we have an entire library of 'mood sounds' that he uses to signal happiness, impending anger or sadness. I can't say how, but to this day I can associate most film lines he has ever memorized to an emotion. I'd say that's a lifeline for someone who isn't able to use the word 'hungry'...

My brother is full of quirks that can make him seem pretty odd to strangers, but to me, most of those quirks are like an amplified view of things that you can see in any human. I see plenty of it in myself, at any rate. I've wondered at some points if I'm not slightly autistic too, but after thinking it through for a few years, I've figured that no - it's just my brother who is very human. And all humans relate differently to and accept different levels of closeness, to the point where we equate a 'near' relationship to a very specific set of rules. Autists are known for being distant, but as his sister I know that he's just very picky about who can get close to him.

I've never felt separated from Robert because of his condition. I've always known that he has a mysterious 'something' beneath the surface that no-one will ever reach. I've always been OK with that, because to me, it seems natural that everyone carries something unreachable inside, and we have to accept that everyone needs that space for themselves, or we crowd each other. This is something I see in myself, because I feel more affinity with people who allow me that space.

Finally, you need to adore absurd humour and be insensitive to embarrassment to get along with an autistic sibling. Some of the sunniest moments of being with my brother occur when he says unexpected things in a surprising context. The only sane way of handling the reality of your now grown-up younger brother happily and innocently yelling in public, "I can't stand being alone, I need a man!" (...a Barbro Hörberg quote) or exclaiming similar random things in solemn places like church, is to not find it embarrassing at all - just see the funny side of it and laugh, then (secretly, because after all these years you're still teaming up against mom and dad's concerned looks) congratulate him because he learned the line with so much bravado.