I go to bed at 2 in the morning sometimes after a day of staring at the pile of homework in front of me, eventually only getting half of it done. I wake up in the morning and snooze my alarm because I'm just too exhausted to care that I set it so I'd have time to finish my homework. I get about a moment of silence to enjoy the quiet of the morning and the noises of the early morning before my ears are assaulted with ridiculous arguments about video games screamed into my ears at six in the morning. I'm already up long before my body wants to be, but my two younger brothers don't care that I've gotten less than three hours of sleep and I'm ready to punch them through a wall. Then it's the lip smacking and the slurping and I wonder why on earth an eleven year old who knows more about Kirby and Super smash brothers than even the creators of those things can't figure out that cereal isn't finger food. I can't even dream of writing until the weekend and yet my characters make a cacophony inside my mind. I've got maybe eight more hours until the weekend, and I can't last a minute. I'm too tired to be hungry and too hungry to think straight. My blank page of homework stares me down condescendingly. My youngest brother pats his belly like a bongo and I just can't stand it anymore. He starts lecturing me about Kirby, jumping on the trampoline, and in his quiet moments his breathing is like the heaving of a rabid beast. He hums, jumps up and down on the creaky trampoline, it's springs groaning under his weight. He does everything physically possible to irritate me to any extent he can and good God I just wanna curl up and have some peace an quiet before I head off to co-op. What I really want is to run to my room, pull the covers over my head, and have a good cry. I really wish sometimes that I was neurotypical, that he was neurotypical. I have the kind of autism that causes me to have heightened senses and an overactive mind. Worlds spill from my imagination every day. And he has the kind of autism where he's loud, rude, and cannot sit still or even have a shred of common decency. We're both very high functioning as the diagnosis goes, yet if he had a functioning brain he'd know that I have sensitive hearing and I need peace and quiet. He can't go a second without making some noise that doesn't stab my eardrums and make me want to run away and hide. I could play music to drown him out but that would just grate on my sensitive ears. Was I that obnoxious at that age? Is he just harder to deal with because he had a traumatic brain injury when he was four? My gosh I really hate the way that kid acts sometimes. I'm trying to be a good person and ignore him but when I can handle no more he just starts doing something that irritates me all over again. And then it hits me. That eleven year old boy doesn't have any friends and comes from school crying at times because of being bullied on the bus. And it hits me that once I was alone at school and the bullying is why my parents decided to homeschool me. I know how it feels to be an outcast, and his struggle is worse than my own. But how can I have compassion in the middle of the chaos? A tear slides down my cheek as I just mentally scream "Please make it stop!" And then he starts humming again. He's not trying to be annoying. He's oblivious to the fact that his actions cause people to want to punch him through a wall. I really don't know how to handle him in a civil way. And I'm his bloody sister for crying out loud. I know everything about him, and I know the unique and creative mind behind all that obnoxious noise. And sometimes I find myself just pushing that human being away because I can't put up with him. How much worse do his classmates treat him? How does he cope by being so alone? Why can't I simply treat him with kindness for just one morning? And I wonder, I really wonder. Is it just me?