KYLE.

I just feel like I need to talk about my brother.

left: Erin, middle: Kyle, right: myself

Sometimes, I feel like he's a high-functioning autistic. I will say that this is not a bad thing. I for one have a very deep rooted connection with children with mental disabilities. Hell, I sit in my school's special education class and talk to them about their days a good deal of the time.

He just acts so different and secluded for society. Let me talk about why.

In third grade, his teacher hated his guts. She thought Kyle was a threat to her classroom, and therefore ostricised him from the class: would not allow him to join in on holiday festivities, gave him copious amounts of work, and treated him so differently from the class that it shakes me to my core. The teacher, again for no real reasons, was going to take him to the principal with his "anger management problems." He was going to be kicked out of school.

Like any sane mother would do at that point, instead of tarnishing Kyle's record and further hindering him from being a functioning member of public schooling and society, she pulled him out of school and began homeschooling him.

This lasts to this day, and he should be a freshman in high school. You see, by pulling him out of school it did the exact thing she did not want to happen. By taking Kyle out to save him from society's harmful ways, she in fact ostricised him by not having people to talk to other than family. This lead to him having an extremely immature and hard to follow demeanor incomprehensible to anyone other than family.

On top of that, it's hard for us to deal with him, since he's fifteen and acts so young. We can tell him to buck up and get over things, stop yelling, but in actuality? I don't think he can help it. And that is so sad.

When asked about why Kyle isn't in school (most of my friends don't even know about him until he comes into our home,) my family responds with him being pulled out due to anger management issues. In actuality, it was because he was bullied by an adult. But no one would believe us if we told them that. Teachers are a pillar of genuine kindness to many.

Erin and I exclude him, I'll admit that. And that makes me feel like the worst person in the world.

When we went to the park to launch his model rockets, he looked so happy. When we lost one of them in the woods, I could tell he was human. Not just the facade of anger and frustration and youth: a human.