Disaster Next Door

“𝒂𝒊𝒏'𝒕 𝒊𝒕 𝒏𝒊𝒄𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒍𝒊𝒇𝒆, 𝒘𝒆'𝒗𝒆 𝒈𝒐𝒕 𝒆𝒂𝒄𝒉 𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓” Growing up in an interreligious household, the feeling of love wasn't foreign to her. But what do they say about children who grow up in houses filled with love? They walk into the world thinking love is simple, until it isn’t. Her life was simple, until they moved into a house right next to his. Gone was the loving brother-sister duo who stood by each other through everything. In their place came chaos, rivalry, and a quiet sense of abandonment. Her brother had found a friend his age. She had too, only, he was more of a foe than a friend. Her brother was no longer the one whose footsteps she had to match, she now had another person, always ahead of her, always succeeding in the extracurricular activities while she was still struggling to find a hobby that felt like hers. Her introduction to dislike came disguised as hatred. Because what do little girls know about the difference between the two? For years, she told herself she couldn’t stand him, not his grin, not his teasing, not the way he made everything feel like a competition. But somewhere between all those years of fighting to one-up each other, she stopped noticing when the hate stopped feeling like hate. Until one day, she did. And it scared her, how familiar he’d become, how much space he took up in her thoughts, how easily her heart forgot he was never supposed to be anything more than the disaster next door.