"I love you" by PQHAÜS

"I love you" by PQHAÜS

(Acrylic on canvas / 16x20 inches / 2025)

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Growing up, there were not many things or people I gave a shit about. I did not care if my so-called friends whispered behind my back, or if my parents screamed until the neighbors called the cops, sirens lighting up our street like a damn parade of dysfunction. None of it bothered me, because I was used to it. That kind of chaos did not shake me; it built me. But through all the noise, there was one thing I held onto like a lifeline: my little brother.

He was the only person I genuinely cared about, the only one who made me feel like I had a purpose. I made it my mission to protect him. I would ask about his day at school, if anyone hurt his feelings, if he was okay just being a kid in this cold-ass world. I was not just his brother. I was more like a father, a guardian, a barrier between him and the kind of pain I did not want him to ever taste. And for the longest time, I did not even question why I was like that. But when I did try to unravel it, it felt like tearing open wounds that never really healed. It stung. It confused me. But I could not stop trying to figure it out.

It was not until a year after he left for college that I finally started therapy. That was when it hit me, how much of my identity was tied up in being needed by him. And suddenly, he did not need me anymore. We grew distant fast. He said I was too clingy, too intense, too much. I get it now, but back then, it shattered me. I thought I was loving him, but he saw it as control. I felt like I was drifting, like all that love I had was now just sitting heavy in my chest, with nowhere to go.

When I broke down in therapy, pouring out everything, the pain, the confusion, the desperate kind of love, my therapist said something that cut straight through me: “It is your inner child you are trying so hard to rescue.” And I knew immediately she was right. I was never protected. I was never seen or held or nurtured. I grew up parenting myself. And so, loving my little brother was never just about him. It was about me, about that version of myself I had locked away in some dark place, still waiting for someone to show up for him.

In trying to save my brother, I was really trying to save myself. Loving him the way I did made me feel like I was rewriting history, like maybe, just maybe, if I gave him the childhood I never had, then mine would not feel so empty. But the truth is, I was layering my trauma onto him, wrapping my wounds around him like armor, not realizing the weight I was putting on his shoulders. I thought I was shielding him, but sometimes, I wonder if I was just projecting all the pain I had not dealt with.

Still, in those moments when he smiled, when he leaned into my love even for a second, it felt like a reward. Like the universe was letting me hold my younger self through him. Every time I showed up for him, I was really trying to show up for the kid inside me who never got what he needed. And in that way, taking care of my brother became the closest thing I ever had to healing. It was my attempt at justice. My quiet revenge on a world that failed me. Loving him felt like redemption, for both of us.

And yet, sometimes I sit with this strange anger that I do not quite know where to place. Because the childhood I did not choose, the pain I did not ask for, it made me who I am today. And part of me is proud of that, sure. But part of me is still mourning the version of me that never got to just be a kid. I hate that something so broken had to shape something so strong. It is bittersweet as hell, being grateful for who I have become, but furious at what it cost me.