My Brother Moved “Away,” And I am Not Happy About It

(Update, my dad has returned from the hospital and he is doing all right despite being diagnosed with heart failure).

As if things hadn’t gone from bad to worse in my life recently, it has gotten worse in my opinion. Two weekends ago, my brother moved out of my parent’s home to move into off-campus housing for college. Currently he has been attending the local university back home, and all this time he has been commuting (and doing distance learning). However, he decided he wanted to try living the college student experience by living on his own in an apartment. I didn’t think he would do this until after he completed his undergrad, but now he is and I am completely screwed for the most part. I would say he is also screwed considering the pros and cons of living in student housing.

To be honest, my brother and I did not get along with each other when we were younger, and we still don’t get along as adults. However, I want what is best for my him; I want him to go on his own path through college and beyond, but I want him to make the best decisions that will not screw him over. The truth is I don’t completely support him living on his own for the semester. For one thing, he is graduating this semester so it doesn’t make any sense for him to be living on his own for a short period of time. It would have been better if he tried it before his senior year, but due to COVID, it would have been difficult since he was doing distance learning that whole time. Also, the distance between my home and his school are 5-10 minutes away. His apartment isn’t that far from our home either, so he can go back home anytime he needs to. It defeats the entire purpose of living on your own if your parents’ home is a few moments away in addition to being in close proximity to the college campus. It would have made more sense moving away to college if you went-out-of-state (which is what I did) just so you can have that full experience. Although, there were several students who lived in-state when I was living on-campus, but most of them lived in hometowns a few miles away from campus. They were still able to go home during the weekends and breaks, but I never heard of a student who lived on-campus that lived in close proximity to the college campus. To add to that, with the rise of inflation recently, it has become more expensive to pay for housing, so not the best time to be living on your own. When living in your own place, you have to pay for rent, utilities, electricity, and so much more. Plus, there is still tuition that has to be paid (with financial aid included of course).

Living on your own isn’t that easy especially when you are doing it the first time going off to college. In fact, one of the biggest obstacles of living on your own is dealing with roommates. If you are starting off college, you have no idea what kind of roommate you are going to get, and it can go two ways. Either you end up living with someone who becomes your best friend or you don’t end up being friends because they don’t have the same interest or personalities as you. That isn’t always a bad thing, but there are situations that become roommate horror stories like they leave a mess all over the place, or they party a lot. I have lived in a variety of roommate situations from okay to really terrible, and I never kept in touch with any of them. For me, the most difficult part of living with a roommate is communication. When meeting your roommate for the first time, it is important to set some guidelines and boundaries on living together. It might be difficult depending on what kind of person your roommate is, but if you don’t communicate your concerns to them right away, then conflicts can occur later on. From there the conflicts get bigger, and either you are stuck dealing with your roommate or you/your roommate can end up moving out. Luckily, I never had to deal with my roommate’s moving out otherwise I would feel bad thinking it was my fault that I caused them to move out. (This might be a great idea for a separate blog post talking about all the roommates I have lived with during college). In my brother’s situation, he is living with three other guys. Unfortunately, there are two single bedrooms and one shared bedroom which he ended up in. Already he does not like the idea of sharing a bedroom with someone since he is used to having his own bedroom all to himself. Plus, with three other people living in an apartment, it might be difficult to deal with depending on how loud or messy they are. Another issue of living on your own is that you have to pay for your own food. Food is essential in our everyday lives, and without your parents’ providing your meals, this can be a challenge. Money is an added factor into getting your own food, and once again due to inflation, the price in buying groceries can be costly. Then you have to cook your own food, and if you don’t know how to cook, chances are you may get yourself sick or start a kitchen fire. In my brother's situation, he does not have a lot of options for food except a few fast food places that is right under his apartment, but I can imagine getting tired of eating from those places almost every day. Plus I am not sure if there is a grocery store nearby his place, and so far he has not cooked on his own. Most of the time he comes home and eats with us, or we bring food over.

Not only does my brother moving out impacts him, it impacts me in a negative way. While the two of us were at home, the chores were split between us; my brother would throw out the trash, and get the mail while I would put the dishes away, and wipe the table. Now that he is no longer home, I am forced to take all of his chores in addition to my own. It can be pretty exhausting taking on more tasks around the house, especially when I have my own issues to deal with like continuing to apply for jobs, and working on this blog. It also means that I am the only (adult) child living at home with my parents, so I have to start showing initiative. Speaking of my parents, my brother could not have moved out at a bad time because my dad had to go to the hospital due to having a heart problem. Hopefully, by the time this post gets published, my dad will be out of the hospital but he will need to have lots of rest. That means he won’t be going back to work for a while (the truth is that hasn’t been working when he was supposedly diagnosed with pneumonia) which also means he is not able to make income. He has been pushing me to get a job, but as I mentioned in a couple of blog posts it has been really challenging to get one. As soon as he comes home, he will be pushing me even more to find a job giving me a lot of pressure since I am the only adult living in the house that is not working.

And that is my rant on my brother moving out for college. To recap, I don’t think it is reasonable for him to move during his last semester of college. Already, he has come home a few times which defeats the entire purpose of living independently. Plus, he has been doing most of his laundry at home since the apartment charges for laundry. I have even heard from his conversation with mom that is already thinking about finding a new place, yet it has only been a couple weeks since he moved into his new place. I assume this “other” new place is for when he graduates from college. I also want to apologize if this post does not sound put-together. As I mentioned in my last post, I wasn’t sure if I was going to have a post before the end of the month but when I was made aware of my brother moving out, I knew I had to make a post about my thoughts. However, I was also distracted by my dad going to the hospital and waiting every day to hear updates while I had to deal with my current issues. Hopefully when he returns, things will return to a bit of “normalcy” and I hope to have a job by then but time will only tell. And my next blog posts will be more thought-out and structured. For those of you who think I am being unfair towards my brother I do want what is my best for him, but I am stating my own thoughts on the actions he takes.