Do You Know My Twin Brother? Cuz I Donβt.
I have a twin brother.
Same childhood storms. Same bright summers that came after.
Same debris, yes, but the same magic, too.
Our father died when we were nine — a rupture that shapes people differently.
I learned to survive by getting curious, by asking questions, by pulling apart the narrative threads until I could breathe again.
He learned to survive by tightening everything — his schedule, his expectations, his emotions, his role.
We were twins, but we developed different languages.
I became fluent in interior life. He became fluent in exterior performance.
There’s a whole generation of men who never learned how to live inside themselves.
Not “emotionally unavailable.” Emotionally uninhabited — never shown how to build a home in their own interior world.
Men who were raised on competence, productivity, composure. Men whose value was measured in steadiness, not self-knowledge. Men who were taught that collapse is failure, quiet is virtue, and endurance is identity.
Men who welded themselves shut not because they’re cold — but because silence was the safest story they were handed.
My brother is one of them. Not because he doesn’t care. Because he was shaped by a story that never asked who he was on the inside.
He built a life people respect. Not one they can enter.
Five kids. A stay-at-home wife. Traditional values. A work ethic that borders on punishing. Bleeding ulcers he treats like household chores.
Every December, he goes all-in on the neighborhood Christmas decorating contest — and wins. Not because he loves tinsel or inflatable reindeer, but because winning is the clearest proof he has that he’s still doing life “right.”
A lot of men survive this way — by overperforming the exterior when their interior feels inaccessible.
My brother sends photos of the latest home renovations. A finished basement. A remodeled bathroom. A perfectly leveled deck. They’re beautiful. But they’re not him. They’re dispatches from someone who speaks through evidence instead of openness.
Many men aren’t hiding their emotions.
They genuinely don’t know where those emotions live.
The world taught them to build fortresses that get mistaken for personality.
To become the wall instead of the person behind it.
Not intentionally. Not resentfully. Instinctually.
My brother is part of that pattern. A man who learned to survive by becoming the strongest version of himself he knew how to be — even when it cost him access to his own softness.
People ask if I miss him. I don’t.
You can’t miss someone you’ve never met.
We grew up side by side, but I have never known the inner man — the one buried under duty, pressure, and inherited expectations.
He’s not keeping himself from me. He’s keeping himself from himself.
And you cannot lose access to someone you were never granted access to.
That’s not cruelty. It’s clarity.
But I would love to meet him someday.
Not the productivity warrior. Not the Christmas champion. Not the suburban knight with the exhaustive task list.
I mean him. The human being underneath the scripting, the pressure, the autopilot, the survival patterns.
Not tears. Not a breakdown. Not a heart-to-heart therapy moment.
I would love just one glimpse of the person he might have been if he’d ever been allowed to lay the armor down.
That’s all.
Just a moment where he is not proving anything — where he simply exists.
Until then, I love him from where he is.
Not out of obligation. Not out of sentimentality. But out of acceptance.
He is living the story he was taught to live. A story that asked for strength, not truth. Competence, not connection. Performance, not presence.
He isn’t failing me. He’s following the script he inherited.
And I’ve stopped interpreting that as rejection.
It’s simply the shape of his life.
You can only meet people where they actually are. And right now, that’s where he is.
The longing to be known is universal. And letting yourself be known is a skill you can learn at any age. If you want to talk about what it brought up for you, I’m here. Because our stories don’t get lighter until we hold them up to the light.
If you're curious about the story you're living inside — or the one you want to write next — I invite you to schedule a no-obligation, no-cost conversation with me here: https://tidycal.com/bombdiggity
