A Concert, My Brothers, and the Life I Almost Didn't Get to Live

Stream, Social Media,
Branding is a lot

I'm a pretty busy girl. I stream on Twitch full-time, run my private math specialist business, manage my household, and try to manage myself. Try is a big word here.

The thing is, nearly all of this happens inside my home, at my desktop, virtually. As a result, I don't get out much. And when I say I don't get out much, I mean maybe once every two weeks. Sometimes even less.

So when my younger brother recently asked if I wanted to attend a concert in San Francisco, my first instinct was to say no.  I'm busy. I'm tired. I have so much to do.  But then I thought about it. I hadn't seen him in a while, and maybe this would be a good opportunity for us to reconnect.  And honestly, connection is something I've been thinking about a lot lately.

The Brother Who Made Me a Gamer

My older brother and I
when we were teens

I talk about this occasionally with my community, but something many people don't know about me is that I had an older brother.  His name was Alex.  We were only three years apart, so we grew up together. He was the older brother and the boy, so naturally, he got the Nintendo. Ahhh, the 80s.

We played outside like 80s kids did, but we also spent a lot of time gaming together. Mario, Zelda, Ninja Gaiden, Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy. All that good stuff.  Sadly, our teenage years were not kind to us, and I lost my older brother to depression when I was in my late teens.

I don't really know how to talk about him with my community today. Sometimes it feels like I want to share it, but the topic is so large that I don't quite know how to share something so personal.  But what I can say is that I owe so much of who I am today to him.

Video games are such a huge part of my heart, but if I'm being real, I probably pale in comparison to the gamer my brother was.  This man had binders of immaculate notes for practically every game he played, including every level in Ninja Gaiden 1, 2, and 3. He played and beat Mega Man 1, 2, and 3, and was speedrunning them before speedrunning was even a thing.  He found and defeated the secret zombie Brad Vickers in the original Resident Evil 2 without a guide!  He was incredible at platformers, shooters, fighting games, RPGs, survival horror, and pretty much every genre that existed at the time.

He was THAT gamer.

Trying to embrace my
identity, happiness and
love of video games

One of my fondest memories of Alex was watching him play Final Fantasy IV on the Super Nintendo. Back then, it was called Final Fantasy II here in the US. I would sit and watch him play for HOURS, completely immersed in the story and watching him navigate this incredible world. And whenever he needed a break, he'd hand me the controller and let me take over.

The funny thing is, I don't remember us ever really fighting over who got to play the Super Nintendo. He was always so gracious about sharing it with me. He'd let me play, and then he'd just sit there and watch me, the same way I watched him. Looking back, I think that's one of the things I cherish most about those memories. It wasn't always about who was playing. Sometimes just being there together, sharing the same adventure, was enough.

It's been decades since I lost him, and while I've worked through so much of that grief, I don't think you ever completely get over losing someone you love.

I miss him every day.

And I often wonder what he would think of me being a Twitch streamer.  Would he be proud of me? Would we connect through gaming the way we did when we were kids? Would we stream together?  Sometimes I think about how, if he had just made it long enough to see the rise of livestreaming and Twitch, he would have absolutely loved it.

I have no doubt he could have been an amazing streamer.

He really was something special.

Giving His Memories New Life

Opening my older brother's boxes
with this gaming gear

Not long ago, I finally unboxed a lot of his belongings.

I've been carrying these boxes with me for decades. Move after move, home after home. I've probably moved around 20 times in my life, and through all of it, his things came with me.  For all those years, I knew there was gaming stuff inside, but I just wasn't ready to open everything.

After seven years of streaming on Twitch, though, something changed.

Finding original games and maps

I wanted to give his things life again.  I decided to put them on my gaming shelves, right behind me in my Twitch setup, where my community could see them.  I wanted his things to be more than memories tucked away in boxes.  I wanted them to be part of my life again.  And something funny happened around that time.

And of course movie classics

After unboxing his belongings, displaying them, and beginning to embrace my age and identity as a gamer more openly on social media, my content started to blow up.  It's interesting how much people connect with authenticity.  But authenticity can also require vulnerability, and vulnerability isn't always easy.  I'm still learning how to do that. Little by little, one small step at a time.

Maybe that's part of what I'm doing with this blog, too.

Finding Connection Again

Me in my 20's visiting my
younger brother'sand cousins

After losing my older brother, I naturally wanted to grow closer to my younger brothers.

For a little context, my younger brothers are actually my half-brothers. My parents divorced when I was young, and I wasn't really in contact with my father again until my early twenties. By then, my younger brothers were still children.

So we didn't exactly get to grow up together the way Alex and I did.

But I cherished the time I spent with them. I visited whenever I could, and I loved getting to know them as they grew up.  Of course, as they became adults, life happened. We all got busy, and we didn't see each other nearly as much.

Life sometimes lifes way too hard, you know?

But ever since my heart-lung transplant, we've all been making a more conscious effort to spend time together.  One of the biggest lessons my transplant has taught me is just how precious life and time really are.  You can always make more money. There will always be another task to finish, another email to answer, another stream to plan.  But we don't get unlimited time with the people we love.

And after losing one brother, that truth carries a little more weight for me.

Saying Yes to Life Outside My Desktop

So when my younger brother asked if I'd like to see James the Seventh, an artist I actually follow on TikTok, I was like, SAY LESS.

It was incredibly short notice, literally the next night, and I had already planned to stream that evening. But one of the beauties of being your own boss is that you ultimately get the final say over your schedule.

So I took the night off!

And my community was so freakin supportive of it.  Thank you, Queendom! Seriously, I love you lovelies.  What I didn't anticipate was how much more meaningful this evening would become.

Walking Through a Different Version of My Life

Me last year in recovery
walking around SF

The concert was in San Francisco's Mission District.  And this is where things got a little surreal.

You see, over a year ago, after I was discharged from the hospital following my heart-lung transplant, I spent six weeks recovering in an Airbnb in the Mission.  Transplant patients are generally required to remain close to their hospital during those early weeks because of frequent follow-up appointments. So that's where my partner and I stayed while I began adjusting to life after transplant.

The thrift shop I used to visit

At the time, even walking was a challenge.  My doctors encouraged me to get outside, practice walking, and learn to breathe and move normally again.  There was a little thrift store nearby that I would venture into as part of that process.  Something as ordinary as walking through a store was an accomplishment.  So when my partner and I arrived early for the concert, we decided to wander around the neighborhood.  And suddenly, I found myself walking down those same streets.  The same sidewalks.  The same places where, a year and a half earlier, I was struggling just to walk.  We even went back into that same thrift store.  Except this time, I wasn't struggling.  I was just... walking.  Freely.  Like it was the most ordinary thing in the world.  Something I couldn't even imagine doing before my transplant.

Me today walking 
around the thrift shop

And I don't quite know how to describe what that felt like.  I'm grateful. So incredibly grateful. And happy, of course.  But there's also this strange sadness somewhere inside me. Almost like I'm mourning something, although I can't quite identify what it is.  Maybe it's the memory of how difficult life used to be. Maybe it's seeing a version of myself who struggled so much, knowing what she had to endure to get here.

Or maybe it's something I haven't figured out yet.

I'm still processing it.

I just know that walking through those streets again, so effortlessly this time, affected me more deeply than I expected.

A Little Food Adventure

Nom noms

Of course, we had to eat!  We stopped at this incredible Japanese curry restaurant called Curry Hyuga.  And ironically, I didn't order curry.  Instead, I went with a server's recommendation: Shiso Mentaiko Cream spaghetti.  Imagine creamy Japanese-style spaghetti with umami-rich cod roe, aromatic shiso leaves, and a little hint of nori.

IT WAS AN ABSOLUTE BANGER.

It's so guuud!

Seriously, if you ever go, I highly recommend it. Get the corn soup, too!

One thing about me is that I will absolutely interrupt an emotional life story to tell you about some amazing food.  Anyway!

Music, Memories, and My Younger Brother

Here we are!

After dinner, we met up with my brother and headed to The Chapel.  What a beautiful little venue!  It was intimate, cozy, and honestly so my speed.

I used to go to concerts ALL the time back in the 2000s. I remember going to Not So Silent Night in 2004, when Muse and The Killers were playing before they became the huge names they are today.  Still one of my favorite concert memories.

Gorgeous venue!

And The Chapel really brought back that feeling of loving live music.  The lighting was gorgeous, very much my colors, and the architecture had this gothic chapel aesthetic that felt like it was made for me.  Very QueenChanleen-coded, if you ask me.

But as much as I enjoyed the venue and the music, what made the night special was spending time with my younger brother.  When James the Seventh finally came out on stage, we both cheered! It was such a simple little moment, but I loved that we were there together, excited about the same thing.

Cheese!

Music is another enormous love of mine (I was a music major before a math major), and my younger brother is deeply passionate about it, too. He goes to concerts practically every week and even plays in a band. It was nice getting to connect with him through something we both genuinely love.

And funny enough, gaming found its way into our evening, too!

He told me he'd been getting REALLY into Pokémon GO lately and even showed me his Pokémon GO autocatcher. I thought that was so freakin cool! Here I am, this lifelong gamer who grew up with Nintendo and Final Fantasy, and my little brother is showing me this whole other generation of gaming that I'm apparently not privy to.

Should I feel old? LOL.

It made me smile, though. I grew up watching my older brother play video games, and now here I was, decades later, listening to my younger brother excitedly tell me about the games he's playing.

My younger brother and I

Different brothers. Different generations of gaming. But that same joy of sharing something you love with someone you love.

And somewhere in the middle of that evening, I found myself thinking about my brothers, my childhood, and all the different ways we find connection throughout our lives.

It was nice to connect with him through something we both genuinely love.

And somewhere in the middle of that evening, I found myself thinking about my brothers, my childhood, and all the different ways people find their way into each other's lives.

Cultivating Connection

My found family

I spend a lot of my life online.

As a streamer, I have the privilege of connecting with people from all over the world, and I genuinely treasure the community we've built together. The friendships, the conversations, the shared love of games and music. None of that is any less real to me because it happens through a screen.

But this evening reminded me that there are other kinds of connection I need to make room for, too.

Connection with my family. Connection with the world outside my home. And maybe even connection with the different versions of myself I've been throughout my life.

I think about Alex and how video games became one of the ways I carry him with me. I think about my younger brothers and how we're still discovering ways to grow closer as adults. And I think about that version of me walking through the Mission, struggling with every step, who probably couldn't have imagined that one day she'd return for something as wonderfully ordinary as dinner and a concert.

There's something bittersweet about all of it.

Life keeps moving, even when parts of our hearts are still somewhere in the past. We carry the people we've lost, the experiences that shaped us, and the versions of ourselves we've had to leave behind. But we also get to create new memories alongside those old ones.

And I think that's what I'm learning.

Connection doesn't always happen just because we want it to. Sometimes we have to make room for it. Sometimes we have to choose it, even when we're busy, tired, or more comfortable staying home.

I'm not suddenly going to become the girl who goes out every weekend. Let's be real, I still love my cozy little world of video games, streaming, and being at home.

But I want to be more intentional about making space for moments like these.

Because the older I get, and especially after everything I've experienced, the more I understand that joy and connection are things we have to cultivate.

And sometimes, cultivating them starts with something as simple as saying yes to a concert with your little brother.

I'm curious, lovelies. Have you ever revisited a place from an earlier chapter of your life and been surprised by how it made you feel? Or found yourself reconnecting with someone in a way you didn't expect?

I'd love to hear your stories. 💜