If you know me, then you most likely know my sister. And if you don’t know her, then you probably will, eventually. Maybe you’ve seen or heard about her somehow through me, you might have just not realized it at the time.
She’s in a lot of places, whether it’s one scroll on my social media accounts, one look at the little photo strips on my wall, and I don’t know a single week where the words “Oh my sister...” doesn’t come out of my mouth at least once. If you don’t know her face then you, for some reason, might know what her favorite musician is, or what foods she likes to eat, or some insignificant fact about her that I brought up in which you mostlikely forgot, but I will always remember.
When I was a kid, I used to think it was strange to call a family member your best friend, as if a best friend could never be someone who shared the same parents as you or who was beside you since the day you were born. I remember being embarrassed to tell people how attached I was to my sister, like I had failed some part of my childhood because I wasn’t able to find someone outside of my family t grow as close to as her.
But, as I got older my shame for my closeness with my sister faded as I started understanding more how lucky I am to have some one in my life who is just as much as a best friend as she is my immediate family.
Three years older than me with the same hair color, same eye color, and the same upbringing, my sister and I have always been so similar yet so different at the same time. She’s my only sibling, and for one thing, we actually look nothing alike. My sister got a good mix of our parents' features while I look like I was born as an exact replica of our father, and that somehow made us look like strangers.
My sister has always been the one our parents ask for help from, at least until I was old enough to be half as knowledgeable as her. If it was anything from calling insurance companies to fixing computer viruses, she was the first one there. When she wasn’t home, our father would shrug at me, and chose to struggle on his own rather than watch me attempt to help him and take as much time figuring it out as he would.
And when it came to me, she was always the one I asked for advice from first. She went through school first so she would recommend her favorite classes, she experienced interviews for jobs first so she would practice questions with me when it was my turn to apply, she outgrew her clothes first so she would sort them with me to see which pieces I wanted to take.
From a lot of peoples’ perspective, my sister is seen as a quiet dedicated student, but she has always been so much more than that. Outside of our daily routines of working a job or going to school, it was the little things in our lives that truly kept our small family going, and it was like my sister was the glue keeping us together, fixing up things here and there whenever she could.
I still have this poster tucked away in one of my drawers from when I was in second grade. It’s a “Get To Know Me” poster, and the main question on the front asked: “Who is your hero?” In the little space they gave me is where I taped a tiny picture of my sister. I remember putting it there with little thought and when I presented it to the class, I would say “I love my sister! She plays with me and helps me all the time! That’s why she’s my hero!” But over the years since then, the meaning behind putting her photo there gained more importance to me.
My sister is the person who knows me best. When I felt down, she wouldn’t say anything, but would walk in my room and sit on my bed quietly. She always knew what specific video or song would get a smile out of me so she would play it out loud in hopes I would react. Even though we are many hours away from each other now, she still checks up on me everyday. She’s the kind of person who stayed on the phone with me while I got lost in the dark and wandered around the parking lot with 1% battery left. The one who knew how excited I was for a concert and called me afterwards because she wanted to hear me rant about it for hours, even if it meant her losing sleep the night before her 7am shift.
When I think back on it, I recall so many moments in my life where I noticed I was starting to display characteristics of my sister, the characteristics she always had throughout my childhood and now. One of the most prominent moments when I noticed this was when I moved to Seattle. Being older than all of my roommates, I felt a new and different sense of responsibility, one that I imagine what it’s like to be an older sibling. There are so many times where I can feel myself saying things exactly like how my sister would say to me. And it’s the little things, like the eagerness to lend over a sweater for a big event, ensuring my roommates’ safety before they go out, or having late night conversations where I give advice on experiences that I had gone through before.
Although my sister knew how worried I was coming to Seattle, she never lived away from home or ever had roommates. I was dealing with experiences that she had never gone through before. As the youngest, I always had the luxury of running to my sister for advice, the privilege of having the support of an older sibling who helped set a path for me to follow. But, for her, she never had the support from an older sister. Starting new things in life that our parents never experienced and having to figure out her next steps on her own was what she had always gone through since she was younger. The feeling of being on your own was likely all too familiar to her, and that’s exactly how I felt in those moments in my life.
To be honest, I don’t think I could ever give back to my sister half as much as she has given me. As I navigate my life in my 20s, I realize more and more how much the love from my sister has impacted my life and those around me, and how I choose to give back this love not only to her, but to those I come across in my everyday life. For my sister, who has given me nothing but an endless amount of love and support, I don’t think I could ever write enough words to describe how grateful I am to have you in my life.
