My sister and I have always been close, or at least I’ve been close to her. Despite the seven year age gap, I was always attached to her at the hip any time I could be. I remember when I was little, I would constantly be in her room, trying to get her attention, or trying to get her to spend time with me. The insane part about all of it is that often times, she did. Even though I was 6 and she was almost out of middle school, my older sister would be on the couch next to me playing Mario Kart on the Wii. (With the added caveat that I was not allowed to play as Peach and definitely could not be player 1, of course). When I was young, I liked to draw-as most children do. Although I had zero skill, I could color in a flower with the best of them. My drawings rarely ended up on the fridge in the kitchen though; not because my parents wouldn’t have put them there, but because I always brought them to my sister. Some of these even ended up hanging on the wall of her bedroom! I don’t know about you, but I don’t think many high schoolers are hanging up a 3rd grader’s art in their space.
It wasn’t just on my end either. I’ve got vivid memories from when I was only 4 and my sister would take me out to be with her friends. I realized later that my mom was probably telling her to take me with her, but I certainly didn’t learn that from my sister. Once, she was holding a lemonade stand and I remember sitting on a stool at the end of the driveway while she joked with her friends that I was going to get them more customers because I was cute. Looking back, I’m sure that she would rather I had not been there, but that wasn’t something I knew at the time because in that moment, I was just excited to be with her. When I got a little older, the lemonade stands went away, but she still would include me in things much more than I think most would have expected of her. Plenty of times she would come get me just to bring me to her room so that she could read me the latest story she wrote (usually some kind of fanfiction about a movie or book that I had never read nor seen). When my older sister took a photography class, I was always her model, and she never failed to make me feel like the photos she took would look the same as professionals. When I took photos with my sister, I was convinced I looked like this:
I didn’t… but she made me feel like it. When she would get ahold of glitter tattoos, I was the one getting decorated. When we would spend summers at our grandparent’s house, I was always right by her side. I couldn’t tell you how much she wanted me there, because she never showed to me any kind of annoyance towards my presence on her adventures. To me, she wanted me there just as much as I wanted to be there. I was her closest friend, just as much as she was mine.
Not only did I constantly want to hang out with my older sister as a child, but I idolized her. To me, my older sister was the embodiment of what cool and popular people were. She was fashionable and I stole not just her clothes, but her style at times. I attribute a lot of my abilities when it comes to fashion to her. When I was in middle and early high school and I was finding my personal style, she was who I looked at. I looked at who she was and said “I want to be like that.” I even spent a year trying my hardest to change the way I dotted my “I”s to a little circle because she did it like that and I thought it was so cool. I thought she was so cool. My older sister was also the person, at least in my head, that could fix anything. When my toys broke, when my clothes tore, when anything went wrong, I’d bring it to her, crying, and a few days later she’d bring whatever it was back to me (or in one case, a copy of it in the original Barbie’s clothes).
So When did it finally click?
Throughout my life with this amazing sister of mine, I somehow managed to make friends with all the kids that had younger siblings of their own. When they would complain about their little brothers and sisters being annoying and always trying to tag along, I laughed with them at the stories they would tell because I never saw my own family in them. I never saw myself as that annoying younger sibling in the anecdotes. They always felt like something outside of my reality. When I would see Tiktoks and other social media posts talking about how the youngest sibling is always trying to butt into the older siblings’ lives, I always got a strange feeling because my life was never like that. I’m very confident that I was super annoying at times but I wouldn’t say that she ever made me truly believe that she didn’t care about me. Yes, we fought because we’re sisters and that’s how it goes, but a few minutes later she would always burst into my room with her airbrush or an acrylic nail kit she had recently gotten. Within a few minutes, it’s like the fight never happened.
Recently, I was sitting in my dorm on my phone, thinking about my life and subsequently my sister and I realized… I was the annoying little sister. I was the one being complained about at the lunch table. I was the one who pulled her away from her friends because she had to babysit. I was the one that bothered her all the time when she didn’t want me to. But I never knew that because, in general, she didn’t let me know that. She wasn’t yelling at me as much as most older sister’s would, especially with such a large age gap. She always accepted the gifts I made and I knew that she liked them because they got hung up next to her posters. She treated me like a close friend no matter how many times I yelled or insulted her (or kicked her down the stairs that one time). My older sister was always there for me.
I didn’t realize that I was the annoying little sister until after I had become an adult…not because I was foolish, but because my older sister always treated me in a way that let me believe that she was as much a friend to me as my classmates and peers. I was the annoying little sister… but my older sister never let me know that.