As the younger sibling of two, I know the ups and downs of being the youngest all too well. My sister and I are five years apart, she is 25 and I am 20. Growing up, we were mostly in different stages of our lives, but we still went through life together.
If someone were to spend an hour or two with my sister and me today, they would instantly be able to tell how close we are to each other. But I can’t sit here and write all about how I grew up loving my sister because to be completely honest, it took a long time to get to where we are now. Throughout elementary school, my sister was in middle and high school, so I was always too young to hang out with her. Once I got to the eighth grade, my sister was already in college, so my parents gave her the job of keeping track of my academics. She looked over my essays (and rewrote them) and made sure I was always in line when it came to school. She always made sure I didn’t do anything that could get me in trouble, so she began feeling like a second strict mother to me. As I began high school, it was the same as always, but as I was deep into my teenage years, I had a huge attitude (even if I didn’t want to admit that) and it made having normal conversations with my sister without arguing very difficult. Even through COVID, when we began getting a bit closer and spent countless hours in the house together, I still only felt like she was just my sister.
During the second half of my senior year of high school, I got some horrible senioritis (as most seniors did), so I would ask my mom if I could leave early, and for some reason, she would usually agree. Since my high school was pretty far from my house, picking me up was a chore, so naturally my parents made my sister do it. The first time she picked me up, I was hungry so I asked if we could grab some food before we went home and from there it became something we did together. She would come pick me up early and we would get food. During this time, we also started listening to similar music and I think that was when we really started bonding more as friends rather than sisters.
Growing up, I never understood how much my sister had done for me from a young age. I was obsessed with Justin Bieber when I was younger (it never went away) and when she would share her headphones with me, she would always play his music. For my birthday one year, she made me two custom CDs with all of my favorite songs. When I was 14, she bought the two of us tickets to my favorite band at the time. She was 20, making her the same age as me right now and I can barely afford to buy myself one concert ticket (not that that’s stopping me), let alone two. And the thing about that is that she knows I can’t, so she spends it for me, not even expecting me to pay her back. Of course, I pay back by buying her some seven-dollar coffee after she’s spent God knows how much on me. (Guys don’t worry I have a list in my phone of everything I need to pay her back for, let me get my bag up first).
In my opinion, my older sister is the blueprint for all elder sisters. She has and continues to do so much for me, and I don’t think any amount of coffee or even money could make up for everything. Even through all of the rough patches in our relationship, she’ll always be my older sister: Apy.