As many of you know, my little
sister, Josie, visited last week. She was on spring break and the only thing
she wanted to do was come to Portsmouth and stay with me! I’ve been in a weird
position for months: torn against my health, my work ethic, and the multitude
of things that steal my time throughout the week. BUT having my sister stay a
whole week with me was just the cure I needed. Don’t get me wrong, OJ is the
best person to come home to after a long day but Josie is the extra special
treat. She honestly didn’t care how my day was, didn’t ask, but the moment I
sat down to relax there she was right beside me showing me ridiculous Vine
videos and laughing so loud I couldn’t even hear what the videos were saying!
It’s moments like those that make me hate being apart from her.
Ladies I tell you, there is no love
or a feeling remotely close to the love that you can have towards your sister
that you will ever feel with anyone else. (Maybe
except for when or if you have a child. Babies make your heart explode with
love you didn’t even know you had—that’s my philosophy and I’m sticking to it!)
Maybe the age difference between you all plays a factor but I don’t think it
matters if you’re 10 years apart or 2, you love your sister in a way so unique
to any other person you love. I think of myself and Josie as a special case.
I’m 5 years older than her but you’d never guess it. (Maybe you could have at that awkward time when I was almost 13 and
decided Barbie’s weren’t my thing anymore. Josie loathed me for like a solid
week, hung out with our older brother, and told me in a note that she wanted to
be a boy, Joe, so she could share a room with Josh.) Never mind that she
has a good 5-6 inches on me and could take me in a wrestling match, or that
people mistake me for the younger sister always, she’s my little baby. Having a
little sister is some weird training for motherhood. To this day, even when I
know she can take up for herself, I’m so quick to defend and protect her. The
thought of her driving or dating scares the living life out of me. I’m equipped
with chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream at all times-the good, the bad, and
the you all just wouldn’t understand. Her life and well-being trump mine, every
single day. When Josie is sad, it makes me cry, whether we’re in the same room
or 51 miles away. Unfortunately, when she’s in trouble, I feel obligated to put
on my imaginary floaties and go down with her. Her happiness is the most infectious thing and
when she laughs (over seriously the stupidest, most unfunny things); I can’t
help but laugh too. I will forever be her second mother, her person, her rock
when she’s shaken, her biggest fan at all her high points, her best friend, and
even sometimes her worst enemy. (FACT: 15
year olds especially hate you when you tell them not to do something, even when
you tell them you got in trouble for it or that it isn’t worth it.) Disappointing
my family is one fear but disappointing my sister means I may as well quit at
life. Being a sister is honestly one of the greatest things in this world: I
say it a million times, but she quite simply is my whole wide world.
I think our age gap made my sister
mature beyond her years and has given me the uncanny ability to forget that I’m
21 and not 12. I am so many things to her, but she is even more for me. She was
my shoulder after every heart break, my listening ear at 2am on a school night,
my reminder that you are never too old to sing into your hair brush. Sharing a
room with her all my life prepared me for what it’d be like to be roommates
with a slob in college (she’s cute but
man is she messy!) I automatically have a best friend for life, meaning for
forever she will listen to me cry and then give me 60 reasons to smile, or at
least send me pictures from iFunny. We will be the mixed version of Betty White
x2. She gives me a standard to uphold. I have to be the best so that she’ll
work to be the best if not better than I am. She’s so brutally honest that it
physically hurts. She somehow understands all my feelings, even when she was like
7; some weird twin telepathy (are
scientist 100 percent sure it’s impossible for twins to be 5 years apart?)
Sometimes she comes up with the out of the blue wisdom that is the greatest
advice ever (“Sometimes you have to be
like Zayn and walk away from what you love because it’s not what you need in
life right now.” ) She was the first person I ever fell in love with.
Sounds really weird but let me explain. I would say my parents are the first
people I fell in love with but they fell in love with me first and my
unconditional love followed. My sister was the first person I fell in love with
because she was the first person that didn’t fall in love with me at first
sight. Keep in mind I’m 5; I have an
older brother who realistically did love me but at the time I felt like his
test dummy for shenanigans and trouble, there was no way he loved me and since
he was mean I decided that some days I love him and some days I don’t. I
thought people could decide if they love you or not (which is totally true, go baby Jasmine-except your family is kinda
obligated to love you so in that sense I was wrong.) I sit on my mom’s
hospital bed, snuggled up to her and my dad hands me my little sister to hold
for the first time. I kind of thought I’d wait to get to see how she was before
I decided if I love her (if she’s mean
like Josh then probz not). But instead,
in that moment, unplanned, almost suddenly, I fell in love. I had this sense
that at any time, any place, always and forever I would do anything for her. It
was an oddly amazing feeling to 5 year old me because I didn’t even know if she
loved me back, I didn’t care. And though how I fall in love with other people
is similar, at that one climactic moment when they’re doing nothing but
existing, my love for my sister has always been in a category all its own.
I know some of you don’t have
biological sisters and that this just seems like a weird, unnecessarily long
story. But I say it again: being a
sister is honestly one of the greatest things in this world. How super special
that three letters brought all these sisters into our lives. It’s inaccurate
for me to say that our sisterhood is anything close to what Josie and I are,
and I think it’s inaccurate to say that that just because we are a sisterhood
every sister is going to give you this same experience and that you’ll gush
about a sister like I do over Josie. But I think it’s incredibly accurate to
say you will build bonds-some of the strongest you’ve ever had. You will find a sister that is basically you
in another body. You will find a sister that becomes your best friend. You will
find a sister that would at the drop of a hat go out of their way for you.
You’ll be loved, cared for, and appreciated. At least one sister will listen to
all your stories, buy you flowers when you’re sad, do the most ridiculous stuff
with you, stay up all night talking to you. Though it’s not the same love as
what is felt between biological sisters, it’s still so so nice to give and
receive. I guess my point is, just like having my little sister is so
rewarding, this sisterhood is too. No it’s not easy, you will get angry, but no
matter what these girls love you, want the best for you, and want to take life
on with you. As Josie would say, “how dope is that?”
