Usually you don’t think about how large the age gap between you two actually is, but there’s something to think about when you look back at how the past years have affected your life. You probably remember the day your parents told you about your younger sibling coming into your life, or you remember the day they came home to you for the first time.

At first, I was excited on the outside but, to be honest, I wasn't sure how this was going to affect our family. Being 10-year-old me, I was sure that I wanted a little sister, and I was sure that I was going to the be the best big sister ever. I was the only child for a long time, and bringing someone new into the family was not at all what I expected it to be. I soon found out that I knew nothing about babies, even after the years of playing dolls.

After my sister entered my life, I thought I was pretty cool. Mainly because I was old enough to hold her without someone holding on to her, too, and I was able to be there for her if she cried. Looking at it now, I never thought about how much I would hold her when she cried, or how often she would find ways to make me laugh when I cry. As we got older, and she grew into a not so tiny little baby. She became someone I loved and accepted, but I didn't always need to be around her. I mean I was going through middle school -- so that kind of explains it.

When I got to high school and she got to school, I got busier and so did she. But that never meant she didn't cry or miss me. That never meant that I was a bad big sister. By this point even though we would get on each other’s nerves and tend to pick at them a little bit, we still loved each other with all that we had. She became the happiness that I needed.

There is something about your relationship with your sibling that nobody could change. Ever. When they’re hurting, you’re hurting. You become almost like a third parent, because you don’t want anything bad to happen to them and you would do anything in your power to protect them. You hope to be a person that they want to be like when they grow up, someone to look up to, and to be someone that they know they can always trust.

Now that I am at college we don’t always get to see each other all the time, and for a while that was really hard on both of us. But I was the adult so I had to be strong, she on the other hand didn’t have to be. And that was OK, she deserved time to process because like I said there is a bond between siblings that no one else can understand and at that moment she didn’t know what was going to come next.

So my hope for you and your sibling, younger or older is that you don’t ever see them as being a burden. Because being a big sister is the best thing that has ever happened to me, and I would never change that, or who she is, for anything.