Being a sister is pretty dang cool. Having a sister is even cooler. Having a younger sister is the best, especially when there isn’t a huge age difference. To say my sister and I have been through a lot together is a huge understatement. I oftentimes hear my parents tell me I’m my sister’s biggest role model. The first few times I heard that I felt this upsetting anxiety in the pit of my stomach. I would ask myself, “Why would she look up to me? I’m a nobody.” And that is honestly how I felt. Now it’s two or three years later and I still hear that phrase in conversation, only this time I feel pride and love.

There are a lot of things I won’t say about my sister, and there are a lot of things I won’t say about us and our relationship, but the things I will say are pretty darn powerful and relatable to many. I would always get really annoyed whenever my sister would copy me. Sometimes she’d get a crush on the guy I liked. Other times she’d start liking a band I’ve liked for ages and act like she’s the first one to discover them. It was no secret growing up that I didn’t like her. Even today in a conversation with her she told me she thought I hated her when I was twelve and she was nine. I paused and then told her the truth. “There was a small part of me that hated you, but I loved you more than anything else.” Growing up, we fought almost constantly and I was resentful and jealous of my little sister for so many unnecessarily complicated reasons. The worst part of it all was I knew all my anger and hate derived from my low self-esteem and it made me even more resentful.

You were probably thinking this was going to be a really sweet story about how wonderful my sister and I are, and we are. We’re like lotus flowers, growing out of a murky mess and turning into something beautiful (totally cliché, but true). My sister knows me in a way that no other person on this planet will ever know and vice versa.

I don’t want anyone thinking we had a horrible childhood or a bad family because we have a wonderful family. We just were affected by life’s ugly circumstances, just like everyone else.

The thought that I am about to share is a thought I had often growing up and it is a thought that I am deeply ashamed of. For a small, but frankly too long, period of my life I was seriously determined to get the hell out of dodge and condemn my sister from my life. I was convinced she was going to grow up and take advantage of everyone and ruin my life. I’m horribly ashamed even now, writing it and thinking about what people may think. I know it was a horrible thought. I had no hope for my baby sister and what kind of sister does that make me?

As the years went on things started to change and it was like the uneven tectonic plates of which our lives were precariously placed had slowly shifted and evened out. With that shift came clearer skies and revelations. My sister still remains to look up to me and it is comforting after all these years. However, I need to say something about that which I’ve yet to share with anyone until now. See, the truth about all of this is that I look up to my sister. She’s one of the biggest role models in my life. I kept thinking “How can I look up to someone who is younger than me?” But why does it matter? Any person that crosses paths in our lives is going to have some sort of impact, be it deep and fundamental, or minute and unnoticeable.

My sister and I have many similarities, but there are many aspects of ourselves to which we diverge. It’s a game of balance, really. There are qualities to my sister that, though originally caused jealousy and resentment, now create awe and inspiration. I can only assume the same goes for her.

The lesson, though there are many, is that you don’t get to decide who changes your life. You don’t get to decide who changes you because life is funky like that and rarely ever are we actually in control of what happens. The person who changes your life in a moment, be it in a good way or a bad way, may not even know what they are doing. They may not even realize the plates shifting and the air churning, but it is all there. It is there all the time.

My sister is one of my best friends and one of my closest confidantes. She’s lively and lazy, imaginative and practical. She’s many things I’m not and many things I am too. The confidence I have that she is going to do so many wonderful things in her life make me proud and excited for the future. Our relationship wasn’t always good, and really it was more complicated that I can put into words, but we had always been close. And I think the fact that we had more in common than we realized has helped set the stage for positive change.

Even now as she is watching Edward Scissorhands on her phone across from me I'm thinking how lucky I am to have a sister like Grace. I know that when we grow up and lead our own dizzying adult lives I know my sister will be there for every monumental moment of our lives and the feeling that comes from that thought is not fear or disgust. It’s excitement. It is unconditional love.