For the first twelve years of my life, I shared a room with my second oldest brother. He and I did everything together growing up, from playing video games to playing outside. I owe a lot of my talents, interests, and my imagination to him. Even when we moved and we no longer shared rooms, we still did a lot together. However, everything in my life changed when my brother decided to join the Army in 2009. Now with this, my whole family had to adjust a lot. We had to get used to the prolonged absence of a person who was a major source of optimism within our family. My brother had to adjust to being away from the people he had spent the last 18 years with, while waking up after two hours of sleep and enduring extremely vigorous physical strain.
As for myself, I learned a lot about life, love and family. Him being gone was tough, but I was never not proud of him. He taught me a lot and it was such an exciting feeling to see him grow and become a man, but I learned just how much you can miss someone who has always been there. The first few days after him being gone were always the worst, and it seemed like every holiday, every time he came home, It just got harder to say goodbye. Over time you adapt, you adjust to the distance, but you never really get used to it.
By far the hardest thing I have ever had to do was say goodbye to my brother before he was deployed to Iraq. Saying goodbye for potentially the last time is one thing I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy. There was so much unknown with it. We didn't know what he would be doing or how it would affect him. I didn't know if I would ever see my brother again. Before that, I never really processed what he would be doing, however as soon as I looked at my whole family and saw the tears in their eyes, I realized it and it chokes me up even now thinking about it.
With all of that change in my life, I learned how to work and how to accomplish my goals. I said to myself that I wanted to make my family proud with my brother's absence. I started studying in school, worked hard, and made myself the best I could be. I wanted to make my brother proud most of all. I went from a low 80s student to a 90s student, and although he has since come back, I graduated tenth in my class, was accepted into my dream college and was accepted to that college's honors program.
Currently, my brother is back home and is still my best friend. I talk to him about everything and we have shared some of the best times together. Looking back, the four years really flew by, but during those times, I started to find myself and define who I was and what my purpose was. I grew in my brothers shadow, but in a good way. I had big shoes to fill, but I tried my best to fill them in different ways than they had previously been made. To this day, although I try endlessly to differentiate myself, I can't help but look at our similarities. However, my second oldest brother, my best friend and my closest mentor made a sacrifice that I would never be able to make. For that, I am extremely proud to call him my brother.
