My sister is my best friend.
She sometimes asks me if we are best friends, and I always tell her no. One: I like to irritate her. She gets mad so easily that it's pretty hilarious, and two: she’s more than a best friend. She’s a sister, which out ranks any other label I could possibly give her.
She doesn’t just know me; she knows all of me. I don’t just get her; I get all of her. I am my most relaxed around her because she knows me better than anyone.
When we were younger we didn’t get along. There’s a five-year age gap, so she wanted to be a teenager while I wanted to play Pretty Pretty Princess, and it worked for us. We orbited around each other for many years, until the day it all changed.
We got close. We stopped scratching each other and fighting for no reason. We became sisters, and we are the two most opposite people to ever be related. We deal with things differently. We have different quirks. We have different sense of humors. We are two highly opinionated people but most of the time our opinions are on different spectrums, but it works for us. We challenge each other, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
She’s a sister who takes care of me because I have a hard time making decisions. She knows I’ll be late when we have something planned, so she tells me to come thirty minutes earlier than she wants me to. She listens when I talk about my day or tell her stories because she knows I don’t tell just anyone those things.
She buys me blankets, pajamas and movies because that’s all it takes to make me happy. She calls just to call even though she knows there’s a ninety percent chance I won’t pick up because she understands that I hate talking on the phone. We act stupid together or we can sit in complete silence--both are okay.
She knows everything about me because she raised me.
I remember her tucking me in at night. Giving me baths (even though half the time she wouldn’t wash my hair because she was mad at me that day). I remember her talking through the air vents when we were in time-out. It was always because we were fighting, but once we were in time-out we would plot revenge against our parents like the reason we were in there wasn’t because we had previously fought.
She’s the one who gives me space (sometimes) when I just want to be in my own head, which I always need because I can’t handle being around people every day of the week. She still badgers me to hang out with her and I tell her no, but the thought still counts.
She’s always there to make my birthday special when I felt anything but. She always cheered me up when I was down even if most people would miss the signs that I was sad. She was there to deal with me being cranky—which I must admit is most of the time—those times when no one else can handle me.
She is the reason I am who I am. She’s always been there for me, even when I wanted to be left alone. She’s my rock. The one person I tell everything to. I take her for granted, but she needs to know I love her more than a best friend. I love her like a sister. I love her like she’s my mother, and I wouldn’t change anything about us.
She makes everything okay when it is anything but, and without her I would be lost.
So, thank you Kelsey for being my best friend, my sister, my mother and the one person I can go to for anything.
