Like most siblings, my sister and I have a love/hate relationship. One moment we're best friends, sprawled out on her bed and showing each other the new clothes we just bought or sharing stories about what we did the night prior with our friends.
The next moment we're screaming derogatory insults at each other with no other intention but to stab the other directly in the heart. Thankfully, our fighting has evolved from hair pulling and hitting to blasting profanities at each other and claiming the other is fat, or ugly, or stupid.
Unfortunately, the latter hurts just as much as when our fights were physical, and even though 99% of the time we don't actually mean what we say, it still hurts.
Almost immediately after each fight, I want to take back everything I said. I want to pull my sister into a tight hug and apologize profusely and tell her she's incredible and beautiful─but pride always weighs in and my ego is too hurt to apologize to her.
When I was in high school, it was so easy for something to come between me and my sister. We were around each other nearly 24/7. Between driving her back and forth to school every day, going to dance together, and of course living together, we sometimes just hung out too much.
It wasn't until I left for college that I realized how much I wished me and my sister left off with a better relationship and how much I would truly miss her.
I came to realize that nobody knew me better than my sister, and I'd kill for those 5 minutes we'd sometimes get a week to just quickly Facetime and tell each other what's been going on in our lives. When I'd come home for school breaks, I found that we were hanging out much more often than we ever did before I left for school.
She began leaving her weekends without plans just so we could go out for brunch together or drive around town and go shopping. And the minute I'd have to return to school, as much as I hate to admit it, I hated having to hug her goodbye for at least another month.
Ironically, the longer I've been at college, the closer I've found me and my sister got. I somehow feel more excited to call her and ask her how her exams went or sometimes have her just call me to tell me what new clothes she bought at the mall. I spent most of my life resenting my sister, sometimes wishing she was never born or wondering how it was possible for a single human being to be so annoying.
But in reality, I think I used those feelings to mask how much I desired to be closer to her.
In high school, I never understood when my friends would tell me they and their sisters were best friends. I never understood the desire to want to hang out with a younger sibling or how other people never felt like their sisters were just another daily pain to deal with. It took me a while, but now I get it.
Yes, we still bicker sometimes and have our occasional fights, but now instead of them ending in tears, we usually just end up hysterically laughing at each other and mimicking how the other sounded when screaming.
Sometimes I think my parents get alarmed seeing us hang out and being nice to one another because they grew so accustomed to the constant hostility that existed between us. If coming to college meant truly realizing how grateful I was to have a younger sister, then I don't regret it at all.
I treasure my relationship with my sister with my entire life and hope that we can continue to build our bond as time goes on.
