“This was almost exactly six years ago, when my sister graduated high school. That was a big deal. When my brother graduated, I was kind of too little to get what was going on. This was kind of like ‘Oh, okay, this is what happens, this is what’s going to happen, this is life.’ Six years is a pretty big difference when your sister is graduating and you’re just getting to middle school. 

I’ve always kind of rushed to be at her level, tried to catch up so desperately. I think with [me wearing] the cap, there’s probably a little bit of jealousy, a little bit of ‘I wish I was more on your level and not so different from you.’

Everyone’s always saying… Once you get to a certain point everything evens out and you’ll be best friends with your siblings, but being little and being at such different points in our lives, that was hard.

I think every time that my sister’s moved on to something new and big in her life, I cried. Like when she moved into her dorm for the first time, when she moved into her apartment, when she got her first job. I think it’s a lot of jealousy, like, ‘I work so hard to be just like you and to get to the same level.’ And you can only do that so much… at one point, you’re still six years younger, no matter how hard you force yourself to be older in your mind.

[Our dynamic] really has flipped. Her last couple years of high school, I ended up being really good friends with her, and she put a lot of effort into that, like, ‘I’m leaving and I want to make use of the time that we have,’ so we were really good friends. I spent a lot of days with her and her friends, which I’m sure was really weird for them, but it was life-changing for me, Sitting in the backseat of her car while two of them would talk about high school things, and I would probably tell my mom and tattle, I don’t think she ever forgave me for that. 

I think that she really wanted me to be a part of her life, and I think that now I’m feeling similarly… I want her to know my friends the way I knew her friends, and while it’s different, it’s the same. I don’t think you can ever really understand how important it is to graduate until you’re there… while I knew that was a big deal, I didn’t know until I was here.”