I have never admired anyone as much as I did my brother. He had a way of enchanting anyone with just a flash of a smile. He had everyone convinced that he was the embodiment of perfection, and I was proud to be his little sister. So proud that when my mom asked him to clean his room, I knew that it was my job. So proud that if he wanted my allowance, it was all his. So proud that when he left me waiting at school alone in the cold for forty-five minutes as a second grader, I never told my parents. It was because of this that I became an anxious little girl, not being able to rely on anyone, but at the same time, trying to please everyone. Not a day passed that I didn’t have a sickening knot in my stomach; worried that Matt wouldn’t be there when I got out of school. It became so bad that I often worried that nobody would ever be there for me, even days when my mother was picking me up. As I got older, I was always the passive one in friendships. I put other people’s feelings before my own because my brother had taught me to. There’s a saying that I once heard: “You could slit my throat and with my last breath, I’d apologize for bleeding on your clothes.” This was how I felt about my brother, and, knowing nothing else, was ok with it. He was flawless in my eyes.

That changed his freshman year in college. Having him away from home for almost an entire year forced me to find my own identity. I was a freshman in high school, only fifteen years old, and I was facing reality. As I was battling problems of my own, my heroic brother never came to my rescue. I began to confide in the girl who had never left my side, his girlfriend. She was the caring sister I never had and the farthest she ever ventured was a phone call away. She was there for me when my brother didn’t care to be. When my heart was shattered by a boy I gave everything to, it took Lauren’s consolation, and months of therapy, to put it back together. But my brother, for whom I would do everything and anything, was nowhere to be found. When Lauren became “the ex-girlfriend”, she was still my sister and one of my best friends. It was a year of growing up and finding my place in the world. I no longer wanted to be “Matt’s little sister”. I realized that you can’t make everyone like you, so you might as well be yourself. For my whole life, I had lived trying to please my brother and everyone else, but after that summer, I learned to not care so much about what people thought, and to think of myself more. When he wasn’t there for me, it became clear that I had to be there for myself.

When Matt came home from school that summer, I made it a point to not ask anything of him and to never go out of my way to do anything for him. Our relationship became tense and we almost never spoke. He felt betrayed that I had confided so much in a girl who was no longer in his life. Lauren was the closest thing I had to a sibling at that point, and I was not about to give that up because of him. That was the summer that I saw his true colors and realized how selfish my perfect brother actually was. I was no longer the little girl who would give anything to make him happy. I was becoming independent and I was slowly realizing my own self worth. Growing up and growing apart, we just need to find balance.