I am an older sister

We’re about to get real mushy, just come along for the ride.

I am an older sister.  I have an older brother, but no older sister so I don’t really know what its like.  I’ve never really had a female figure like that to look up to and take cues from.  I do have a little sister, so for her, I am that older sister.  I’ve never really looked at myself like a role model for her though.

I can easily say that of my siblings I am by far the closest with my sister and I know she shares that same sentiment.  While there are a handful of things she and I have in common, I mean, bizarre things that most people shouldn’t have in common, on most levels we are completely different. I always laugh when someone says we look like sisters.  Let’s be honest, nothing about us physically is remotely similar, literally nothing.  Oh wait, I take that back.  We both have long torsos.  Yup, that must be the dead giveaway that we are related, those long Maki torsos.

All that aside the fact remains that we’ve always been pretty independent from one another.  She always had her art thing, I did the sports. She was more a relationship girl while I was more a date anyone and everyone kind of girl.  She the introvert, I the extrovert.  When she was really young we didn’t along at all, but here in these later years we’ve gotten pretty close.  Despite how close we are though we’ve always just kind of done our own thing and walked to the beat of our own drums.

Recently my dearest little sister got engaged.  This is happy news and I am incredibly happy at the man she found to spend her life with.  This news was bittersweet for me however, due in part to the fact that I am not married, nor am I engaged, nor am I even dating anyone.  Even though I’ve never really seen myself as the “big sister” figure, showing my sister the ropes or helping her through life’s different stages, I felt a sudden loss at the fact that she would be getting married before me.  At some point in time, somewhere written in my brain was this thought that it should happen to me first, because I’m older.  I should be able to offer her advice, do’s and don’ts, how to’s… but I can’t.

I have felt rather stunted and incapable, lesser even.  There have been several times during this wedding planning process that I’ve withdrawn because I just don’t know what to do.  I don’t know how to handle being sad that she’s getting married and that I’m not even close.  I remember when she got engaged, I went into a dating frenzy, as if I could hurry up and find a husband before she got married.

At least dating someone gave me some comfort through all of this.  It was just nice not to feel so alone.  When that relationship didn’t pan out I felt myself pulling even further away from everything.  A week or so ago I remember I could hear my mom downstairs with her phone on speaker, hands a mess in some meatloaf.  On the other end was my sister, audibly crying, upset that she hadn’t picked the right wedding dress.  I felt sad for my sister, but I couldn’t help but feel envious.  There isn’t anything I wouldn’t give to trade the woes of my rejected and aching heart, for that of being apprehensive over a wedding dress.  I’d wear a paper sack down the aisle if it meant I could be married.

I’ve had a lot of mixed emotions lately and felt a lot of uncertainty about myself.  My mantra has always been to take things one day at a time and that’s how I’ve been handling everything, to the best of my ability each and every day as it comes.  Something happened the other night though that though that brought it all back and reminded what I really am, I am an older sister.

My sister and her fiancé are improvers and do a weekly show.  My mom has always been a big supporter, going out to the shows and sitting by herself at times.  I on the other hand, almost never go. While I love watching my sister and her fiancé on stage and enjoy the show, I find the other patrons in the audience to be just beyond my toleration level.  That and I tend to work a lot, preventing me from attending.  This last Friday they had their debut performance of their new improv troop and since I wasn’t working, nor did I have any dates lined up, I had no reason not to go.

Now my mom was there, which is common, and my dad was there, much less common, even my brother and sister-in-law came, which I don’t know how many times they had attended but if I had to guess it was probably about as often as myself.  All these family members showed up to offer their support… but I saw how my sister’s face lit up when she saw I was there.  She thanked my parents for being there but went on to express a genuine gratitude for my presence, it was unfounded for me.  Even after the show she thanked me for coming and on Facebook she thanked me some more.

It was then I realized that in spite of the fact that she is getting married before me, in spite of how much of a colossal failure I am at relationships, and in spite of how differently we approach life… she really does look up to me.  I am her big sister and that means something, regardless of my missteps and imperfections.

I saw a memes recently that was a picture of a dog and the caption, “be the kind of person your dog thinks you are.”  Well here and now I want to be the kind of person my sister thinks I am.  If she can look at me like that and think I’m something special, that I’m someone worth looking up to, than damn it, I had better be it.