The Art of Sisterhood

THE ART OF SISTERHOOD

At the weekend, my life as I know it changed again. I had to say goodbye to my sister as she begins her new life down in London. It's a long-held dream she has always aspired to, even when people tried to change her mind. She knew what she wanted, she knew where she belonged, she knew where she wanted to be, she knew what she wanted to do, and she set out to achieve it all. And achieve it she has. My sister had a dream and she was so courageous and brave in following it, and it fills me with immense pride and joy to have watched it steadily come true over the last year. From the first day she verbalised it, to the present, when she moved in to her house in London, my sister has had such faith and conviction in her ambitions, a rare quality to possess, and I admire her so much for it. To watch someone you love achieve their dream, something that means to much to them, something they've worked so hard for, and be blessed with so much happiness, well it's just the most wonderful, beautiful, joyful feeling in the world.

But as much as you want it to, and as much as you tell yourself these things over and over in your mind, and your Mum repeats it like a mantra, and you try and visualise your loved one living this incredible, fulfilling, happy life, it doesn't make goodbye any easier. Even two years after moving out and going to uni (crikey, how time flies!) saying goodbye to my family is still something I struggle with, just a smidge. It still conjures all the feels, and I still sometimes need an emergency cry to clear out the waterworks and I still sometimes need to listen to Boyzone/ Backstreet Boys/ Take That/ take your pick to make me feel better. Goodbyes are just the worst, even when you know you're lucky to have something and someone that makes saying goodbye so bloody hard in the first place (oh Winnie the Pooh, you wise fellow). But saying goodbye to my sister has definitely been the hardest goodbye I've ever had to go through. In my head I had been thinking of all the good things, but when the moment came for us to leave, and we both knew that this was it, and she started crying, I literally burst into tears just like that. I couldn't help myself. Her sadness was my sadness.

And then my parents and I left, and we had tea in the local pub. And when we went back to the car, the curtains in my sister's house were shut, and it was surreal knowing that whilst she was in there, taking tentative footsteps into her new life, we were merely on the outside looking in. We wanted to stay, and be a part of it, but we knew we had to go. At least for now anyway. And I was fine until we joined the M4. The road curved through the perimeters of the city. London in her majesty rippled out from all around us, a sea of buildings, light, motion, as far as the eye could see. And we were right there in the heart of it, still right there with my sister, until suddenly we weren't. The car turned a corner, the city disappeared, and the realisation that my sister was there, and I was here, suddenly hit me. The tears came and they wouldn't stop going. A couple of hours in and I was missing her already. And when we got back home, I went up to my room, and it was so surreal being in the house without her in it. For it to just be Mum, Dad and me. There was a sense of incompleteness. The sense that this is home, but it isn't home in the truest sense until the four of us are together. And then I saw that bloody drawing of Alex Turner she did for me the other Christmas, even when she doesn't like him (or so she claims), and the picture of us from a photo booth ten years ago, that's tacked on my wall, and what do you know, the tears started again. 

Even though we had to say goodbye when I went to uni, and of course there have been lots of smaller goodbyes and hellos in between then and now, I think it was slightly easier because I was the one leaving (I don't like being the one left behind), and because life as we knew it didn't change too much. We still saw each other fairly regularly. Derby was still our home, and where everyone could be found. Family life still resumed as normal. We skyped. We talked on the phone most days. We messaged every single day. We always came back to one another. Saying goodbye to my sister now though, means so many different things. It isn't just saying goodbye to her in the physical sense. It's saying goodbye in the emotional sense. It's saying goodbye to our shared childhood. It's saying goodbye to our teenage years. It's saying goodbye to the home life we all knew. It's saying goodbye to my sister as she is right now, before independence and her new life leave their impending imprint. It's saying goodbye to the little set up we've had going the last few years, where I'm in Manchester and all my family are just over the hills of the Peak District in Derby. It's saying goodbye to living with each other and seeing each other every single day and winding up Mum and Dad and living our lives together in tandem. It's saying goodbye to my soul mate. It's saying goodbye forever, because now that my sister has gone, I don't think she'll ever live back home again, and I don't think I will, and I don't know if we'll ever live together again either. And of course it's saying hello to the present, the future, and all the unknowns and possibilities that await there too. It's just so many things. It's a massive change for all of us, and right now it feels like life is changing in so many different ways. And I've never felt ready for it. The momentousness and importance and reality always hit me when it's too late. 

But obviously change happens. It's only natural. With the passing of time we can't help but move forward and evolve, progress. I think it's just hard when you're happy with how things already are, and you don't really want to have to give that up in exchange for something else, and it's hard accepting that your childhood is officially over. Seeing my sister off into her new life made me think about our lives so far, up to this point, and I ended up getting swept up in the nostalgia of everything. I felt emotional and grateful thinking about everything we have shared together, and that I have been lucky enough to live out all those formative years with her by my side. My sister is my best friend, and my most favourite person in the whole entire world. And it isn't that she's a superhuman, or someone out of the extraordinary. Of course she isn't perfect, and she has her flaws and annoying qualities, as does she have all these amazing qualities and quirks, and if anything her flaws make me love her more. In my eyes she is my favourite person because because of what she means to me, what she brings to my life, what she has taught and continues to teach me, and how we connect as two individuals. We've seen each other at our best and at our worst, and everything in between, and we still love and accept each other unconditionally. It sometimes feels like we know each other better than we know ourselves. My sister is hands down the most valuable, priceless and important gift I have ever been lucky enough to receive in my life, and I'm positive that this will always be the case. I would not be even half the person I am, if it wasn't for her.

People are often very surprised at how close our bond is, and sometimes I don't think they quite understand it either. Most people have good relationships with their siblings, some have mediocre relationships, some don't get on with their siblings at all (cough cough The Gallagher brothers). To me, it's surprising that your sibling could be anything other than a best friend. Even when they're being a noob and pissing you off for whatever reason, all that pales in comparison to all the great things about them. A sibling is your closest ally and closest relation in this world, regardless of biological connections. They are a rare and special connection to have. And if you do happen to share the same mother and father, you and your sibling are both made of exactly the same DNA, just different gene expressions, and it doesn't get much closer than that. I know that for me personally, that's always been such a comforting fact, especially when the world can feel like such a big place. Knowing that there's another person in this world who is the same as me, who is as close to me as anyone else could possibly get. Knowing that my sister is one of the 7 billion people in this planet. These things always make me feel like I'm not alone. All those times when I've felt like no-one would understand, when I've felt that aching loneliness, when I've felt out of my depth and like I didn't belong, it's always been remedied by my sister being there. Whether it's just the thought of her, calling her, texting her, being with her. It's like she puts my soul and mind at peace. She gives me hope and strength. She's the yin to my yang in every sense, and together we make a whole. She feels more like a twin than a younger sister. We're always so in sync with one another, even after time and distance have kept us apart. We think the same things at the same times, we say what each other is thinking, our love lives mirror each other, we share the same opinions, we strive to be the same kind of person.

Being the oldest sibling, I once knew life as an only child, but the funny thing is I don't even remember a life without my sister in it. In my memory, she has always been there. Even now, I forget that she is younger than me. We seem to have always met each other somewhere in the middle. When my sister was born, I apparently used to sit by her cot and call her baby Anna because I couldn't say her whole name. Growing up, we had a tendency to buy matching outfits, and she would check what I was wearing so that we could match. We'd argue over Nintendo DS, her setting up her dolls in my bedroom when I was at keyboard practice, her grassing me up to Mum for something or other. During shared bath time, she always accepted sitting at the tap end. We'd set up shops in my bedroom and take turns being shopkeeper. We play fought and took the mick out of each other. We'd spend hours on SingStar and playing racing games on the PS2. Mum would film videos of us singing, and later we went on to film our own You Tube videos. We'd wake up at 6am every Christmas morning and pester Mum and Dad to wake up. We'd cycle around our suburb together and carry walkie talkies so that Mum could call us home for dinner. We helped each other out of shyness.We were glued to each other's sides, and we always stuck together when it mattered. 

I remember my sister loving me unconditionally when we were younger, and how she always looked up to me and wanted to be like me, and I remember how I often used to reject that. It annoyed me, and I think that's because I was too young to understand it, and I guess I just didn't think I deserved it. But I distinctly remember the moment, sometime in my late primary school years, when I realised how incredibly lucky I was to have my sister. How lucky I was to have someone like her in my life. And how I needed to stop being a stroppy mare and start being nicer to my sister. Let her know I love her too. I distinctly remember that moment, because that's when our relationship became what it is today. That's when I broke down the walls and let her in. That's when I started to put time into our relationship. That's when I started to be more caring, kinder, loving. That's when I started to see her as a friend and an equal, and it changed everything for us.

Of course we still disagreed and fought and had our iffy moments, but for the first time I felt like I had a genuine ally, not an annoying little sister who copied me all the time and got on my nerves. I had someone who I was truly in sync with. Someone who I could trust infinitely. Someone who understood me unlike anybody else. Someone who would always be there. Someone who I wanted to be the best version of myself for. Someone I loved more than I loved myself. Someone I would die for, take a bullet for, defend until my last breath. Someone to share dreams and adventures with. Someone who would become my greatest friend. Our teenage years weren't as difficult as they could have been, because we had each other. She was a constant when my life was changing. I used my experiences and wisdom to help advise and reassure her. We would always go over to each other at school and talk, and that simple thing always turned a bad day into a good one. We would come home from school and I would sit on the worktop, she on the stool, and talk about school, problems, boys, life. We'd go shopping in town together. We'd take trips to the cinema and walks around the neighbourhood. We'd sit and draw together, make cakes, watch films, binge watch TV, and sneak off and sit in our bedrooms talking till late. We'd let out all our emotions and fears with one another, and help each other figure out where to go next. We were never afraid to tell each other the truth. We went through that hideous awkward teenager stage together, and eventually pulled each other out of it and found our own style. 

We would share our dreams for the future, and talk about places we'd visit, where we wanted to live, family, marriage, cars, houses. We navigated all the ups and downs together, each of us taking turns to be the mature one. We argued when one of us didn't agree with the other. We'd nick each other's clothes and wardrobe space. We were bonkers together. We grew in confidence together. We found ourselves together. We learnt from one another. We've encouraged and supported one another, even when it was hard. At the time, it didn't really feel significant or special, and even now when we're together, sometimes I still take it for granted, though I try not to so much anymore. In some respects, I think that our gradual flying of the nest and subsequently being apart from each other, has actually been a good thing. It has made both of us look back on what we've had with more appreciation and affection. It has made us look at the bond we have right now and realise how special, unique and important it is. We're more aware of how lucky we are to have each other. We're more aware of how much the other means to us. 

So even though these times we have known and shared together for the last 18 years have come to an end, and a chapter has now officially closed, I'm starting to feel a lot better about everything. Even though I wish I could see my sister every single day and share every moment of our lives together, I would take the way things are now, over how they were back then, because now every moment we spend together is precious. We appreciate each other more. We make more of an effort with each other. We argue less. We laugh even more than before. Even though we are now further apart than we have ever been in our whole lives, ironically it feels like we're closer than ever. Time and experience have taught me that it takes a lot more than distance to break a bond. Every time my sister and I are back together, it's like we instantly sync right back up with one after, that's if we ever fell out of sync in the first place. And in the spaces in between we are always connected to one another in some kind of way. We still share our lives with one another, perhaps more than we ever did before. It's like we've navigated childhood together, and now we're turning our sights towards adulthood. And sure things are getting tougher, but they're also getting even better than either of us could have ever imagined. 

Our world is no longer contained within these four walls. This city. It now spans counties, countries, continents. Our lives are a shared melting pot of possibility, dreams, hopes, and it feels like we can take on anything if we have each other by our side. So I guess it's time for me to say goodbye to what was, and instead focus on the here and now, and the amazing infinite future that we're creating together piece by piece. I know, that life will no doubt have more ups and downs in store for us. It always does. But I know that it's going to take a lot more than a million earthquakes and a thousand hurricanes and an asteroid collision to break this bond apart. I don't know what my life will look like in five years, let alone ten or twenty. But it's comforting to know that whatever does happen, the one constant, the one thing I can always count on, the one thing that will always be there through thick and thin, near and far, is my sister. And I'm not a millionaire, not even close, but being able to say that, makes me feel like the richest and luckiest person in the whole wide world.