On September 9th, 2013 I woke up as a somewhat immature 10th grader and my first thought was about whether I should really wear the dress that I’d laid out the night before. I walked downstairs and mumbled “good morning” to my mom, and then I waited at the counter for my breakfast. My sister came down and I gave her a pinch to be annoying.
With time this routine became regular as summer faded into the background, but underneath I began struggling because I missed my brother who’d left for college that August. The fact that I’d never told him I loved him made it all the more difficult as I thought I’d lost my chance to be his friend and that all we would ever be was strangers.
In October, I wrote an essay about how my brother leaving impacted me, and my dad sent it to him. When I got a three page email back from my brother I did a double take. “I love you. I have always loved you,” my brother typed. And suddenly we were best friends. Suddenly we were two friends talking about our love lives and he was telling me the things at college that reminded him of me.
I think reconciling with my brother that fall happened for a reason. Because that January my mom turned to me with tears streaming down her face and told me that my dad had pancreatic cancer. When I blindingly went to my room and fumbled with my phone, I couldn’t figure out who to call through the blur of my tears, but I typed in one of the only numbers I’d memorized: my brother’s. He was the only person that would understand what I was going through precisely because he was going through it too.
I listened to his breath on the phone, and amidst all the knives that seemed to be going into my heart, I told my brother something I couldn’t even believe myself, “He’s going to be okay.”
And I think that is what love is. It is lying to someone when they need to be lied to. Sure, it doesn’t sound glamorous, but it’s true.
That April my parents left to go 3000 miles away so my dad could get surgery and get his pancreas and tumor removed. My sister and I remained at home. For a month straight my sister slept in my room. My friends complained about how embarrassing their parents were, and I ignored them and wanted nothing more than my mom to be home so she could ask me how my day was. I was no longer a sister in the month my parents were gone, I was a parent. I learned that sometimes it takes asking your sister fives times and barging through the locked bathroom door to get your sister to break down sobbing and tell you what was wrong.
My parents did come home eventually, my mom stronger than ever, and my dad, cancer free.
Exams came and went and I suddenly had the best grades I’d ever gotten, and then summer came and I spent time with my family. I spent time with my dad who was diabetic and depressed and recovering from a serious surgery.
Then, on September 10th, 2014, I woke up as an 11th grader and my first thought was of whether my dad got a good night’s sleep. I skipped downstairs and gave my mom a hug as I said, “good morning, isn’t it?” I got out my cereal and milk and when my sister came down I gave her a kiss on the top of her head.
I don’t know how to describe what happened in the year between these two Septembers, but somewhere along the line of pain and love I became someone real, someone with perspective, someone who I was always meant to be.