The older sister’s love can be summed up like this: I am the only one who is allowed to tear you down.

No one else in the world can insult you, boss you around, or scorn you. Because no one else knows you like I know you. No one else is connected to you by blood. They don’t know the womb we came from. And when you entered the world following behind me, I did not know a life before looking back over my shoulder to see my little sister.

When we were little we had this shared civilization with a language that only the two of us could speak. It expressed through the characters we made, when we could play endless games with or without any toys and just our minds alone. The creation of it all was inherent in our very souls. It is an unspoken sixth sense we share that allows us to do this great magical act – and it does not exist in this physical realm or in some other dimension, it is as present and invisible and all-surrounding as God Himself. It consumes all things and tints the light upon our worlds. I still try to reach up and look out of that way of life like a child on my tiptoes at a windowsill. 

You are my own blood and my own entirely. It is not like a child, you are not half of me. You are another version of me, and like myself, I hate you and love you in the same breath. I want to kill you and I would kill for you. 

Because a sister is a bond that is not competitive. We are not Cain and Abel, we don’t fight for our father’s love like frivolous boys. We are more like two trees planted too close together, and keep trying to outgrow each other towards the sun. But our roots are so intertwined we support each other’s whole weight and life force; we feed each other nutrients. We are one being in a place that cannot be seen by anyone else. And we would never be seperated, even if we grow apart to seek our own patch of light.

We were girls together. I can picture you in the sun on the beach and in the waves through my salt-burning eyes, and then laying in your bed across our room from me in the dark, our little bodies still swaying in the pull of the ocean when we close our eyes, like the water is still all around us. Why did I ever move into the other room? In the dark of our bedroom at night, two little girls laughing and casting shadow puppets and being scared of monsters in the dark together. Why did I ever leave that room? Our bedroom was our womb again—like time and space bent and somehow we were there at the same time. Still growing up into life. This whole world still feels like that, a womb you and I shared and will one day leave this place into the unknown. We are girls together, but I’m the older sister, so I’ll lead the way.

I could kill anyone that hurts you and yet I weep for your pain more breathlessly than I would for my own. It is more unfair, for it to happen to you. Because I know my evils, and I am wicked. But I know your evils, too, and your goodness far outweighs it. I know in all our fights and anger that you are still, down to your core, so good, in a way that is better than all the ways of this world and against societal norms. Jesus died for your sins, too, but you are the most worthy person I know. Good in a way that is against human nature. You wouldn’t have eaten the fruit if you had been in Eden. They misunderstand you. They are alarmed by your goodness. Your goodness inconveniences their evil.

You know me in a way that even when you insult me it is so sharp and precise it bleeds painlessly, like a needle I don’t even feel and say “Wow, that was it?” to the doctor. You are funny in a way that sparks deep joy like an electrical shock, with a cleverness that warms me, because only you who knows me the way you do, could make me take myself so unseriously. I have felt blinding rage towards you that’s burned hotter than any other rage I’ve ever felt, and yet it has dissipated so quickly. It’s like a F5 tornado that never touches the ground. The winds of my anger towards you only seem to fan the flames of love, because it is in our DNA and how we grow. We are a seed that hatches in fire.

When we went to Friendly’s the server would come by and ask our order, and no matter what I got, you would always copy me! I would get mad at you! I would get mad at you when you followed me around at the family parties, too scared to go up to get food first or talk to the Aunts and Uncles without me. I pretend it’s annoying, I say looking over my shoulder when you follow behind me, a foot shorter, but when I turn back ahead to face the front I am secretly smiling. Because who am I if not the first one to jump off the high dive, the first one to graduate high school, the first one to ride a bike? What is my purpose here if not to break the surface tension of life, so that when you enter the world it’s a softer landing? On the snow days home from school, I learn it’s so fun to brave the cold, wet world with my little sister. You learn it’s easier to walk through the snow in the imprint of feet already stepped before you. These days when I look behind me and I’m still surprised when you’re not there anymore, on a different path completely sometimes. I’m not smiling when I turn back to the front and walk ahead.

It’s so hard to let you dream. And I am sorry; for when I tear you down, like one baby bird not letting the other fly away first. I’m so scared to see you fall. I would rather jump out and break my neck and die right in front of you so you always stay safe and never leave the nest at all. But what a life is that? I have to let you jump and freefall and catch the wind and let it take you to where it’s supposed to. I have to trust that you are prepared just as well as I, since it is both our first times living, too. I have to trust it’s strong enough to carry us both. I always pray we land in the same place, but I’ll get there first and catch you.

Best, Karissa