Being an aunt is one of the most amazing things to be. You get to be there for all the great moments, but you don’t have to stick around when the dirty diaper needs to be changed. You get to spoil that beautiful child with annoying toys and ice cream and then you get to drop them off at home and let their parents deal with the repercussions. You get to watch your niece or nephew grow into an amazing little person that is a piece of one of the most influential people in your life, your sibling. Though there are all these great and sweet moments, being an aunt doesn’t come without struggles and through these struggles I have learned so much about myself.
1. I was jealous.
When she came into the world, life was hectic and I just so happened to be in the most hormonal stage of my life at the same time. I told myself every day that I didn’t envy her, but somewhere inside I always did. She was the new kid on the block, definitely the most beautiful and for those first couple years of her life, I felt like I could never out-do her.
2. I fight with her because I’m immature.
Everyone always tells us, “You two fight like sisters,” and they are absolutely right. When she is feeling a little ornery, she has the ability to make me as angry as her dad used to when he would call me “Crapper”. But what she doesn’t understand is that I regret treating her like a younger sibling as soon as I calm down, just like I used to regret getting her daddy in trouble as soon as I told Mom.
3. I am still jealous.
But not for the same reasons as when I was thirteen. Sometimes I feel like she doesn’t see me as the person I want her to. I’ve always imagined walking through the door and seeing her little face light up when I come home from school, but the reality is that she never realized I was gone. I’m jealous of the way she sees other people, and I struggle with watching her love someone more than she loves me.
4. I want to be her best friend.
When someone asks her who her BFF is, I want her to always be able to say, “My KK”. I want to be the cool aunt, the protective aunt, the wise aunt. I want to be everything she’ll ever need in a friend. I know I have some work to do. I never want her to suffer through anything alone. I will always be willing to bear her pain because I love her more than anything.
5. I cry more than her mom does.
Every milestone she’s hit in her life, her mother has shed some tears. While my sister-in-law is softly shedding sweet tears, I have always been the one violently sobbing in the back. When she started kindergarten, I laid in my dorm room bed and wept. I cried when she finally jumped off the diving board after being extremely afraid to do it for weeks. I teared up the first time I made her laugh when she was seven months old and sitting in her Bumbo seat. Though it seems pathetic, I have come to learn that her triumphs in life bring me more joy than my own.
6. I wonder if I’ll be able to love my own children as much as I love her.
I know it sounds strange because that’s not a conventional worry of someone’s, but in my situation, it is. She doesn’t understand how much love I have for her. Sometimes, if I’m not paying attention, it almost knocks me off my feet. When she tells me she loves me to the moon and back, when she dances like she’s the only one in the room, when she counts to 100 hundred all by herself, when she cries while watching a cartoon because her little heart feels more than it should or when she falls asleep on my shoulder with her bottom lip tucked in her mouth, I am overwhelmed with the infinite amount of love that I have for her, and I can’t imagine loving anyone or anything else as much as I love her.
