When young, I always regarded my little sister as just that — a little sister. Someone who was there, who experienced everything two years later than me. It was only when we started to get older, when we started to get involved in the same activities, when we started hard-core academics in school, did I begin to resent being the older sibling.
There are many things I could list as to why I grew to wish that we could have switched roles. Going to school was always a struggle. Diving literally headfirst into the freshmen swimming unit was terrifying. And yet for my sister, aided with my stories, it became a much more expected and even bearable experience. She learned from me to stay only in the four-foot side lest having to swim twelve laps on the seven-foot side. She also learned that the PE teachers were notoriously known for letting the freshmen out of the pool when the bell rang. (Meanwhile, I had always ended up running to geometry class exhausted and still dripping wet.)
There was always that older figure to get advice from. Take calculus instead of statistics. Take AP U.S. History instead of regular. And inevitably, as she grew older and began doing everything that I had done, it became more and more apparent that she was succeeding and, at times to my astonishment, was doing better. First, it had been the piano lessons, in which she would catch up to the pieces I was learning, eventually surpassing me in skill level after I had quit while she continued on. Then it was school, bringing home tests with hundreds on them while I had once struggled to get an A. I finally broke a 2000 on my SATs? She got over 2100 on her first try. The math class that was my arch nemesis was her lovely acquaintance. The standards that I had once set and that my parents had once proudly congratulated me on were constantly being overshadowed and replaced.
Not to say that we were constantly pitted against each other. My parents put in a great effort to not compare us, celebrating each of our individual merits on their own, to which I am thankful for. But I guess the main reason why I had wished that we could have switched roles was because I felt as an inferior older sibling. What could I impress my parents with now? My little stories and feeble paintings, which paled in comparison to test score numbers? Clearly, I wasn’t as academically successful. I wasn’t as smart. What kind of older sister was I then? If I couldn’t set a high bar for her to look up to? What could I have to offer her if I was the one who had to look up to her achievements? Was I just dumb?
When I shared this with others, they always would end up comforting me in a way along the lines of, “your grades don’t define you”, or “it’s all in the past now”, as if I could treat this as a kind of forgive-and-forget situation. And yet, although there were small spikes of jealousy here and there, I never held any resentment or hate towards my sister, had never even thought of it. Doing that would only drive an uncomfortable wedge into our close relationship, in which I would constantly be consumed over things that I could no longer change. I had given my classes my best effort at the time, and my grades reflected that, whether or not they compared as well to the grades that my sister got. I had merely accepted that my sister was, to put blankly, “smarter” than me, and that was that.
And now, as my sister is a senior in high school, I continually notice myself telling her more and more of what to do. Go hang out with your friends. Wear this to the party. Volunteer for this, it will look better on your college apps. Let me edit your essays. You should consider applying here. Choose this major. Choose this school. And with the more I tell her, the more I realize, that I am not just telling her about the things I did do, but about the things that I hadn’t done but wished I had (or the things that I had done but wish I hadn’t...). And I guess in a way, I am telling her to vicariously fix my regrets, to not let them become her regrets.
I know that all older to younger sibling relationship dynamics differ, and I feel extremely blessed to have such a close relationship with my sister. As the luck of the draw goes, I guess I’m forever stuck with my brainy younger sister. Although I may not have the academic smarts to offer her, I realized that what I can offer to her is my experience. I can make sure that she doesn’t mess up in the areas I messed up in, help her with struggles that I had already been through, advise her on her life, and basically help her to do a better job at things than I had done on my own. In essence, I have now taken the role of the person that I had always wanted for myself.
Sure, I can’t math, can't grammar (half of the time), and am always unabashedly asking my younger sister for help on college homework, but I can’t really complain about something that I can’t change. Being the "dumb" older sibling, or the older sibling in general, isn't so bad when you realize the big and great responsibility you have for your younger sibling. Things are the way they are, and all I can do is truly focus on what I can do, which is helping my sister achieve more and be an even better person than I had ever dreamed of myself to be. I am the older sister after all. Upon her birth I was destined to become her caretaker and lookout. Isn’t my sister lucky?
