If you ask anyone who their role model is, the typical answers you would receive would be mom, dad, or celebrity. If you were to ask me, I would say my brother, and there are plenty of reasons why. I'm not going to sit here to tell you that our relationship has been magically perfect for our entire lives because, let's be real, we're siblings and that’s probably impossible. However, I will explain to you why my brother is amazing and how he has earned the honorary title of ‘Role Model’.

I will start out by saying that my brother and I are almost five years apart, so growing up in our teenage/pre-teen years, we didn’t have a lot in common. However, I do remember that when we were younger, we spent quite a lot of time together. I don’t know for sure if it was because our parents forced him to let me tag along or maybe it was just because he secretly didn’t mind his sister as much as he pretended to; I would like to think that it’s the second option, to be honest. But because I was with him a lot, I developed a strong attachment to him and wanted to be just like him. He and his friends would collect Pokémon cards and battle each other, therefore I would also collect the cards but I was too young to really understand the rules of the game so I sat and observed. He wanted to go exploring so I dutifully followed, and most of the time we would go to this pond and try to catch tadpoles and other creatures. My brother is even the reason that I got into sketching, though he is still so much better at it than I am. I will even go as far to hesitantly admit that I wanted to dress similarly to him whenever possible.

I'm not sure the exact moment when we started to drift apart, but if I had to guess it was probably when he was starting high school. As I stated earlier, that’s when we started to have different interests and he really didn’t want his little sister following him around. At the time, I didn’t mind too much because I had my own friends, I was starting to figure out who I was as an individual and I would still see him in the evenings; though he was holed up in his room most of the time. It was also during high school that my brother was trying to figure out who he was. I think he already knew, to be honest, but let's just say, it wasn’t what you would typically see in conservative Oklahoma. No worries, he didn’t care what was ‘normal’ he just wanted to be able to express himself as a person and his passions. He got the tattoos that he’s always wanted, he experiments with his hair, as in has had dreads at some point, and he rocked it because he’s a bad ass and can do what he wants, he is also one of the most laid back, funniest and caring person I know.

I can go on and on about how awesome I think my brother is because he does what makes him happy but that’s only half of what makes him a role model. Like most families, we had a series of bumps in our lives, which was quite hard for all of us naturally but it was especially difficult because I wasn’t able to see my brother very often for a while. Despite all that’s happened in the past few years, I proudly tell others that he graduated from college, has a steady career doing something that he absolutely loves and he is happy.