There are a lot of benefits as well as drawbacks when it comes to being the youngest in the family. In my case within a family of five, I’m not only the youngest, but the only girl as well and growing up with two older brothers isn’t always a walk in the park. Everyone would always tell me “oh you’re so lucky, having two older brothers to look out for you”. Look out for me? It was survival of the fittest in my house. We fought for TV time, game consoles, and don’t even get me started on fighting for the front seat of the car.

Now that my brothers and I are older now, all in our twenties, I’ve come to appreciate how I was raised. Having two older brothers I got to watch how everything was done through them. How they handled birthday parties, how they conducted themselves in middle school, high school. Watching them drive off with the driving instructor and then come home and tell me how much they hated it. Dressing up for prom or watching them graduate—I always had someone to watch, to learn from, to mimic. There was always also someone to blame. Broken things, scuffs on the walls, stains on the carpet—there was always someone else to point the finger at. Now that both of my brothers are out of the house, the only finger that’s being pointed is at myself.

As much as there are benefits to having older siblings, there are also drawbacks. The biggest for me is being the youngest; I’m the last one in the house. No one to come home to when the parents are at work, no one to play Mario Kart with or go swimming in the pool. Even the little things like hearing my brother's laughter down the hall late at night when I’m going to bed; I never realized how comforting that used to be. Now, my brothers have both moved out and are doing something with their lives—Nicholas, the oldest, is in the Navy and Bradley, the middle child, is a pastry chef in New York City. They’ve gone out on their own and made something of themselves and I’ve come to realize my days of mimicking their actions are long gone. What they’ve done with their lives, the paths they’ve went down—I can’t mimic them.

Having siblings and being the youngest is like walking in the footsteps they’ve made in the snow—my brothers made footsteps before me, big enough for me to walk through when we were younger but now I’ve been realizing there comes a time when I have to make my own footsteps in the snow, that following what my brothers do comes to an end.

I am grateful for the family dynamic I grew up in. My brothers, who I used to fight with relentlessly as children, are now my best friends. All of us had gone away to college and I believe the distance has made us stronger and able to appreciate what we have as siblings. We watch each other thrive and show our love for one another in our own ways. Though they can still be a pain in the ass sometimes, I’m thankful I have them.