I was born the last of three, a surprise that deposed my older sister of being the youngest, a throne she had inhabited for over a dozen years. My oldest sister probably didn't care because not much was changing: she was still the oldest and also leaving for college soon. I don't remember life with them very much. I was only a toddler when both were around; by time I was in kindergarten, I was an only child.
Most of my formative years were as a pseudo-single child, temporarily inhabiting this title and that world until they would come home for breaks. It became normal to me, to have siblings that were off living their own lives and never around, something my friends and classmates would never understand since their brothers and sisters were all closer in age. It set me apart, made for a subtle and unexplainable weirdness that distanced me from other kids.
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As I grew up, I preferred the company of adults to kids my own age. I wasn't used to their noise and antics; I knew how to be around adults because I'd had a father and a mother and two mother-aged sisters. In a college, I struggled with sharing a room (exacerbated by living with another only child), but I also craved pillow and snowball fights which had rarely been indulged in my youth, along with pranks. I'd never outgrown it and wanted to live that phase of my life now. Most of my housemates were not amused but luckily one, and my other freshman year roommate, were always game for prank wars. During sociology class when we talked about birth order and how it affects us, I was still the odd one out: born the youngest but raised as an only.
One of the quirks that stuck from my upbringing is long-distance relationships don't really bother me. Others struggle and suffer when separated from a partner or friends while I hardly notice. I had been seeing a guy at the end of one year at college and he surprised me by saying he wanted to try continuing it during the summer despite living a few hours apart. He visited once, we texted every other day, Skyped or called occasionally and it was a comfortable summer. We broke up the night I got back to college... we just didn't really work out well when we were actually together.
Similarly, of my closest friends, I hardly get to see them. I met one right before we went to colleges far away and our friendship actually developed with a lot of texting and seeing each other once, maybe twice, a year back home. Another came about similarly and now that we've both moved home after college, we try to see each other a couple times a month since we live so close. But her grad classes and my full-time job sometimes get in the way and a relationship by finger and QWERTY keyboard must suffice. Beautiful Em spent a semester just down the hall from me when we were freshmen and in the four years since she left, we've stayed close. Though we rarely get to see each other, photos and sporadic texts connect us and I don't know what my soul would do without her.
My oldest sister moved a couple states away when I was still young enough to get irate at her and not understand floating away from the spider web was a normal part of growing up. She was right that I barely saw her even living in the same state, basically just at holidays. A decade and a half later, I still see her once or twice a year at family events, and the rest of our correspondences consist of too-late Facebook messages to remember sunscreen and text messages asking how bad it is if one of your arms is sort of paralyzed (I'm fine). We still have that same old dynamic of me being her little one, which I exploited for many years to demand piggyback rides or pounce on her even as our weights got closer and closer.
The other sister was always going somewhere. Most of my youth was her moving to someplace or another: across the country, then to another altogether. We didn't have much to say to each other as I grew up. We just weren't close like I was with my other sister. After a few years of living on another continent, she returned to our home state. I see her less than her dog and we communicate through quick texts, usually about work or to ask Mom for something. Similarly, despite living only a county apart, I see my cousins mostly at holidays, occasionally for happy hour, and through Facebook pictures. I enjoy hanging out with them but everyone is busy and it's easier to just like an Instagram post.
Relationships are subjective and not quantifiable. I'm not here to say my way is better or for someone else to say it's worse than spending time face to face. We all know that our generation is the biggest user of cell phones and social media and that it's definitely shaped, maybe even warped, our communication and social sphere. There are certainly times I'd rather be able to sit across the table with a friend or lie on the ground together holding hands. But my friends are scattered across different states now after our exodus from undergrad study. I can pick up my phone anytime and reach them: I'm OK with that and I'm happier for it.
