Many other students were reviewing their homework sites, finalizing their schedules, locating the classrooms that they would soon be sitting in. What was I doing? Not this. I was cleaning my apartment, frantically. Each room – kitchen, living room, bedroom – had been torn apart. Drawer-by-drawer. Item-by-item. I had made facial, nail, and even hair appointments. You're thinking: Oh, she must just be getting ready to start fresh this semester. Wrong. I wish those were the intentions fueling this fire. I may have been coming up on the first week of my junior year but what I was really preparing for was the arrival of my brother. I even find it difficult saying that word. Brother.

A little background: For the first fifteen years of my life, I wouldn't say my brother and I were inseparable, but I would say that we were best friends whether he liked it or not. He was my idol. Even the candid pictures my mother snapped were always showing me looking up to him, literally. We laughed together, cried together, drove together, and, yep, even hated each other at points. In my mind, he could do no wrong. John and I had the kind of sibling relationship others dreamed of – we never raised our voices, we shared, everything, and we taught each other, anything ranging from tying shoes to taking an Advanced Placement test. In the past six years, however, we have become your everyday strangers. We've grown into different people – ones that might not even be looked at as coming from the same household. Our physical looks differ drastically– tall, dark, and handsome (my brother) versus blonde, beachy, and blue-eyed (me). Even when I see him at home, he's nowhere near the image in my head of the boy that helmed the boat ten years ago.

And here we are today. This person I hardly know is coming to my college town for the first time. It's his first time in Pennsylvania, his first time seeing me apart from my parents and home, and his first-time spending time with me alone since the inevitable end of our close friendship. In my mind, a lot was on the line. Most importantly, it was my first chance to impress my brother, and that's one thing that has kept us intertwined for all of my twenty years: competition.

Since Kindergarten, I can remember thinking my brother was better. In everything. One afternoon we sat in the garage with my mom, learning how to tie shoes. It wasn't her intention to teach me that day, but I saw it as an opportunity to pick up on something quickly, aka faster than him. That day I learned how to tie my shoes and write our home address in chalk on the driveway. I was a champion while he was wearing Velcro for the next year and a half. In my mind, I had won. Well, it was my first- and last-time winning gold in this competition we like to call siblinghood. From that day forward, John has always been ahead, been better, brighter, been beyond his years. All of these things, I never thought I would reach, and even today I still toss and turn with these same concerns.

I'm genuinely ashamed to say that all of my prep – the cleaning, the organizing, the pampering and prettying – was all in an attempt to force my brother into viewing me as perfect. What the hell had I done? I had turned into this monster that was trying to encourage jealousy. How could I be such a hypocrite? This was practically my biggest pet peeve. I wanted to reach something that was unattainable. Not only was the pressure making me uncomfortable, but how did I think John was going to feel? Would he know that I, too, was struggling, just as he did in his college days? I really, sincerely hope so.

My brother will arrive tomorrow at some odd hour as he makes his way to his new home in Boston. I sit here, tonight, continuing to question: how did the person who help me at my absolute lowest point, when I was in the trenches, become the person who I won't even let see a tear on my cheek? And, what happened to those two kids that couldn't stop smiling when they were together?