I was never really the kind of person to act all goofy and silly until my brother came along. Everyone around me would always praise me for my maturity, so I felt the need to always act older than my age. However, when my brother entered my life, I couldn't help acting like a kid. I would do anything to hear his laugh, even if it meant embarrassing myself. As he grew older, my brother went from watching me act silly to being silly right next to me. We played pranks on family and friends (and each other, of course), and spent hours laughing at others and at each other. My brother taught me that there was no need to be serious every second of my life. There was a time and a place to act professional and to let it go and laugh, and this really led me to appreciate the little things in my life that I overlooked before.

As an only child, I was used to doing a lot of things alone. My parents trusted me to do my homework first and foremost, and never really gave me much supervision since I proved to them that I could take care of myself from a young age. However, my brother could not have cared less. He would follow me around the house from the second he could crawl. To be entirely honest, it was kind of hard for me to adjust. I found myself going upstairs to my room to be alone because I wasn't used to the constant company. When I'd come downstairs, I'd find him sitting at the bottom of the stairs waiting for me. As soon as he looked up, he'd start smiling from ear to ear and would clap his hands at the sight of me. I stopped going upstairs after that, and would sit down in the kitchen right next to him when I did my homework. That's how my mother started to call him my "tail." My brother doesn't even bother to knock on the door to my room now. He just lets himself in, walks over to my desk, and gives me a huge hug no matter what I'm doing. I learned to love his company and can't imagine a home without his presence now.

My brother and I are the definition of partners in crime. Everyone knows it. We do anything and everything together, from painting and drawing to spending our nights reading in bed, from doing homework next to each other to staying up at night watching movies. We prank our parents together, throw surprises together, play games in the back of the car together, and even give each other fashion advice. His idea of female fashion is so pure, it tugs on my heartstrings. He says I look like a princess when he notices that I'm all dressed up. How angelic. Trying to separate us is a lot harder than it looks since we are both very affectionate towards each other and have no fear in showing it. We win the award for brother-and-sister goals, hands down (sorry everyone).

My brother used to call an "only child" a "lonely child" because he didn't know that it was "only." This, however, spoke volumes to me. I really did feel lonely all the time when he wasn't around, and something always felt incomplete. The second he came into my life, I found myself smiling more and more every day. He became the reason for my happiness and my inspiration to keep moving forward. I found myself feeling so much better about myself when I would make him smile or teach him something new, and that feeling still holds true today. I can say without any hesitation whatsoever that my brother is the biggest blessing I have ever received in my entire life. I can't and don't want to imagine life without him, and learned to always put his happiness before mine. Even though he's ten years younger than me, my brother taught me invaluable lessons about life and people that I would not trade for the world.