Nofie

Land Down Under

tomorrow she leaves. the person i both love and hate the
most, my arch-nemesis and my best friend. she is, of
course, my little sister. tonight as i was leaving the
house, she stopped me and said, "you know, we haven't
really spent a long time apart in eighteen years." and
she's right, except for when i was eight and went to
sleepaway camp, and when i was thirteen and went to vienna.
both times, we wrote letters back and forth religiously
every day. when we were little, we were inseperable,
partners in crime. now that we're both older, we've
realized just how deep our differences run. we're literally
opposites, she's agressive and forthcoming and self-
confident, i'm quiet and introverted and shy. these
differences have come between us on many occasions. to be
perfectly honest, we've gotten along very little in the
past two years. we argue on a daily basis, we've had more
than our share of fist fights, and the words "i hate you"
and "fuck off" are some of our most commonly-used phrases
towards each other (among many gruesome others).

i guess my point is that i'm sad. i'm sad that our
relationship has changed so much, i'm sad that we had to
grow apart, i'm sad that i can't honestly say that i like
the person she's grown to become. not that i'm perfect, i
know she feels the same way about me. if i met her
tomorrow, i'd hate her guts and would never want to be
around her. that's just life, it's the truth, and i'm not
going to deny it just because she's my sister. i do love
her, she is my little sister and i will always feel that
protectiveness towards her, no matter how much she insists
that i need more protection than she does. perhaps she's
right, but a big sister's instincts are not ones easily
ignored, whether needed or not. i don't just love her
because she's family and i have to. i love her because in
my eyes, she will always be my baby sister. she will always
be the little curly-haired girl who cried at night because
she always got in trouble, and i will always remember
sneaking down to her bunk and telling her everything's
going to be okay. she will always be the little girl who
squished next to me in the recliner with a book and asked
me to teach her to read. she'll always be the one who was
on my side no matter what.