For the past six months, my mind has been stuck on one certain thought: how many days until Maggie graduates? It felt like my whole life so far had just been leading up to the day when my sister would finally graduate and be gone from my everyday life. Ever since my math teacher seemed to make me his enemy because of all the mornings I showed up late to school because of Maggie, I had been counting down the days. Whether it was her taking forever getting ready or both of us running late with no good excuse, there always seemed to be chaos attached to her. Now that the time has finally come where all of that chaos is gone, why does it feel so different from what I thought it would?
Not many people can say they had an older sister to look up to, and now that I’m older, I realize I’m lucky to be one of them. Even though it probably never seemed like I looked up to Maggie because of all the hateful things I would constantly say about her to my friends, I secretly always admired her. Without even realizing it, she taught me how not to let other people’s words affect me and how not to let one bad grade tear me down. She never directly told me any of those things, but I learned from watching how she handled situations like that herself, and because of her, I learned to handle those situations too.
The constant fighting was another part of our relationship that seemed as if it would never end. When I thought about Maggie graduating, I was excited because I thought the morning fights would finally stop. But now, waking up with her asleep somewhere else, and the house completely quiet, has left me with this weird, empty feeling in my stomach. For the past week, I’ve had nobody to complain to during the car rides to school that somehow always felt like they lasted an hour. I never realized how much I would miss those small conversations until they were gone. Back then, they just felt normal, but now I realize I took them for granted.
I regret all the times I said that I “wouldn’t care” when Maggie graduated, because that was obviously never true. The truth is, I miss all of it—the fighting, the friendship, and having someone so close to me that I could always look up to. I still have a few more months with her living in the house, but even now, it already feels different. In just a few short months, she’ll be an hour away, and I’ll be left with an entire quiet floor to myself. The moments I regret the most are the ones where I could have easily walked into her room just to talk to her, but didn’t. I never realized how important those simple moments were until they started disappearing.
