I recently wanted to follow in my sister's footsteps. I started to go to the gym to be fit like her. I am working on being more independent and outgoing like her. I am even listening to the same type of music as her. This is because I'm the opposite of her. She has all the qualities that I am trying to improve in myself.

Although she now gives me advice when I'm having trouble with something and we get along well, my sister and I had a very bad relationship. It impacted her negatively because I was the younger sibling. I would always get away with doing whatever I wanted. This caused her to continually take out her anger on me because I would always get her in trouble. We were like enemies and at that point, she didn’t consider me her sister. Our arguments would result in us not talking to each other and losing trust in each other. We were never close. It felt like I didn’t even have a sister. Instead, it felt like she was a stranger who would always argue with me. I was young so I didn’t understand the severity of our problems.  I felt sad and regretted my actions after each fight.

I thought she hated me for no reason, I was a snitch and my parents would get angry when I told on her. One day, my mom said to me that if I wanted to fix my relationship with my sister I was going to have to change the way I acted toward her. However, my sister would often still take out her anger on me and it was hard not to get back at her. As time passed, I started to become less childish. We knew little about each other since we wouldn’t talk and there was still a silent rivalry between us. This silent rivalry made us distant. I slowly started to do small favors for her. We started to get along better since we would both do favors for each other. She lives on our property in a separate trailer. She would never let me in her trailer, but that changed as we started to have small positive interactions with each other. Finally, we were almost like sisters again, with a few fights here and there but not all too serious.

Our relationship improved as we started to get to know each other. Even our parents noticed that there was a big change in the way we acted toward each other.  We would play games together and talk about any problems we were having. My once hateful sister became one of my best friends.  At this point, we hardly ever fight and we have good interactions. I have someone I can trust who will help me when needed. I learned that even if you think you will never get to know or think you will have a good relationship with someone you can change things if you try and make an effort to. My sister is currently the biggest inspiration in my life. I now have one more person that I can trust.

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