An exploration of the bonds that tie siblings to one another, and the shared trajectory of our lives.
When I was six, a small blonde girl of four years old came into my life and became my best friend. I remember the moment, when I was seven years old, when we sat together in one chair staring at our parents, fingers gripping each other’s tightly. Our parents were getting married! We would be sisters! It was a life changing moment for me, who had been born as the singular biological child to born to my parents. I had always wanted siblings, and at this time in my life, I was granted two. A little girl with golden blonde hair and stormy grey eyes. An older boy of ten, with shaggy brown hair and chocolate eyes like his mother — and so skinny that my sister and I would brush the bones on his spine and call him a dinosaur. He always took it in stride — he as the older brother made it his mission to pick on us as much as we picked on him.
When we were nine, eleven, and thirteen, our lives shifted even more. A beautiful, tow-headed baby boy with the same eyes as our older brother was born. The moment I first held him in my arms at the hospital, the morning after he was born, I knew I would never love anything as much as I loved him. He was adorable from day one, with curious eyes that shifted to look at everything. As he grew, he came to love Mickey Mouse, looking at himself in the mirror, and his doting older siblings. He would bop to the heavy metal music I played for him, and I taught him how to headbang when he was three. It was a funny, yet joyous way, of connecting with this happy baby boy. He is my world.
Now twelve, just a year older than I was when he was born, he is one of the sweetest, funniest, loving people I know. His sense of humor only compares to that of my baby cousin, who is the same age as him. They are wildly sassy, and they know what they want. My brother is a precocious kid. He’s smart. At his age now, he loves science and technology. He wants to be on the Robotics team at his school, like our older brother was. He loves cats, like our father and I. He lives in a house full of cats, six to be exact, and he adores each one of them. When he sees me, he runs to me, throws his arms around me, and says my name like I am the most important person to him in that moment.
My sister is a beautiful person, too. When she comes to visit, or when I go to her, we sometimes sit in silence with our heads on each other’s shoulders. We have lived a heavy life since our families were merged. She is my stepsister by law, but my sister by choice. She chooses me and I choose her and we always have. Even when we were little and went through a phase of fighting and bickering with each other, we never stopped choosing each other. During my custodial weekends at my father and stepmothers’ house, we shared a bed. We whispered to each other in the dark. We shared each other’s pain growing up, as siblings bonded by mutual trauma do. My sister is incredibly loving. Her attitude could make a grown man cry when she’s dishing it out on full blast, even though she is normally one of the sweetest people I know. For most of her life, she wore her hair all the way down past her waist, a beautiful waterfall of warm blonde.
My sister loves to crochet, hates pictures, and can be a little antisocial at times. She likes to watch medical and law enforcement dramas on TV, like her mom. She is quiet, observant. She is, to this day, one of the greatest loves I have in my life, and she always has been, since the day I met her. When she was nineteen, she gave me one of the greatest gifts — I became an aunt to a boy that looked nearly identical to our baby brother. He is perfect in every way and has the most adorable smile. My sister is a wonderful mom, even though she had him so young. She dotes on him, spoils him with her love, and protects him fiercely. She does everything to give her son a good life and I couldn’t be prouder.
My life took a drastic turn when my father decided to up and leave the state to move thirteen hours away. I was fifteen. He and my stepmother had full custody of my siblings, so they had to go, too. At that point, my brother had been incredibly abused by the man who said he’d step up to the plate and be a better dad than his biological father. He was kicked out of our house at fifteen years old, and just two years later, moved to Tennessee to be with his paternal family. So, all of my siblings on my father’s side were gone. I spent two weeks with my father in North Carolina as he unpacked his house and made it a home. It hurt me more than anything to walk into the plane terminal, alone, knowing I was going to be subjected to the rest of my teenage years to a life without my siblings. I began to cry as I hugged my baby brother tight and took in the sweet smell of his hair. It would be a year before I saw them next, and another after that, and that, and so on. Last year, under sad circumstance — the death of my younger siblings’ nana — was the most time I’d been able to spend with my siblings in years. Even though we text and call each other, it hurts me so bad. I miss them every single day.
I have more stepsiblings through my mother’s side. Three older, two younger. My oldest sibling, the stepchild of my stepfather, is mean and cruel to my mother and stepfather. They have her blocked on social media because time and time again, she has spit vitriol at them and blamed them for things that were not in their control. They spent years trying to help her build a future for herself. My mother has known her since she was a younger teenager and at one point, they had a semblance of a bond. My stepsisters’ biological mother had passed, so she couldn’t see my mom as a mother figure. But I think she could have maybe considered her a friend, until she didn’t. My older brothers do their own thing. I love them, too. I’m incredibly proud of my oldest stepbrother, who has built a great life for himself and is succeeding in so many ways. I’ve always looked up to him. I’ve watched him grow into himself from a distance, and it has been beautiful. My other older stepbrother on my mom’s side was one of my best friends in high school. We walked home from school together. He looked out for me. We told each other secrets and we cared about each other.
My younger brothers on my mom’s side are who I fight for, the way I do my younger siblings on my paternal side. I don’t need to do much fighting, though, because they also have my mother — who is the very definition of a Mama Bear. She fights for them, too. She has protected them since long before she became their stepmother. She did everything to make their lives better in the wake of their mother’s passing. My mother fights for her children in every single way. I know, without a doubt, she would kill anyone who dared to lay a finger on us. She threatened my own father with that when he put me to a belt at two years old. He never hit me again after that, though he did everything to intimidate me and make me feel small. She taught me how to stand up against that. To this day, she guides me through overcoming the inner child in me, the small voice in my head that cries for a better father who doesn’t hurt me the way he has. She helps me heal the scars left in my mind and heart; she guides me through the trauma of processing the memories of that hurt.
She taught me how to be there for my siblings through my pain, how to love them from a distance, how to remind them that they are still so loved by me in every way. She has even offered to be there for my father and stepmothers’ children, because she knows what we’ve been put through. I think she cares about them, too, even though she never has really spoken to them, because she knows they are a part of my world, and she knows that they have been through the same things that I was. She has always been a protector of hurt children, even ones that aren’t her own. She has given a safe space to many of my friends. She even fostered one of my friends when I was young, whose mom had passed suddenly.
My younger siblings on her side are also incredibly witty, like my other siblings. They make jokes constantly, and have the same sense of humor as my stepfather and mother. They are also both very smart. My youngest brother on her side loves computers and technology. He even built a computer from scratch at the age of fourteen. He loves history and gaming. He has deep, dark brown eyes, nearly black, and springy brown curly hair. He is sweet, even though he’s currently going through that teenage boy phase of no longer hugging his older sister and saying he loves me back. He used to let me paint his nails and put makeup on him. He would play Halo with my older brothers and I as a kid. My other younger brother on my mom’s side, who is the same age as my sister, is fascinated by biology and anatomy. He collects taxadermy, but don’t worry — he is a kind and loving person towards living creatures, big and small. He is just very into studying the components that make them up. He has long, coppery red, unruly curls and vibrant green eyes. He keeps to himself, but he talks to me when he needs someone to confide in.
My siblings are one of the driving forces that have motivated me to center my mental health, so I can be a better sister to each one of them. I have had many bad thoughts in my life towards myself, yet keeping them in mind has kept me alive, because I could never leave them by choice. I have friends, family, a boyfriend, but being an older sister is the most important role I’ve ever had in my life. I am a safe haven for them, someone they can talk to, and I have stood by that because they deserve it. We’ve all experienced hurt and trauma. They don’t deserve me to project my trauma onto them. They deserve love, pure love, safety, and honesty, and I strive to give them that. Last summer, when my youngest brother came to visit, I decided he was finally old enough and mature enough to know the truth of our father’s treatment of us. Even though he is in sixth grade, I want him to have the tools to identify when he is being hurt, too. Plus, he needed to know eventually. I know my father and stepmother could never come clean to him. I told him, gently, about the abuse we were put through — the physical abuse our older brother experienced, and the emotional and mental manipulation my sister and I endured. I reminded him that we still love our father, and it is okay to love him — but it is also okay to recognize when he is the root of the pain. He is, unfortunately, also experiencing that emotional pain as well. I wish I lived closer to him, so I could defend him in the ways he needs. He’s the only one left in the house, so he’s now the only one left to witness my father.
I prayed to God each day as a young child to have siblings, before my parents remarried. I wanted at least one of each — a sister and a brother. My prayers were answered tenfold. I was blessed with eight siblings. Now, we are inexplicably tied together through unprecedented circumstances and trauma. But even more than that, we are tied together through our love, strength, and endurance. They are the stars that light the deepest corners of my mind. They are the reason I have and will always keep going. They are not responsible for mitigating my mental health — they are the reason why I needed to mitigate my mental health. I don’t have children of my own, but I have four younger siblings who mean the world to me. That is motivation enough, on the days when my world feels like it is falling apart. They always live in my mind and heart; within the armored walls I have constructed to keep others out. The bond of siblings is a powerful force of nature. The bond I share with my stepsiblings is special in the way that they have chosen me to be their big sister, regardless of blood, and I have chosen them. I will continue to hold them fiercly to me, even when we are far apart, because that is what a big sister does. I will never let them go, and I pray that I never let them down.
