You came into the world 15 years after me, like an undeserved gift placed in my arms on my very own birthday. I remember you even now: small, soft, round like a ball of light. I couldn’t understand how something so fragile and perfect could belong, in some way, to me too.
Then I left. My teenage world threw me into a cold boarding school, and you stayed at home, with your hands reaching toward a void you didn’t yet know how to name.
I, miles away, was trying to grow up.
You, at home, were learning my absence.
Years passed and, maybe as a clumsy way of trying to recover what we’d lost, I kept buying you little-girl gifts while you were beginning to become a teenager. I gave you dolls and frilly dresses when what was growing in your heart was the need for independence. Maybe because a part of me had stayed with you at that small age where I had left you behind. Maybe because, somewhere inside, I wanted to extend your childhood a little longer and keep you as my child for just a bit more.
You turned 30.
My birthday is also yours.
Two sisters born a lifetime apart and yet tied by the same invisible thread: you, my gift; I, your absence.
Two sisters on the same day, like a beautiful scar between us. A sign that destiny wanted to bind us, even if life kept placing us on parallel roads.
I think of you now, of the brilliant child who could read stories at age three; the hyper-independent child. And I’m sorry I didn’t know, back then, that behind your performance there was an emptiness. You were so good that you became invisible.
I look at the too-mature teenager who never had the space to explore and fully enjoy life. Then I look at the woman you are now: beautiful, competent, whole, at what you’ve built with your own hands and at the Wonderful Human you’ve become. And I feel gratitude. And longing. And a love that hasn’t faded for a single moment in these 30 years.
You are my gift, and you are your own story.
And I am the sister who would choose you again, every single time.