I believe in sisters.

 

The three girls who I was destined to admire from the start. That held my hands and braided my hair and swung me around the hardwood floor while a Good Charlotte CD spun in the shared red CD player, scratching every so often. Each skip in the song served as reminder that my grubby little hands were forbidden from touching the precious collection of iridescent discs. And each spout of cackling laughter assured me that despite the initial rage of my faultless idols, my puerile mistakes were always forgiven. 

 

I am a mosaic of my sisters. Fragments of their lives and learnings making up my entirety. And while I wear their jeans and well loved shirts, that have become exhausted by the time they reach me, begging to not live a fourth life, the true collage is within me. 

 

I absorbed Hannah’s taste in TV as she showed me the hilarity of The Suite Life of Zack and Cody and the adventurousness of Mary Kate and Ashley. She taught me how to straighten my hair and never turned down an opportunity to practice her makeup on my fat five-year-old face. 

Anja tried and tried to teach me how to draw with my ever-persistent wish to be as good as her, and her lack of patience was never visible with me, even when I would imitate the cat and claw pesteringly at her, she respected my dedication to character.

 

And Annika, who was the only one to ever scream back, who was once both my mortal enemy and complete obsession, representing everything I wanted to be. She taught me the art of the perfect sandcastle and is the reason for my deep empathy towards animals. Crying with me when that bird hit our window and never was able to fly away.  

 

Each and every trait of my sisters has somehow worked its way into me, as if my mother has weaved them together like one of her knitting projects. For the longest time, I felt like an extension of my sisters, following their every move like a duckling, unsure of what direction I should turn without their tracks to follow. However, the security they brought was abruptly altered when the first, Anja, went to college. And only one year later, my Hannah followed. 

 

I was left with only Annika, who I was forced to reconcile with each time we feuded. We grew past the constant spats and she became my sturdiest pillar. When the shadows in my room morphed into ghosts and goblins, I would sneak into her room and wiggle myself into the bed she had made for me in the corner. She would stick up for me when her much bigger friends picked on me for trying to tag along, and as we grew up she became my best friend. 

 

But one day she left me too, and I was stuck in a house with three empty rooms and an echo of silence. I had no ducks to follow and a new lingering anxiety unsure of what way to go. Until one day, I found a place where 60 sisters could fill the silence and fill me with the stories of their lives, weaving me a new blanket of colorful thread. Now I have three sisters plus 60 more, and I can say with confidence that I believe in sisterhood.