Going, Going, Gone

I have always thought being the youngest child was the easiest. Especially in a family with only two children. The youngest can always learn from what the oldest child does wrong. They usually get things that they want sooner than the older sibling. There are so many advantages to being the youngest, that is until the eldest goes on to college.

I had never experienced what being an only child was like until my sister, Hanley, left for Ohio State this past year. Even though it has only been about a month since she’s been gone, my life has changed drastically. Now I sit alone at the dinner table with my parents, feeling pressured to find topics to talk about, even more so now that my sister was gone. The worst is when I have to eat dinner alone because of my busy volleyball schedule. She was always the talkative one at the dinner table, sharing every little detail about her day. I never would've thought that I’d find myself missing what I thought was just another round of her pointless stories.

Hanley and I are very close. We are only 16 months apart in age, and shared a room with each other for the first 12 years of my life.  Before she left for college in mid-August of 2013, we had never been apart for more than 10 days at a time. We tell each other everything. Every time I walk by her room I want to just walk in and tell her random things about my life, but then I remember she isn't there. We talk on the phone all the time though, and she texts me a lot. There is this sort of game we would always play with each other, where one person would just shout or say a movie quote and the other would have to either finish the quote, or guess which movie its from. We started quoting everything, and even in public we would shout these random quotes and people would be so confused. That’s probably the thing I miss most about having her around all of the time.

Being an only child, while sad and really different, does have its advantages. It might be that I’m just not used to it, but I feel like the center of attention in my house. It is such a drastic change to go from it being all about getting Hanley ready for college to being just about me.

Now that she’s gone, we still talk often, but it’s definitely harder than it was before due to her busy schedule. Also, I feel like this transition is almost harder for me than it is for her. She has so many new friends and exciting new things happening for her, and I’m still back in high school. When we talk about things and people, its hard for me to relate as easily as I could back when she was here and I knew what she was talking about.

I miss my sister terribly. This is by far the biggest adjustment I’ve had to make in my entire life. She used to be right down the hall, and now she is 2 hours away, and probably having the time of her life. I know this is something a lot of younger siblings go through and I believe this transition is so difficult because we are so close. There was no way to prepare myself for what this would be like, but it had to happen eventually.