A Dysfunctional Sisterhood by Sydney

A Dysfunctional Sisterhood by Sydney - February 2017 Scholarship Essay

Between the ages of 8 and 12 I didn’t make the county soccer team six times. I quit the violin in seventh grade because I struggled to read music. I was cut from the varsity basketball team my junior year of high school. I was turned down from every job I applied for the summer after senior year because of how soon I would be moving. I have faced disappointment and failure constantly throughout my life. However, my biggest failure was the one I never saw coming: the collapse of my relationship with my younger sister.

I come from a family of eight. Being the second oldest, I bonded most heavily with my oldest sister, Elyssa. Although she was only two years my elder, I worshipped her completely. My parents were both still in school when we were both, so we spent time bouncing around from family member to babysitter and back again until my parents got out of class. When Elyssa started kindergarten, I would wait impatiently by the bay window, praying to see the yellow school bus arrive so I could see my best friend again. By the age of four I was sitting next to her on the kitchen bench so she could teach me everything she had learned at school, then we did her homework together. We were partners, with an inseparable and fervent devotion to each other. This wouldn’t have been a problem except for Makinna. Makinna was born two years after me, and two years after her came a brother. Elyssa tolerated my youth out of necessity for a playmate, but Makinna was too small to keep up with us, and was often left out of our adventures. I suppose Elyssa and I assumed that she would bond with our brother the way we had with each other, but he was a boy, and much too rowdy for her taste. Years passed and we fell into our own lives and patterns. We all fell in love with athletics, but I was undoubtedly the most studious in the family. Elyssa and I bonded over books and boys, and Elyssa and Makinna bonded over soccer, but Makinna and I never grew close. We interacted politely and fought as sisters do, but we mostly stayed out of each other’s way.

It wasn’t until Elyssa went away to college that I was forced into a sudden realization: I hardly knew my younger sister at all. In fact, as I learned through a series of sharp remarks on her end, that Makinna assumed that I hated her! I had allowed, through my own negligence, my sister to think that I didn’t care for her at all. It shattered my heart completely. I spent the next two years making it up to her. I served her whenever I could; I tried to include her in my life, and told her I loved her, even if she didn’t believe it. It was a rocky time. She had spent so long with a quiet resentment towards me, and didn’t trust my attention. But gradually her spite faded and turned into tolerance, and then, even more slowly, into love. I am still working to make up for all those years we lost because I excluded her from my heart, but I think, in time, we will become sisters in more than blood.