Today she can legally drink a beer. Not that that has ever stopped her before.

She spends her days typing furiously at her keyboard, eating every vitamin her body could possibly need, and offering me sage advice in the form of mockery and swearing. I couldn’t be more grateful for a human.

She’s older than me, but I’m taller, and that irks her. She used to persuade me to get my hair cut into a bob, saying I’d look just like Kit Kittredge, so she could have the longest hair. Now mine’s longer, but she still says it’s pretty.

Our conversations nowadays typically end up with me crying, her laughing, both of us complaining, and somewhere in there Alexandre Dumas gets mentioned.

She can’t keep a secret.

I used to hate her. Not really, but she was more of a mom than a sister, and I already had a mom.

I introduced her to Jenna Marbles and The 1975, and she made me watch Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and showed me Guy Ritchie movies.

She has this unwavering faith that life will turn out better than anything anyone could ever dream up. Somehow, when she tells you about the life she’s gonna lead and the things she’s gonna do and all the adventures she’s gonna have, you believe every single one of them already happened, that they’re already marked in history. She knows what she wants and how to get it, and the only thing in her way is people not giving her the chance to show them what she’s made of. She is so self aware, she can see her own potential and she refuses to waste it.

Whenever I need encouragement or motivation to be the person I wanna be or do the things I want to do, she goes on these lectures. And I love them. I love being lectured by her. I love the idea that someone can have so many helpful things packed into their mind and all they want to do is share them with their little sister. She could keep it all for herself. She could not talk to me, and she could hate me for the things that I’ve have done and for wanting the same career that she wants, but she doesn’t. Instead she shares. And I despise the people that think she is anything less than the best friend you could ever ask for because of it.

We’ve spent our whole lives together. We haven’t lived in the same state for almost four years, but she never left me behind. She’s always been just a few steps ahead of me, her own torch in hand, gesturing for me to hurry up so we can finally walk together again.

She is my trailblazer.

And I hope someday I have the privilege to be hers.

“Yeet and yee shall be yeeted.” -C.M.E.

-Alexandra Eckelbarger