My Ates: (ah-teh) Not (ate)--Chloe

I was called out of my bedroom by my 25-year-old sister after a night’s homework session accompanied by lo-fi beats playing in the background. Her and her boyfriend had just come home from a day at Disneyland: one of my family’s most favorite places to visit, and the place where my sister and her boyfriend first met. In the hallway outside my bedroom door, they told me to simply look around to see if anything abnormal is around. For some odd reason, the first thing I thought of was a bug. Out of natural instinct plus my high fear of bugs, I started to frantically look around the walls and ceiling, causing them to laugh at me. I on the other hand felt so confused, but that was until my sister showed me her hand, leading to a jaw dropping moment in my life. There I saw a sparkly, gorgeous, white diamond on her finger. “Are you for REAL?” That was all I could say in awe. The newly engaged couple went ahead telling me about how it happened. I figured they told my mom the news before me because she came out of her bedroom next to mine beginning to laugh at my face too. We all had a long day that day, so we kept the conversation brief and called it a night.

Later in my bed, my thoughts commenced, reeling in a numerous amount of ideas. My sister who I grew up with all my life is getting married. Here comes the British man who lives in Scotland here to marry my sister and take her away (the two have a long distance relationship). Is this the end of childhood? This was only last year, and I am technically a teenager now, but despite my age, the engagement news really gave a shock at the thought of a whole new page turn in the book of life. Regardless of her daily, childish, annoying acts upon me in addition to our similar odd mindsets, unlike me, my sister is an “adult”. All my sisters stand in the age of adulthood actually. All three of them are currently in their 20s, two of them are already moved out due to college plus almost graduating, and this one is moving on with another person! Last I remember we all were jamming to Jonas Brothers and Demi Lovato albums or spent the day playing Sims on the Playstation together. It was always us four. Always has been, and now it will not in the very near future. It was then I realized, I have reached the dark filtered, melancholy adulthood scenes of the 2019 movie adaptation of the novel, ​Little Women ​by Louisa May Alcot, and I am Beth, the sister stuck at home. Childhood really is over.

Sure, my sisters can be at times not the most wonderful people who just love to ruin my life: they eat my food after I deliberately announce that I am saving it for myself, they steal my clothes that I have been looking for all over for ages,... the list can go on and on about the tiny grudges I hold against those three monkeys. But anyways, back to the point I am trying to make, although the three can be monsters, my life would not be the same without them. My sisters titled me as the “cool one” out of all of us, which I myself fail to see, but that is probably because I think I would not be who I am without them. I view my persona as a whole picture and they are the puzzle pieces because I have something of each of their personalities inside of me. My music taste is basically all of their music, my hobbies like singing and drawing were introduced by them, my love for Disney and Audrey Hepburn movies began, and I also would not know as many good boba and Asian food places as well. Even my first word was “ate,” (ah-teh) which in the Filipino culture means “older sister.” I would not say this to their faces seeing as, if i did, they would start to incessantly asking me for a lot of trivial, silly things, but I do believe I owe so much to all of them.

At the time when my sister’s boyfriend, well I guess, now fiance, had just proposed, I was and am happy for her. My sister deserves this happiness, I get along with her fiance even if he does love to annoy me like an actual brother, and I trust that she is in good hands, but I abruptly launched into a feeling of a type of loneliness. Not the “romantic” type of lonely that pops into most heads when first hearing the word, but instead loneliness due to the thought of all of us moving on with our own lives. I started thinking about my parents and their siblings. They are all separated now living in different countries or states, and it saddened me, putting myself in their shoes, how my parents, uncles, and aunts do not see each other as often no more. I thought more though throughout the days and managed to come up with an epiphany. I have been acting as if once my sisters are gone, that is it. I am alone. I do not have them anymore. However, this is not the case. Just like my parents always call or text their siblings, my sisters will still be there even if we are apart. Just because there will be one day where we will go all our separate ways and I will be alone without them, that does not mean I have to be lonely. Alone does not mean lonely. Those are two different words with two different definitions. I will not just be a sitting duck, and I will also be preoccupied with making my own means of life. I should have known even in the beginning when I first thought all these types of wonders of loneliness, because the first thing I thought of was ​Little Women,​ and despite all their life changes and growing, the sisters in that storyline still had each other, just as I will too.