Dear Brother,

Six days. Six days, and you’ll be done with tutorials, seven period days, bells, passing periods – done with high school.

You’ll graduate high school and move on to college, move on to the next chapter in your life.

And what does that mean for me? I’ll have my own car. I’ll be able to sleep in a bigger room. I’ll eat the entirety of the snacks Mom brings home. I’ll take the good seat on the couch. I’ll be on time to school in the mornings.

But I will also, in a way, be losing one of my best friends.

I’ll have no one to show me the newest music from obscure artists. I’ll have no one to send me original memes. I’ll have no one to yell “two hands on the wheel!” with every time a cop drives by. I’ll have no one to debate the best 21 Savage lyrics with. I’ll have no one to roast, no one to bother and no one to ask for physics help at home.

Granted, every year, thousands of siblings leave their homes for college. I should be happy that you will be attending a great college that is relatively close to home. A lot of my friends with older siblings told me they thought they wouldn’t care when their siblings moved away. Later, they realized that they did, and that worries me a little.

I already know that I am going to miss you, and if people who didn’t think they would miss their siblings actually missed them a lot, where does that leave me?

I guess we’ll just have to wait till the end of summer to find out. Until then, I just want to say that you have been the single most inspirational person in my life.

I have lost track of the amount of times my friends and classmates, your friends and classmates, adults, teachers and people we don’t even know have told me how smart you are or what a great kid you are.

Even then, I do not need anyone else to tell me how capable you are. Living with you for the past 16 years of my life, I am amazed by how much you’ve accomplished. No one I know, even in an environment like MVHS, can process and learn things as quickly as you do. I have seen you handle strenuous course loads, varsity sports, a social life and huge amounts of pressure while still managing to stay relaxed and perform at the highest level.

What’s even more inspiring is that I have seen you handle it all without ever complaining. I have never seen you skip a day of school because you had too much work to do. I’ve never even seen you ask teachers for an extension. In fact, I never really understood how hard you work and how smart you are until I entered high school and went through it myself.

But even beyond academics, I am amazed by how incredibly down-to-earth, funny and kind you are. Whether it be bringing me food and warm clothes after I play a game in the rain or staying up till 4 a.m. talking to me when I can’t sleep, you have always been there for me. Even the smallest things, like bringing me my cleats when I forget them or asking me how my test went, remind me of what a genuine and sincere person you are.

Granted, we fight, we argue and we get angry at each other. You are not a perfect person, but you have been a perfect brother to me. I could not ask for a better friend and a better role model.

I know the future has great things in store for you, whether it be at Berkeley for the next four years or past that. The only thing I ask is even when you’re busy partying and achieving great things, don’t forget to send me the latest meme you made.

Love,

Stuti