As I walk around campus I hear a distant voice calling out my sister’s name. I look around to find her, but she is nowhere in sight. I keep on walking, listening to the conversation behind me. “That’s not her, it’s her sister.”

Are we that similar? Do people just see that we’re a similar height, and have similar ponytails? Do they see the fact that we play the same sports and have good grades and simply assume we’re the same person?   

People didn’t notice that we were related until we said it out loud. Then they started to notice the similar qualities we have and began to remember me as “her sister.” And when they do, it sticks in their minds and becomes how they address me.

    There are people – some  I’ve met once, some I’ve known my whole life – that  can only remember me as “her sister.” Even my teachers, classmates, teammates, and friends who knew my sister, call out her name when looking for me.

Being called my sister’s name angers me. It was okay when it was just a few times, but when it became more and more frequent by the same people, it started to irritate me more every time. Each time I hear people say it, I get the urge to scream back, “I’m not my sister so stop saying her name.” But I’d control the urge and pretend that it never happened.

When they look at me they can only see my sister, like I’m invisible to their eyes. It’s as though I’m there but at the same time I‘m not.

    Being known as “her sister” makes me feel like an incomplete replacement of her because no matter how similar we are I don’t have her straightforward personality or her ability to befriend everyone she sees.
    She is irreplaceable and I know that better than anyone else, but people should learn to see the person who’s in front of them, not who has come before them. I don’t like to be ignored or mistaken for someone else. No matter how similar we are, I am not my sister and I will never become my sister.

But I do look up to my sister. She is smart, dependable, responsible, and easy to get along with. She aims for the best to help improve herself and helps to encourage me to aim for the harder classes to become better. I love my sister, but I still don’t like being compared to her. Her standards are too high for me to reach so being compared with her is just outrageous.

    Jealousy is probably the best way to describe this feeling. I envy my sister for having so many people remember her even after she’s not there. It makes me want people to remember me.  For who I am, and who I will be.