Once upon a time, there was this song called "You Were There"

This song does something to me like no other songs can. Maybe it's the lyrics, because I'm such a sucker for cheesy words ("I'm always lost for words when someone mentions your name"), or the fact that the first time I saw those lyrics written was in my sister's notebook. I'd always hear the song, liked it, but I could never really make sense of it until my sister's notebook. I discovered how deep the song was and finally what it was about but that's not what I'm writing here for. Anyway, nothing in the lyrics describes my relationship with my sister of course. But whenever this song plays, my sister is right there on my mind. The song plays. My sister. Repeat.

I never wrote it down anywhere (which is weird) but for a long time, I looked up to my sister. She was a hero. For me, it's like she could never do wrong.

Highschool was great for her, although I can never say the same about me. Her friends came from everywhere. Highschool's best: the athletes, the artists, even the nerd and the wrong crowd, you name it. I never considered my highschool life awful but alongside hers, and thinking hard about it now, highschool sucked for me, man.

In a crowd, whenever I saw my sister, I always had the urge to go to her. To let her friends know we were siblings. One time, that mattered. There was even an instance in my freshman year when I did try to approach my sister. She was qeueing for a drink when a girl in front of me turned around and threw hers on me, bless her soul. I never tried the "approach the sister" maneuver ever again after that.

She was a magnet for extraordinary. I loved her, I hated her, all for the same reasons. I could never do the things she could do. And the things she did mostly got her into trouble, which means I got to hear the shouts and all that accompany shouting at home. She was always up there. I was always just hovering. She was always game for something, which is strange for someone so lazy at home. She was either not going for it or she was in a grandest, most spectacular way possible. There's no in between.

My sister never seemed to have fear on the unknown. More times than I can remember, it ended with her making our parents angry or disappointed, especially my father. While I cringe everytime I even think about doing anything not normal, like be a disappointment. She must have known, everytime she did things that she ended up getting punished, that that was going to happen, but that never stopped her. Again, you'll love or hate her. All for the same reasons. Her willingness to take risks for something she wants no matter the outcome, is her forte. It's tough especially when you're all living in the same roof as two angry parents. But I wish I was like her. The toughest person I know.

The song reminded me of my sister, because she wrote the lyrics when we were in highschool, her place that I got to live with her where she was not quite so close, because in the same notebook as where she wrote the lyrics, was where she wrote her lyrics for a guy she was crushing real hard then because that's just the kind of person she was, the kind who made lyrics out of another song lyrics and kind of owned it, the kind who lured me into reading the notebook because I was always envious of her handwriting, which is the best, if you ask me.

We were never really close. She was always something more that I could ever be. But everytime I dreamed about the future, she was there. I've always wanted to travel because of her. She made me a dreamer.