The Most Lovely Influences
Sometimes when I think about who I am and my taste in things, I realize I'm just like a puzzle. I may have a whole image that's just my own, but other people have put many pieces in place at different times throughout my assembly to becoming whole - many people have helped to create me. My older sister is definitely one of those people.
Since the age of 10 she has influenced me probably the most out of anyone. I was such a typical little sister. Her style in clothes influenced my style, her taste in music influenced mine, and I idolized her personality. She seemed glamorous, amazing, and I wanted to be like her in so many ways. I feel like I followed her around like a puppy for years. Sure I still had my critical thinking skills - I always have - and I realized things about her I didn't want to repeat in myself, but even then, her mistakes were my learning opportunities.
As weird as it sounds, she taught me how to be an individual, be myself, and be confident doing so. Sure, I can look at myself now and see a lot of her in who I am, see that she put so many of those puzzle pieces into place, but that's because I decided that's who I want to be. I guess everyone kind of does the same thing when they're in that angst-y time of life trying to figure out who they are. They look at the world and decide what the think is good, bad, cool, and uncool and create themselves out of that. Rebecca was just a big part of that process for me. She was just a very big influence on me.
I thought of all of this when I saw a TV commercial that had a song playing and I immediately thought "Damn, I love this song! I haven't heard it in forever! ...who is this? who is this? Oh! Yeah! It's Sleepyhead by Passion Pit!" I could remember Rebecca playing this music video for me around a year ago, and telling me how much she liked them and that the song reminded her of me. I posted the song as my profile song on myspace after that introduction to Passion Pit and started listening to more of their music. I thought of all of that and realized that there is so much in my life that I have loved and been excited for as a result of my big sister's influence on me. So much of who I am is a result of her.