16 Surreal Things That Happen As You And Your Siblings Grow Up

From: Thoughtcatalog

Becoming an adult is #weird. Watching your siblings become adults is weirder – this ain’t no game of “house” anymore. Here, Ella Ceron and I have compiled the surreal things that happen when you and your siblings grow up — together. 

1. You actually become friends. You willingly go out together, call each other to catch up, plan vacations, and go out of your way to be together which is a far freaking cry from a few years ago when you couldn’t be in the same room for more than a half hour without it erupting into some petty feud. 

2. Your baby siblings remain your baby siblings well into their 20s and even beyond, and no graduation or romantic relationship or entry-level position is going to change that. Your older siblings remain your fiercest protectors who are still mildly annoyed by you now and again and no child or marriage or new house or grown-up-title is going to change that either. 

3. You start to embrace the fact that you look alike, and as you grow into yourselves, you analyze who got what from each parent. Aside from that, realize how much you just act alike too — you never realized until you were separated for a bit that you’d be on the phone for hours with them going on and on not because you enjoy each other’s company as much as you just get each other. 

4. You talk about your siblings to your significant other and can tell them who is going to approve (even within the first conversation), who isn’t, how to win that one over, what to say, and how they’ll come around eventually. 

5. You start seeing the ways you’re becoming your parents and call each other out on it. No longer is it “Stop trying to be mom!” but rather, “Oh my God, that’s something Mom would say,” said with a mixture of pride, bewilderment, and fear that maybe you’re next to transform. 

6. You start planning the weddings you talked about being in for so long, choosing the baby names, picking out apartment decor like you’ve been talking about for so long. You’re becoming aunts and uncles and adults with full-time jobs. Things that were only a game of make believe a few years ago. 

7. You lose people. You lose friends and older family members and realize that you have to keep re-structuring your life around those losses. It doesn’t get easier to lose another grandparent, and there’s nobody that understands, loves and misses those people like your siblings do — and there’s nobody that can do a better job of keeping their memory alive with you. 

8. Your parents get sick, they divorce, they start talking to you about their own problems and suddenly you realize that they aren’t invincible, and that there’s a lot that they were holding together that now falls on your shoulders. You will be fearful together, band together, and prepare for the unthinkable and inevitable and all of the paperwork and business matters that come along with. 

9. But most of all, you cherish your parents together, even if they drive you nuts. As soon as they do something cute and quaint and silly, you immediately text each other photos of your very own old people doing cute old people things. 

10. You begin to buy each other really money presents for holidays and birthdays, as if to make up for a lifetime’s worth of macaroni drawings and “coupons” for getting out of noogies free. 

11. Your life becomes a perpetual search for the singular most embarrassing #tbt image you can find and tag your siblings in. 

12. No, you never do get over the fact that someone else has your sibling’s name. You will never be able to reconcile this. You will always think of them whenever anyone else says your similarly-named coworker’s name. It just happens. Same goes for birthdays and jobs and majors: “That’s my sister’s zodiac sign!” “My brother does that too!” You don’t even intend to have them come up in conversation as often as they do, and yet. But still. 

13. You begin to plan vacations and holidays together. You realize you won’t just naturally come together for event or holiday celebration — you actually have to set aside time in your schedule and make it happen. 

14. Your siblings start to have kids — miniature, living, breathing copies of themselves whom you can now spoil and treat the way you should have treated your own siblings. It is all at once the creepiest and best thing that ever happens — until you have miniature versions of yourself. 

15. You realize it never really mattered who was smartest, prettiest, most athletic, whatever — you’ll each settle into your own jobs and friend groups and love lives, all the while knowing that somewhere out there is someone else with your same genetic history, and therefore will always know you better than anyone else in the entire world. Always. 

16. You realize that all that talk about “some day, when we’re grown up” is today. Right here. Right now. 

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