Generational
I wake up, it’s a late noon when I choose to get up out of bed. I go downstairs and my little sister is laid on the couch on the phone to her best friend. Her phone discarded next to her on the sofa, she reads a comic book. We are wearing the same outfit in different fonts, both of us still in our pyjama shorts, she wears a black t shirt that’s a little too big and I wear a black hoodie. It’s an endearing reminder that we both infact woke up late.
She is 12, I am 18, to anyone else, the comic book in her hand is a standard reflection of a 12 year olds typical reading ability, it’s pictures and dialogue heavy text with onomatopoeia littered across the pages, make it an obvious choice for a child that age. But to me, I look at her, I see me. 12 year old me who took a comic book to school and got told off by the teacher, one written by some YouTuber I was obsessed with at the time about a girl who escaped her sad grey life to a better suited virtual one made by her late father. My sister reads a comic book that’s about feral cats who have gathered themselves into some sort of society, I know this because she only reads aloud. A habit which most older siblings would find annoying but my 12 year old sister couldn’t read properly until about 4 years ago, so her victoriously loud reading is never lost on me. It never will be.
I was told to put down the comic book, in return for the teacher finding me one much more suited to my gifted reading level, he would tell me that comic books were a waste of my academic ability and I should spend time reading the much harder books as he passed me a non-fictional book about Marie antoinette. And here I sit, late noon, sunny June, looking at my sister reading this comic book and I feel a sense of pride. No one is here to tell her to put it away and find a new book that’s equally as less interesting as it is more complex. The only person here is me, who watches her with love so strong it makes me cry if I think about it too hard. Like full body sobs.
So she’ll read that comic book, she’ll finish it and as far as I’m concerned, she’ll read the fucking next one. Because for me and her to go through equally as horrible but contrasting traumas in life and still hold similar values and interests, it gives me strength and hope. I know she’s gonna be okay because she is me and I am making sure I’m okay. She’s the version of me that will always be championed, as long as I’m alive, I will always be cheering so loud for her that she doesn’t even know if there’s anyone booing her, and if there was she wouldn’t care anyways.