Day 11 is my siblings.

This is where it gets somewhat entertaining:

• I was born and raised an only child.
• I constantly refer to my sister, a young woman named Kaitlyn. But we aren’t biologically or marriage-logically related.
• I have an older sister that I’ve never met, who was given up for adoption when my parents were 18. Her name is Bobbie Sue. No one knows where she is now or how she turned out.

Since I know nothing about Bobbie, I’ll talk about my heart-sister, Kaitlyn. I called her my sister because ‘friend’ seems far too shallow to encompass the depth of our relationship, and since we were both only children, it was rather nice to have an extra family member close to our own ages. We met when I was 14 and she was 11, and though we came from vastly different households, we were so similar in interests and hobbies that we may as well be literal siblings. We also look alike, amusingly enough – we have similar eyes and hair.

Kaitlyn has been my confidante for as long as I’ve known her, the unwavering partner-in-crime to all my hijinks and success and bad days. She and my partner, J, are the two most important people in the world to me.

Kaitlyn is currently living in DC, quite far from my corner of the desert in Nevada, but we still make all efforts to see each other a few times a year. We keep in touch via online journals, instant messaging, Twitter, and cell phones. Though we’ve both changed immensely since we met – hard not to, given that neither of us are kids anymore – we’ve stayed close and comfortable with each other. I don’t think either of us have friends who haven’t heard of the other; we are a constant part of each other’s lives.

Instead of trying to describe my sister, I’ll tell you a story instead:

One Saturday night, back when I was living in Colorado and she was at college in Ohio, Kaitlyn was not happy. It had been a bad day. She wanted a hug, and her local friends were all preoccupied or absent. She and I were talking on IM, and much like xkcd once pointed out, sometimes typing *hugs* is not enough.

So, we each got in our cars and drove twelve hours to meet in a random town in Missouri. We had breakfast at IHOP, completely delirious from sleep deprivation at this point since we’d started out late at night, caught a few hours of sleep in a hotel, had another meal at TGIFriday’s, and then drove back home. We got a few hours sleep before she had class and I had work on Monday morning.

And it was totally worth it.