My sister has always been hardworking and smart. Through her years in university, she studied hard, and as her older brother just a year ahead, I often felt horrible about myself.
We’re polar opposites of each other and couldn’t be more different. She went to the library; I went to parties. She attended tutorials; I showed up at game nights. While she watched YouTube videos on Biochemistry, I binge-watched TV shows.
Anna was one of the most serious students I knew. Everyone, including me, believed she would graduate with a first class. But in her third year, she clashed with a lecturer who kept making advances.
He handled one of their core courses, and when she refused him, he tampered with her results. First, he gave her a carryover. After a lot of back and forth, he changed it to a C.
That was the beginning of her results falling apart.
She eventually graduated with a 2:1. To my surprise, she didn’t take it too hard. She was even happy about it. Around the same time, she started serving, while I completed mine and landed a job with a federal parastatal. I had studied Business Administration and graduated with a 2:2.
I believed finding work wouldn’t be hard for Anna. She was smart, hardworking, and had picked up important skills. The place she served treated her well, but they couldn’t retain her, so she returned home.
I kept telling her it would only be for a short while. Soon, she would get a job. If someone like me who barely took school seriously could get one, then she would too. We had uncles in connected places who could help. It was going to be okay.
But a year has passed since I said those words. All we have to show for it are piles of we regret to inform you emails and the fading light in my sister’s eyes.
I’ve tried everything I can, and my parents have tried too. Nothing works. I paid for her to learn some tech skills, but she never showed interest. She has never been business-minded either. For as long as I’ve known Anna, her dream has always been a 9-5.
She says it has structure, form, and instructions she can follow to do well. Business doesn’t work that way. I even raised money for her to sell shoes and bags. She’s doing it, but I can see she’s not happy.
These days, she talks less, smiles less, and spends more time lost in thought. She no longer speaks about her goals or the things she once wanted to do. It feels like she’s slipping away from her old self and becoming someone else entirely.
Sometimes I wish I was the one without a job. And I wonder if she thinks the same, that the one who worked hard is stuck at home while the one who played his way through school somehow got lucky. Life feels so unfair to my sister. And if there’s a God, He’s being unfair to her too.
I look at her and feel powerless. Nothing I do seems to reach her anymore. I don’t know how to pull her out of this silence, how to remind her she is still Anna. That she’s still the same girl who once dreamed big and fought hard.
I am terrified that one day I’ll wake up, and the sister I knew would be gone completely.
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