“It takes one to know one,” was my sister’s favorite comeback line in the history of comeback lines. As we got older, she got wittier, but I always knew she did really love me when she repeated her favorite line. She could never get the words ‘I love you’ to come out of her mouth, it was just easier to say ‘it takes one to know one.’
The year I went to college, Amanda was a junior in college and would send me text messages at all hours of the day and night just to say hi. When she would send me funny quotes and memes in the middle of the night, I knew something was wrong. She had always been a morning person and was usually in bed before ten each night. When I asked, she always played it off that she hadn’t been sleeping well and always thought of me in the middle of the night.
I wish I had pressed her harder. I wish I had gone home more often during that year when I knew she was having a hard time. I wish she would have told me what had happened. I wish she hadn’t been depressed. I wish she hadn’t gone off and married her boyfriend the day she turned eighteen. But then, if I had pushed for answers, I would not have my nephew Collin. So maybe wishing I had done more worked out in its own way.
Standing Room Only 