Meet Me Where I Am.

Every year, when another school year begins, I find myself reflecting on my own.

I don’t think I’ve ever really talked about what school meant to me growing up, mostly because it was just my life. I never really stopped to think about how much of my childhood was shaped by being a twin, or how much having Ashlee beside me mattered until I didn’t have her there anymore.

When I close my eyes, I can still see myself at six years old.

I’m terrified of walking into kindergarten, so I put on my plastic princess tiara and sob.

I don’t want to go inside. I don’t want my mom to leave me. I don’t want to be somewhere unfamiliar without the people who make me feel safe.

But I have Ashlee.

And for as long as I can remember, that has been the answer to a lot of things.

Being a twin is something I don’t think I will ever fully know how to explain to someone who isn’t one. So many of the milestones you experience growing up are shared with another person. Your first day of school. Your birthdays. Your sports. Your accomplishments. Your failures. Even the little things become a competition.

Most of the time, a healthy one.

Who got there first? Who did it better? Who was taller? Who got the better grade? Who could run faster?

But underneath all of that was something I didn’t understand until I got older: I never had to experience any of it alone.

Growing up shy, I needed that.

I needed someone who was already there.

Someone who knew me before I knew myself. Someone who could walk into a room with me when I was too nervous to walk in by myself. Someone who made unfamiliar places feel familiar simply because she was standing next to me.

For a long time, I thought that was just what being a twin was.

It wasn’t until I started experiencing things without Ashlee that I realized how much her presence had meant to me.

Growing up eventually meant going through milestones without the person who had been beside me for all the others. And it was strange. Not necessarily because anything was wrong, but because I had spent my entire life having someone there.

It made me realize how much the people in our lives shape the way we experience the world.

Ashlee was my first person.

But she wasn’t my only person.

As I grew up, I found more people who became important to me. Friends from high school. Friends from college. People I met in places I never expected. People who stayed. People who moved away. People who became part of one chapter and somehow still left an imprint on the chapters that came after them.

And I think that is what I have been thinking about more and more as I get older.

How much people matter.

How much the little things matter.

How someone remembers what makes you nervous. How they know when you need to talk and when you need someone to sit beside you in silence. How they know when to push you and when to let you be. How they know what makes you laugh when you’re having a bad day.

Showing up matters.

But I think showing up how someone needs you to show up matters even more.

Because loving someone isn’t always about doing the biggest thing for them. Sometimes it is knowing the small thing that would mean the most.

It is knowing your person well enough to understand them.

And maybe understanding someone is the ultimate love language.

I think about that little six-year-old version of myself sometimes. The girl in the plastic princess tiara who was crying because she didn’t want to walk into kindergarten.

She didn’t know that she would spend her whole life surrounded by people who would make new places feel less scary.

She didn’t know that the people she met along the way would become some of the most important parts of her life.

And she definitely didn’t know that one day, she would have to learn how to do some of those things without her twin beside her.

But she also didn’t know that the absence of someone beside you doesn’t mean the absence of their impact.

Ashlee has shaped me simply by being there for so much of my life. My friends have shaped me by knowing me in different ways. The people I have loved have all left little pieces of themselves with me.

And I think that is one of the greatest gifts people can give each other.

To know someone.

To notice them.

To remember them.

To show up for them in the way that makes them feel most loved.

Maybe that is why I still get nostalgic when another school year begins. Not because I miss school, but because it reminds me of all the people who have walked through different versions of my life with me.

And when I think about that little girl in the princess tiara, I don’t feel so sorry for her anymore.

Because she was scared, but she wasn’t alone.

She had Ashlee.

And somehow, all these years later, I think that is still one of the greatest things I can say about my life.

I have always had people.

People who showed up.

People who knew me.

People who helped make me who I am.

And I hope I can spend the rest of my life doing the same for them.

So much love,

Emi Sue