It’s an ordinary day when my brother leaves for college. 

I’m two weeks into my junior year of high school when my brother pulls a carry-on bag—filled with enough clothes and bedding and stationery for him to settle into his new dorm in the next week—with him as he steps across the threshold, out of the house and into the garage. Yawning from waking up early in preparation for the trip, my dad helps my brother fit his luggage into the trunk in preparation for the six hour drive up the California coast to what will be his new home for the next few years. 

It’s not long before he leaves, the car pulls out of the driveway onto the street, after a few final goodbyes and well wishes and promises to stay in contact. I linger in the doorway for a moment  before returning to my room and sliding numbly into my chair at my desk by the window, thinking. 

It’s hardly the time for idle thoughts. After all, junior year workload is no joke, and school has just started, and I’m already overwhelmed by my extracurriculars and outside projects for the start of the year, and, and–and yet, the only thing on my mind, as I sat in my chair staring at the sunlight slanting through the shades over my window, is the realization that, I’m on my own now.

Now, really, in my rational mind, I know I’m being unreasonable and overdramatic; he’s only a call away—thank you, modern technology—with his number being the first one saved into my contacts the day we both got mobile phones years ago, and it’s not like I’m never seeing him again.

But the only thing that registers in my mind is the too-quiet emptiness of the bedroom adjacent to mine, the knowledge that no amount of rapid-speed internet will bridge the new 375-mile distance between us to the 10, 20 feet I had grown used to after living under the same roof as him for 16 years.

We’ve always been close, my older brother and I, and I’ve always regarded him as a study partner, a confidante, and a friend. From memorizing our times tables to walking to the school gates after school to sitting through Chinese class together, we’ve always had each other’s backs growing up, through thick and thin.

Neither of us has ever been particularly social, the two of us both inheriting our parents’ introverted personalities, but at any social outing or foreign environment, I would always trail after him like a shadow, and I became familiar with his friends before I first developed any of my own. In so many instances, he’s always been an unwavering support, ready for me to fall back on at any time. 

In any case, he’s been a steady constant in my life, staying as my companion through elementary school, middle school, and the first 2 years of my high school career, outlasting the school friends I made, the hobbies I experimented with, the fantasy book series we both devoured as kids—until now. 

Thanks to the close relationship we’ve had since we were both very young, I didn’t know that having a sibling as a close companion wasn’t a guarantee until I was older and a little more outgoing, and started noticing my peers’ relationships with their siblings. One particular memory that stands out to me is visiting my cousins, both around the same age as we are, and seeing them fight in front of us. Since then, I’ve been far more aware of my luck in the sibling department—something that has only become more apparent to me in his absence. 

Paradoxically, his absence has only made me notice his presence in my life even more; I see him in the empty seat at the kitchen table, in the multicolored ballpoint Bic pen I found in his drawer after he left, in the matching spring green computer case and keyboard protector he left in his room that protects my computer.

And even as I write this now, he texts me reassurance for the competition tomorrow that I’ve been stressing over for days, at just the right time when I need it.

Even hundreds of miles away, unaware of my writing this piece in gratitude of him, it seems that he’s still been the person who knows me the best, who knows exactly what I need to hear at the moment, like always.

Thank you for always being there for me, Jon. I’m incredibly lucky to have a brother as kind as you.