My sister is getting married today. Excuse me? She’s not old enough to get married! Or perhaps I’m just not old enough to have a sibling getting married.

I’m only seven years old, and she’s only eleven. At this age, it thrills me that our ages form the name of our favorite place to go every single Wednesday night after Awana for Slurpees.

We visit Lombard and Bartlett at every holiday and in between – our grandparents lavish attention on us, enjoying either their first grandchildren, or their first granddaughters after many boys.

We’re playing hide-and-seek in Lombard. She tells me to hide in the trunk of the car. Once it’s closed, I panic and scream – a lot. She gets in trouble.

We’re homeschooled, and she’s learning probability on the couch. For some reason, the basics of probability fascinate me and my sister gets pissed off when I answer questions as she does.

I break my arm, and quite honestly it’s all her fault. I get a cast, and unconsciously exact my revenge while we sleep, whacking her with my cast.

I throw my stuffed cat at her before going to sleep, scratching her eye with the tag.

We share a room, and read Archie Comics by the light of our bathroom every night after Mom and Dad leave the room.

She hits me for touching her arm, or leg. She hits me for kissing her. She threatens my life for smacking her butt.

She’s going into ninth grade; I’m going into fifth. She’s horrified to leave the comforts of homeschool to go to HCA; I’m excited to go to real school.

It’s her first year in college, and we talk on the phone for a decent length of time, perhaps for the first time ever. I have the same teachers she had four years ago, and I’m involved in the same things. We actually have something to talk about.

I visit Moody, and we come to the incredibly realization that without our parents around, we’re actually capable of coexisting. She seems proud of me as her sister, even though she emphasizes the word “little” in “little sister.”

I watch her walk and receive her diploma from MBI; one week later, she watches me do the same, receiving my highschool diploma.

We share friends during the summer. She tells me vague information about her long distance boyfriend she met on Bro-Sis. I leave her behind at the end, taking her place at Moody.

It’s Christmas, my sister just got engaged. I’m not sure what I think of the man, he calls me a freak. I accept this. If she likes him, he might be ok.

I sew aprons for her reception.  I watch her try on wedding gowns. I envy her finding her dress the third try — my maid-of-honor dress takes multiple trips to locate.

It’s four days before the wedding, and I’m still in Chicago. I print my plane ticket and write her a note on facebook before racing to a Missions Conference session. I spend the next three minutes saying “My sister is getting married” repeatedly to a patient Josh, who’s internal response should be something like, “shut up already.”

I’m watching her stand next to Dad as he forgets his one line, “Her mother and I.” She’s tiny next to him, since like me, she’s neglected to wear shoes for the majority of rehearsal.

She tells me to grow up as we wait to run through the ceremony again. I can’t take her seriously with her ribbon-and-bow practice bouquet tied to her head.

I take videos with Heather of her dancing in the front seat of the car to the radio , on our way to Melting Pot for her bachelorette party.

She’s telling us what she loves most about Jerry. I get a glimpse of why this man I barely know might actually be good enough for my sister.

I lie in bed, unable to believe she’s getting married. I want one more day to just play in the snow, listen to Renee stories, complain about Mom and Dad, swim at Lake Emerald…

She’s getting married in the morning. My beautiful, stubborn, obnoxious, loving, violent, cultured sister is getting married.

And if I don’t go to sleep now, I’ll be in world of trouble with her for nodding off on stage.

What I tell myself is that I am content being single. And oddly enough, this is true. Am I content to not have a significant other? Not precisely. I am simply content with singularity. Please don’t attempt to convince me there’s an inherent contradiction in this, because I am aware of its presence.

I merely know that somehow, both statements are true. I miss the loveliness that is being in a relationship, being somebody’s someone. However, in my current state I am only my own person. Any attempts to further explain this result in what sounds like an attempt to convince someone, perhaps myself, but that does not make it any less true.

It is not that I find advantages to being single and enjoy those advantages. No, if it comes to that, a relationship trumps.

Rather, I know that being single is exactly where I need to be right now. I am on an incomprehensible journey to figure out who Jenna Pirrie is again. I think I had an answer to that, at some point, maybe before I graduated. College changed everything, and while I am insanely grateful for that, I still haven’t figured out who I became in that transition.

Where is the reputation of intelligence I once held? Nowadays, I far too often allow my offhand, hyperactive, facetious side take over in conversations. Passion for anything failed me for a while there, and motivation simply dumped me and left for another girl. You could use this moment as an example, when I should be doing homework, but alternatively I see writing here to be just as imperative for this journey I’m talking about as keeping up with my workload.

So if I’m trying to figure myself out, is it possible that being single is the best state to maintain? That is quite exactly what I’m thinking. Maybe I could do that just as well in a romantic relationship, but maybe not. This journey is personal, despite the help close friends have given me. Thank you, by the way. But yes, perhaps the matter are not as directly related as I suppose.

Relationships are complicated things. I am quite willing to attempt this sort of complicated thing given, well, the right man, but why strive to add complications to an already complicated state of mind?

Do I sound like I am trying to convince myself of the merits of being single? Perhaps. The fact remains: I am working through this incredible process, and the stress of a crush – of wondering, and feeling insecure in whether or not that person knows, doesn’t know, cares, or doesn’t care – is silly, and really only endangers a friendship, if one was preexisting.

As a woman who would prefer to be pursued by a man she’s attracted to, rather than pursuing him, I have come to realize that being content with my current Facebook relationship is, for me, a choice I make, not a state of mind that just happens. I choose to enjoy this chapter in my life, for I must. I must, because in doing so, I will have jumped one more hurdle in my path to becoming who I want to be.

And now, I have a confession. It is incredibly late, or at least it feels as if it is. I have not gotten adequate sleep, and this topic is simply one that was on my mind and needed escape. I am not even certain that it coherently expresses my thoughts, but at least I attempted. Hopefully, no young man will assume from this that I am choosing a life of spinsterhood and wish to be left alone – exactly the opposite. In reality I battle the inherent need to love and be loved, and lately my beautifully platonic relationships leave me wanting. I simply don’t want to be left wanting – I want to feel complete no matter if I remain single or not. I desire confidence in who I am, not who others view me to be, and not in who I think others view me to be. But in me – a lovely creation of an intelligent Artist who made me the way I am for some incomprehensible reason – a reason I want to discover.

But like all journeys, this one will be made a tad sweeter if embarked upon well rested. And with that, I bid you adieu.

Drugs are bad, kids.

Or are they really? I mean, come on, I have a shoebox full of drugs on the shelf above me now. I carry a small candy tin of drugs on bad days. My roommate has drugs that keep her focused. And I lost my ibuprofen purity at a young age.

Wait, what do you mean those don’t count? Just because the government says they’re ok… they’re ok? That strikes me as insanely illogical, but don’t ask me to explain why.

Well fine. If you want to keep this conversation entirely legal, maybe I shouldn’t mention getting high off nail polish fumes. High as a . . . skyscraper.  I mean, high like a skyscraper. All I did was visit a skyscraper! Really? Wait.

I still haven’t made it to any of the skyscrapers here since I moved here for school. Now that’s just sad.

I bought Ramen.

I thought you should know.

Sleep deprivation is  a funny thing in my life. It either renders me lethargic and unpardonably antisocial, or hyperactive, talkative, and ridiculously haphazard.

Guess where I’m at tonight?

“This must be what going mad feels like.”

Time for dinner, kids. And remember, don’t do illegal drugs, just cocktail the legal ones.