My relationship with my family was never something I could describe as harmonious.
If I were being entirely honest, my feelings toward most of my siblings for the majority after I graduated had hovered on a broad spectrum between cold indifference and mild annoyance rather than anything resembling actual hatred.
We shared blood, sure, but blood was a cheap tether when survival and pride were involved.
Except when it came to my oldest sister.
She was the single entity in my youth that I constantly fixated on aside from Heroes, as the second unreachable benchmark I spent years striving to become.
Against all logic, that very obsession ended up breeding a deep-seated inferiority within me, a quiet envy that ate away at my confidence whenever I looked at her.
Long before we could ever build a meaningful bond, that looming shadow drove a wedge between us, leaving us to drift apart into complete strangers who happened to share a surname.
