Choreographing on My Own: How the Baby of the Family Grew Up

I always wanted to be just like my sisters. Thankfully, I couldn’t. 

I am the baby of my family. Sara is four years older than me, and Julia only two. Like many babies, my siblings were all I knew. My childhood was spent trying to replicate theirs—to become them. My sisters became my models: the answer key to who I am. But, cheat sheets can’t last forever. 

When I was in kindergarten, Julia came home and announced she had a boyfriend. Yes, this relationship lasted 3 days with a total of 3 conversations, but she had a boyfriend, and now I needed one too. 

The next morning, I walked into my kindergarten class, and asked a boy to be my boyfriend. I don’t know if he knew what that meant, but my success rate was 100%. When I came home, all I said was, “Julia! I am just like you!” 

When I was in 5th grade, Sara entered her high school era: the “I’m too cool for you” phase of her life. I would watch her friends arrive and go straight to her room. Always trying to run after them,the lock on the door would turn before my hand could reach the knob. Julia, being her sassy self, would rub salt in the wound of my FOMO, “why would they want to hangout with the annoying little sister?” 

“Pull quotez”

Honestly, I never cared about hanging out with the highschoolers. I didn’t understand their talks about makeup, or boys, or school. I just saw my sister growing into a new phase of her life, and I couldn’t watch her grow without me. I couldn’t imagine being left alone on a different path. 

I don’t know what it was that kept me going—what kept me motivated to plagiarise the lives of people that already existed. I searched for years to find myself hidden in fragments within my sisters, but that person was never complete. 

My sisters were never athletic or artistic—no offense. They never found joy in this realm, and therefore I never thought I would either. 

I have never been more wrong. When I started dancing in 8th grade, I started my own journey—my own routine that neither of my sisters had ever done. It felt weird to do something new. It felt wrong to explore something so foreign to the Bach legacy. But it felt freeing to be led by my own self interest and not a personified cheat sheet. 

Dance was the first thing that wasn’t theirs first. I always thought of myself to be fixed: a combination of Julia and Sara. But, I never thought I could have something they didn’t. In dance I found myself able to articulate my personality into movement. I created pieces that reflected my authentic self, not my sisters. I found the steps to my own choreography. 

When I look into the audience, living out my favorite hobby,  I see my sisters smiling at me from their seats. It was their support which allowed me to stand under my own spotlight, and not absorb the reflection of theirs. If my sisters were an answer key, dance was the first problem I solved on my own. 

On some level, I will always be my sisters. It’s impossible for the baby of the family to grow up inspired by two models and not take on some of their qualities. My sassiness is a reflection of Julia, my work ethic is derived from Sara, and my love for my sisters sparked from the both of them. But that is not enough to make up a person—an identity. I had to find that on my own. 

Now, my sisters are together at university, living just a dorm room away from each other. Being a senior applying to college, the most frequent prompt I am given is, “are you going to go there too?” Am I? Will I carry out the legacy and complete the Bach trifecta of college admissions? I don’t know.

If you were to ask me this question a few years ago, I would respond with hope and certainty. Obviously I wanted to copy my sister's journeys all the way to their college. But, I never knew if I actually wanted that. How can you know where you truly want to be when your role models took the same path? That could be my destiny just as much as it couldn't. But it's not based on following my sisters anymore—it's based on me. 

Role models are supposed to inspire. And, speaking on behalf of many little siblings, they really do. But their inspiration shouldn’t be a template. Copying them may have brought me closer to them—but farther from myself.  I have learned to stop living in someone else’s life.  I am now able to thrive on my own, as my own, not just as identical clones of my big sisters.