This morning after I read the email about February’s theme for the Honor’s Journal, I pondered the famous question asked; “what is love?”. I continued with my morning finishing up a Critical Thinking quiz and a Stat exam. I finished them both up and got my phone from my sister to scan and upload them onto Canvas, but the second I attempted to do so, Sophie, my 13 year old sister grabbed my stat exam, crumbled it up and tried to do the same to the rest of my papers. She somehow got triggered by me scanning my papers. I was furious, I yelled at her, and marched up stairs to get away, but she followed and continued attempting to stop me. You might be wondering “damn sucks to be her…but what’s she getting at?” I’ll tell you right now. What happened to me this morning, how I responded afterwards, and then what happened this evening as well, I believe is the greatest example of the sort of unique love one has for their sibling with special needs. 

However, before I continue I’ll tell you a little bit about Sophia. Sophie is autistic and if we were to put her on the spectrum she would be between mild and moderate, meaning that although she is incredibly intelligent, she is sensitive to certain sounds and actions and although she is incredibly social, she still needs a little bit of help with her social skills and daily living skills. Moreover, Sophie is an absolute artist: she draws incredibly detailed cartoons and comics and makes the most realistic miniature clay characters and objects. Like other autistic individuals, Sophie has multiple “special interests”, which are incredibly focused interests that are often how they spend a majority of their time. Sophie’s are: stuffed animals, nostalgic 2000’s cartoons and toys, and DVDs. We indulge in her special interests, because if we don’t...it won’t be a fun time for either party. 

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          Now that you got to know Sophie a little, I’ll continue on with my morning experience. After a while, once she came downstairs and threw another tantrum by making a mess of the living room, she calmed down and apologized. Typically, at this point one would avoid their sibling for at least a week, but I, like many other special needs siblings, continued to fulfill my responsibilities towards Sophie and moved on with the day. Even though she tore up my statistics exam, I still gave her all her pills, her probiotics, sent her to the bathroom then washed her up, brushed her hair, made all her meals, and put her on the treadmill for her daily exercise. What this experience taught me was that the love between a special needs child is a continuous care for them despite the implications their struggles may have on you, continuing to show affection despite being hurt by them. This sort of love can only exist within our relationship, if it existed elsewhere it would surely be draining, but not for me, not for us. 

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          Then, this evening as I was finishing up some reading, she came to me and asked me if she could buy something with her allowance money. She showed me a picture from an appraisal website named Worthpoint of some rare Leap Frog plushies from 2005! I told her we couldn’t buy them on Worthpoint because it wasn’t a marketplace website, but she threw a fit not understanding the difference. So, I left my reading and searched the whole ~interweb~ for these Leap Frog plushies from 2005 for around 20 minutes or so, however, only finding them on eBay and each for 25 dollars...she didn’t have a hundred bucks to drop on some plushies though. Instead, I discovered a website called “plushmemories.com” that helps people find their lost or rare stuffed animals. I emailed them, begging for help and now I wait for their reply

hoping they’ll be of any help or else I expect a mini crying session from Sophie tomorrow. A typical evening for me and probably many special needs siblings.