I Swear You Will Be Fine

With our Mum being a doctor, we grew up aspiring to have Dr in front of our names. When Josh realised medicine wasn’t it for him, he decided to eventually get a PhD in psychology. He saw it as a compromise for my grandparents.

When I applied for university, we really didn’t know how it was going to go. Australia was out of the picture, Singapore was notoriously difficult and we could only justify going to the UK if it was a good university. The UK results came out first, and we spent enough time online that we knew people were getting offers. I like sleeping in. Josh and Mum didn’t. We knew the offers were going out early in the morning in Singapore. So instead of sleeping in till 11am, Josh and Mum would try to tiptoe into my room and check my phone. Eventually, I gave them my password to log into on their own phones.

I still remember, it was Joshua’s voice I heard. “YOU GOT IN”. I had barely opened my eyes when I realised what he was saying. Mum and Josh sat in my room while I rang all our relatives. You should have seen Josh the whole day – you would have thought he was the one that got into medical school.

Josh has always been my biggest supporter. He absolutely did not vocalise this to me, because you can’t say nice things about your sibling to their face (this worked both ways). But I know he was. When I did atrociously on my first test at university, it was Josh and Mum I called. And they have comforted me for literally dozens of exams while I cried over stupid marks lost.

This exam season has been really hard. It’s not even that I would have called Josh every time I was stressed, but now I know I can’t. I hate reading exam questions about BPD (especially when they’re difficult and I don’t know the answer). It makes me feel like I’m failing him all over again. I know Josh would roll his eyes, laughing and say “Jess, seriously”. But I can’t help it. He was slightly saner when it came to exams.

Bad exams used to mean the end of the world to me. Now, I’m not sure if I’m numb. Or if this is a taster of how Josh used to feel. I wish he just got to enjoy his success and hard work. He worked so hard on everything. And he did so well. Sometimes it feels like a cruel joke – God gave him all the talent and intelligence and morals and looks, but couldn’t let him enjoy it.

I’m glad we got the last 2 years though. Josh was thriving at university, with new friends and insane grades. He lost so much weight that I conceded to being the less fit sibling. I’ve decided I’m still going to give him that title – it feels wrong to win by default now. We got to see him become a man he (and all of us) were immensely proud of.

It feels wrong to spill tears over exams now. I think they’re a lot more precious than they used to be. I cried every time something bad happened with Josh, all throughout the last 10 years. So I think it’s ok if I don’t cry over exams now. I finally listened to Josh – there are far bigger things to be crying over.