In the morning, my neck hurt, but my heart was full. That night alone was worth the entire month. On the last morning, I packed my suitcase slowly. Neither of us wanted to say goodbye. We had a late breakfast—pancakes, slightly burnt—and sat in comfortable silence.

I was having a low day. A “what am I doing with my life” kind of Tuesday. Jess noticed me staring blankly at frozen pizzas for five minutes. She didn’t ask what was wrong. She didn’t offer solutions. Instead, she put her hand on my shoulder and said, “Remember when we were kids and Mom would let us pick any pizza we wanted on Fridays? You always picked the one with the stuffed crust. You still do that, you know. You pick joy first, even when things are hard.”

I arrived with a suitcase full of optimism and snacks she didn’t ask for. She had cleaned the entire apartment, lit a candle that smelled like “calm ocean,” and pre-made a playlist for our first dinner. It was adorable. It was also unsustainable.

“Yeah. That’s ya best.”

If you’ve never spent a month as an adult living with your sibling, let me save you the suspense: It is chaos. It is therapy. It is a mirror. And by the end of it, I updated my contact name for her in my phone to three words:

But the most important moment happened at a grocery store. Specifically, the frozen food aisle.