400 word autobiography

When we were young, we were a pair, partners in crime. My sister was my confidante, my role model and my best friend. We were inseparable. One of my favorite memories with her was when we entertained Old Orchard mall by singing, “We are dageos”, a song from the TV show, The Angry Beavers, on the outdoor patio of the restaurant Hulahands.
I remember the time we had to sleep in our basement for almost a month while our bedrooms were being redone. My parents still say to this day that they can’t believe they let us sleep down there alone, since I was only 8 and my sister 12. We caused havoc wherever we went, out of our parent’s sight of course. We mixed drinks of ketchup and water and salt during dinner and stole packets of sugar to eat later in the night when we were supposed to be sleeping. Stephanie was someone I could always turn to, someone whom I could plot with about our next crazy scheme, and most importantly, she’s my sister.
But all of that faded too quickly, Stephanie is 4 years my senior, and she grew up faster than anyone could have predicted. The summer going into her freshman year of high school Stephanie went away to camp, and came back a new person. She wore makeup now, wanted to get her belly button pierced, wore a lot less clothes that showed a lot more and she just was not the person I remembered her being just a few weeks prior. I didn’t like this new person; she was mean, never home, always on the phone and always fighting with my parents about something. This was the start of the downward slope.
Stephanie went to high school and made new friends, friends you wouldn’t want your daughter hanging out with in high school. She started dating a football player who was a year older. His drug and alcohol problems trickled down to her, and she became addicted. I can’t say I remember much about this time in both of our lives, mainly because I’ve blocked it out. Our house was constantly filled with the screams of my sister and the angry words of my father, I would lock myself in my room, watching the TV my parents of given me, for the sole purpose of having something to drown out the screaming from downstairs.
After high school, Stephanie went to ASU for not even a semester, having to drop out due to excessive drug use and the fact the she never went to a single class. She moved back home during my freshman year, just when I thought I had escaped the madness, it was thrown back upon me.
I guess I could say I’m almost thankful for Stephanie’s struggles, now that she has conquered them and is finally doing something with her life. If it weren’t for her problems and constant mistakes, I wouldn’t know first-hand how destructive drugs can be to oneself and the people who surround them. Today Stephanie and I can talk openly about her drug addictions and what triggered them, it’s been the first time in a long time where I actually feel like I have a sister again.