My sister is beautiful. Her name is Dillan and she is like any other thirteen year old girl I know, loves makeup, boys, and Justin Bieber. Dillan made her middle school cheer team this year and loves to perform on stage. My sister knows how to read and write extremely well and she has dreams of becoming a waitress or a nurse someday. Dillan plays soccer, made it to Special Olympics for swimming, and she is an amazing dancer.  My favorite thing about Dillan though, is that she has Down syndrome. Her body decided it wanted to form an extra chromosome, and man is it a blessing! Her compassion towards others never ceases to amaze me. Even when someone gives her a dirty look or stares, she smiles and waves or even says hi. Dillan can see the positive in every situation and makes my bad days 100x better. For her whole life, she has been in and out of the hospital for lung and heart problems. My family has spent endless holidays in the hospital, but the only thing that mattered is that Dillan left the cold grey rooms completely healed. Ever since I was little and people could comprehend that I had a sister with a disability, kids and adults alike treated me different. I never could understand why. I never understood why people in the stores would stop and watch us walk by, I never understood why my mom would get so defensive, and I never understood that she was different from any one else’s siblings. To me, Dillan is a best friend and someone to laugh with, I have never seen her as ‘disabled’ or ‘mentally retarded’. As I grew older and matured, people got worse. It hurts to hear someone make a joke using your sister’s disability or say how they would never want to have to talk to a person like that. It hurts. It hurts knowing that not everyone can understand the beauty of being different. Sure, Dillan’s eyes are more buggy-almond shaped than your average joe and her speech is impaired, but if you look past the outside and into the human being she is, Dillan is remarkable. I have grown up thinking that what Dillan does is normal and it’s saddening to know that it is far from your typical standards of ‘normal’. Please don't tell me you are sorry for my sister having a disability, it is nothing to be sad about and I am so proud to be her older sister. Disabilities have the potential to be incredible and they don’t have to be looked at as a flaw in the system, everyone is beautiful, especially my sister Dillan who will forever be in my standards of ‘normal’.