I don’t talk to my little sister anymore.
That was my choice.
I heard she’s navigating something incredibly scary and difficult today. I waited for the feeling I thought I was supposed to have.
Worry.
Fear.
The immediate urge to reach out and say, Hey, I know we’re not talking but I heard about tomorrow. I hope you’re okay.
Something.
Instead, my first thought was:
I don’t want to reach out.
Then the worse realization set in…I don’t actually care.
Which bothered me more than the event did. Because that’s my little sister. I’m suppose to care.
Right?
There are things you’re apparently supposed to feel about family regardless of what has happened between you. There’s this invisible line where history is supposed to stop mattering because but that’s your sister.
And she is.
She’s also someone that calls me horrible names when she’s angry. Someone who has taken kind things she’s done for me and turned them into weapons later.
Some debts don’t disappear when the balance hits zero.
There are layers to our relationship that I don’t know how to explain neatly. Maybe that’s because none of it is neat.
And I’ve also been a villain in her story. Many times. Especially when I was drinking. Because that version of me was cruel, sharp and unkind.
I was unkind.
There are things I said and did during that part of my life that I regret. Things I have had to own instead of hiding behind the fact that I was drinking.
She has a laundry list of reasons to be hurt by me, too.
That’s part of our story.
And maybe that’s what makes family shit so complicated. There isn’t always one person wearing the villain costume and another one standing there completely innocent.
I can acknowledge the ways I hurt her without pretending the ways she hurts me don’t matter.
I can regret who I was during that period of my life without believing I have to spend the rest of my life accepting punishment for it.
I can own my side of the street. I have. I’ve apologized, changed my behaviors and made peace with the old me.
But I can also still decide that I don’t want to live on her side anymore.
I’m tired.
Not angry.
Not devastated.
Just…Tired.
So, I stopped participating. I chose no contact.
And I think some part of me expected that choosing that road would mean constantly missing her. That I’d have to fight the urge to call. The birthdays and holidays and big life events would come around and I’d sit there wondering if I was making the right decision.
Sometimes I do.
But mainly, life got quieter.
And then I found out about this and I realized I don’t want to call.
I don’t want to text.
I’m not staring at my phone fighting with myself.
And that breaks my heart.
Not because I want my sister back but rather, I realize how far gone the relationship actually is.
I wish I had a normal fucking family.
That’s it.
That’s the thing underneath all of this. I wish my little sister could go through something and my only thought be about getting home to be with her. Hoping she’s okay. I wish I could text her without wondering what opening that door will eventually cost me.
I wish kindness in my family could just be kindness.
I wish disagreements in my family could just be disagreements.
I wish being angry didn’t mean saying the cruelest thing you can think of and figuring out how to make it hurt.
I wish I had a father I could call.
I wish I had a childhood I didn’t have to recover from.
I wish “family” felt like somewhere I could go instead of somewhere I had to escape.
And that’s what I’m grieving.
Not the relationship I walked away from. The relationship I never fucking got.
Because I don’t want my sister back the way things were. I don’t want to pretend none of it happened just because something scary is happening to her. I don’t want to send a message I don’t mean just so I can prove to myself that I’m a good person.
I just wish things had been different enough that I wanted to send one.
There’s a very specific kind of grief in realizing you don’t miss someone. Because sometimes the absence doesn’t hurt. Sometimes the peace feels good.
And that is what hurts.