Yesterday, my sister turned seventeen years old. I wonder about the young woman she is today, and I have a good idea about some things, but I feel blurry on a lot of it. I haven’t seen her in three years, and I doubt I will see her for at least another two years. And that makes me incredibly sad.
To say that it’s all “complicated” would be an understatement, but here is the basics – my mother is toxic to me, abused me for all of my childhood – authorities even got involved a couple of times – and so she is no longer in my life. And my sister is her daughter. And she is a minor. And while I know my sister is safe, and my mother would never turn on her (you’ll just have to take my word for it, safeguards are in place – I know), my mother is very controlling and she controls and inserts herself into every aspect of my sister’s life, meaning I am not a part of it.
I’m fourteen years older than my sister, and when she was young we weren’t just siblings – we were closer. I read Kelly her first book. (For privacy purposes I did not use either of my siblings’ real names.) I fed her. When I left home after my mother tried to kill me (I was strangled to the point of unconsciousness, and given quite the beating before being dumped at my father’s house) my sister went through horrible separation anxiety – even refusing to eat unless I came over and fed her. But she wasn’t even two years old at the time, and I doubt she remembers any of this. What makes it worse is that I refuse to play my mother’s game, so for the last decade my sister has been kept from me and my mother has told her all kinds of things about how I mistreat my mother, and how horrible I am, and it makes me sick. I hate thinking that my sister has no idea who I really am, and it hurts to think that most of the things she has to go on are these lies she is told.
