Best Strangers!

I’ve met loads of people who talk of the strange relationship they have with their siblings. They always talked about rivalries and feelings of ill will or discontent. I never understood it. We grew up sometimes at one another’s throats and sometimes we banded together to fight our battles in unison. I remember hating and loving you both with the same ferocity, but never because we had anything more or less than one another. In fact I always thought how unfair it was that there were people who wanted to make each of us different. How they tried to put us in boxes and label us with dye cast from their own fingers.

I love and loved you both with equal measures. I missed you both with intense sadness and could feel the shredding of my heart when you went. We stood and said goodbye to one another so many times. I wanted you to go, I wanted you to have freedom and in my heart the loneliness spread like blood ebbing from the knife wound to my soul. We said all the things we had to – ‘go, it’ll be ok – I’m good, I’ll write to you and everything will be ok’ and through it all I could see the pain reflected in our faces. You had to go because our freedom depended on it – and so you did and we stopped writing about the sad things and painted the perfect picture to make the going away easier.

I think I wanted to love you both less, I needed to feel numb so the spaces wouldn’t feel so empty without you and although we were close I chose to pretend it was just me in this world even thought it never was. As much as we all existed for ourselves, my highest priorities always included the two of you. For whatever love we couldn’t have I’d be sure mine was full and all encompassing.

You asked me to come one summer. We were older and you showed me the fissure that made your half filled cup weak! I packed up everything and sold the possessions I spent 5 years filling the wide open spaces of my life with! With two bags and half a prayer I began my pilgrimage believing that now it would all be different. Now we were the masters of our fate, the money we made and spent was our own and the choices we made we didn’t need to ask permission for anymore. You asked me to come and I thought I would buoy you up with love and support and we’d be just like we were 13 years earlier when you took your chance to get away! I was wrong. It was hard and I realised we were siblings before we were friends.

For all my faults I loved you with and without flaws. For the times we didn’t see eye to eye I chose to let you be you. I put my judgements and opinions aside and encouraged you to make your choices however much they didn’t agree with my morality. I figured we’d been forced enough and I hoped that when I made mistakes you would be a source of strength and my stable shoulder to lean on.

At some point I realised that your tolerance of weakness was low, while mine is a wide open canyon where I pack the feeble, the conquered, the lonely and desolate. This canyon is also the space now that has opened up between us, broad and looming. I don’t know how this happened! We come together and move around one another like two strangers in a pregnant space. I’m sad and I can sense you’re indifferent, but I don’t know what to say or how to say it and to be fair it’s just easier to go away feeling cheated than to point the finger at all the things that are wrong and demand to know why.