Crave

I used to have an old cat that would hide under the bed whenever anyone came over so no one ever knew she existed.  Similarly, my sister who is 10 years older and, who was rarely around when I was growing up, became our family’s well-kept secret.  I was usually met with surprise whenever any of my friends found out about her.  And, I would try my best to make her sound as exotic and cool as possible in an attempt to soften the blow of her being gone.  She essentially left home right before her high school graduation and at that point any hope of forging a relationship with her was a foregone conclusion.

To be fair, the age difference between us is a large gap to bridge.  Ten years feels like a generation apart and you are never in the same life phase together.  It was like our existences were a Venn Diagram, the one with 2 circles overlapping in the center only our lives rarely overlapped.  I used to ask my parents some version of, “Why did you wait so long to have me?” as if only I had been born earlier then we might have had a chance at knowing each other better.

When I was younger, I played the part of the pesky, little sibling who constantly wanted to be in her orbit while she was the perpetually annoyed older sister who didn’t want much to do with me.  I would do things like sneak into her room when she was gone to try and piece together who this mysterious person was based on her belongings.  There were the rare moments where our lives would intercept like when I was small and she would do “airplane” with me on the floor launching me in the air suspended by her feet.  Or as I got older, taking me to bars and supplying me with an endless river of alcohol and showing me off to her friends.  I craved attention from her and if she only knew for most of my adult life, I compromised my values and my own voice just to have her in my life.

Growing up, because of the decade that separated us, we were raised in what felt like 2 separate and very different households.  Leading up to my parents divorce we lived in a home that was dominated by my parents unhappy marriage and my dad’s controlling behavior and excessive drinking.  It was a fragmented family life, with us rarely doing anything together.  My parents lost a son, my twin brother, who died shortly after we were born and I can only assume the residual trauma from his death contributed to our family breaking down.  After my parents divorced, my mom remarried a few years later and by that time my sister had already moved out.  While I was living in the aftermath of the divorce and spending every other weekend with my dad, my sister was already in her first abusive relationship and was pregnant at 19.

Through the next several years, she was in and out of my life and at times would make an effort to see me when she could.  When she would call our house, my mom would either be yelling or crying and that’s how I knew it was her on the other line.  My mom rarely talked about her or where she was so I never knew when I would see her again and I was left to come up with my own narrative about where she was.  She eventually left that abusive relationship, and she and her daughter (my oldest niece) starting living with her new boyfriend who worked at the same strip club where she was a dancer.  Our family saw him as a prince charming of sorts who helped “save” her from her former abusive boyfriend.  I remember our family had this overwhelming feeling that we had her “back” with the previous tumultuous years where we rarely saw her in the past.  We now saw her and my niece fairly regularly and she seemed happy with this new life.  Her and this new boyfriend continued to work at the same club but now she was no longer dancing.  At this point, whenever we went to visit her, we would generally end up in either a bar or strip club and as a teenager, this mostly was just a chance to get free drinks and cigarettes but also spend time with my big sister.

One particular time when I was about 18, I was at the club where she worked along with my mom, grandparents and my boyfriend at the time.  We were all drinking and I remember watching one of my family members and boyfriend get a lap-dance from another dancer and my grandparents, mom and my sister acting like this was completely normal.  They were laughing and looked to be having a great time and since at that age you’re still looking at the adults around you to help gauge your feelings, I probably looked like I was having a great time too.  When I looked back on this event as a much older adult, I saw it for what it was.  Completely inappropriate and anything but normal.  And I’m willing to assume that I wasn’t the only one that felt uncomfortable in that situation, but rather than saying anything, they all froze and chose to go all-in as to not risk upsetting my sister and having her pull away from our family again.  For me, this event was significant because it was the start of my indoctrination into our family’s way with her.  That no matter what she did, just go along with it regardless of how it makes you feel.

By this point, the idea of normalcy with my sister seemed to be completely skewed for our family and nothing that she did was too much.  We seemed to cling to the narrative that everything bad in my sister’s life was done upon her absolving her from any personal responsibility for any of her choices going forward.  Now, her and her now husband opened their own strip club so now every trip to see her includes going to said club and other local bars and involves copious amounts of alcohol that I was fully participating in.  I came to realize that I could only really connect with her when I wasn’t sober.  And while drinking and being immersed in their lifestyle, I put myself into plenty of compromising situations mostly in an attempt at closeness with her.

It wasn’t until a few years later, when I was in my early 20s that there was a pivotal moment between us.  We were preparing to go to her house for Thanksgiving and I had just started dating my now husband.  Knowing that we would most likely end up in her club while we were there, I preemptively told her I wasn’t comfortable bringing him there on his first visit.  That moment and my sister’s reaction remain in my memory like it’s standing on the tip of a pinprick.  Because not only was this the first time I attempted to set a boundary with her but this was the first time she lashed out at me.  Her reaction caught me completely off-guard because I thought naively that she would understand and see things from my perspective.  But now I know that in that moment our relationship changed in an instant not only for me but for her too.  She got her first glimpse of me no longer idolizing her and I know her anger probably came from feeling hurt and judged by me.  I was torn because I knew this was a slap in the face for her but I also didn’t want to keep being in the same uncomfortable environments especially while in a new relationship.  Surprisingly, not only was my sister angry but my mom was also incredibly upset with me that I didn’t just go along with everything as usual.  Looking back now, I believe my mom was scared that my actions could have potentially caused my sister to leave our family again.  And it was my mom’s reaction that solidified in me to never rock the boat with my sister unless I wanted to risk being shunned by my family.  As long as I went along with everything her and her husband did and I didn’t voice any dissenting opinion then there wasn’t a problem.

Throughout the next decade or so, my sister and I continued to struggle to find a rhythm.  Now it was as though I was in a constant state of winning her back because I was sure that my relationship with my family hinged upon having a successful relationship with my sister.  And as a result, I was afraid that any wrong move meant my family might discard me in order to preserve their relationship with my sister and her children (my nieces).  Eventually, my sister and I had another blow-up that involved her and her husband berating me which left me questioning whether or not I was this horrible person whom they painted a picture.  This actually led me to seek therapy for the first time as an adult and this is what I credit as having started the process of recognizing the dysfunction in our family.  And I began to understand that my sister’s reactions were more about her, and not me.

The final chapter between us started with me reaching out to her before my mom’s 70th birthday and before I started my first round of IVF.  Something happens before you become a parent where you have an urge to bring your future child into a picture-perfect family which was my main driving force behind this last effort.  But during my pregnancy and throughout the first years of my son’s life, I continued to see the same red flags with my sister and her husband.  Eventually, I knew it was only a matter of time before I needed to back away from them because I knew this is not what I wanted my son to be around.  Then a few years ago my youngest niece dropped a bombshell and confided in our family that she was sexually abused for years by her father, my sister’s husband.  After this came out, my brother-in-law of course denied any wrongdoing and my sister has chosen to not believe my niece (her daughter) and to this day continues to stay with the man who raped and molested her child.  Additionally, most of my family, including my parents, continue to have regular contact with my sister and her husband without acknowledging or questioning the sexual abuse that happened to my niece.  For me, this finally caused everything to shift into focus and it became crystal clear that I needed to officially cut ties my sister.  I couldn’t explain away her behavior any longer.

The fact that it took this horrific event for me to finally see that my relationship with my sister was not a good one is insane.  But more importantly, this was the start of another reckoning for me about my family of origin and that the way my family handles my sister is really just a symptom of a bigger disease.  Because it didn’t start with her.  A 17 year old doesn’t leave home because she’s happy and getting her needs met.  I believe living in our home became unbearable for her and I can clearly see why she wanted to escape.  Looking back as an adult, I can see my sister was struggling and as a teenager had all the hallmarks of a kid who was crying out for help, attention, or anyone to notice that she was not ok.   At 10 years old she was left to process our dead brother with 2 parents that were emotionally unavailable whose marriage was breaking down in front of her.  All the while having a dad who was an emotionally abusive alcoholic who was largely absent through our childhoods either working or drinking.  Our family didn’t have most of the ingredients that goes into a emotionally supportive, functional family so it’s no wonder my sister turned out the way she did.  I should have too and, almost did but therapy ignited the spark that gave me insight into not only dysfunctional behaviors in our family and others but also helped me recognize similar behaviors in myself that I did not want to perpetuate.  This process is ongoing and has helped me learn how my own behavioral tendencies affect my relationships and how to continue to set healthy boundaries for myself.

Initially, this post was focused on my relationship with my sister and how my family has enabled her by tiptoeing around her bad behavior.  But then I realized my focus was too downstream from everything that had happened before us.  Because in the rearview mirror, I could see the generational trauma that came even before my parents including an alcoholic grandfather who contributed to an unstable household that raised my dad.  I started to reflect on the effects of layers of trauma from our families that we can either continue to carry on our backs or try and shed.  And most importantly, the realization that I cannot heal our family’s generational trauma, but I can help break the cycle.  A large part of who we are is because of or in spite of our family of origin.  And my sister is simply operating from the same blueprints that were laid out for her.  As a result, I have learned that she does not have the emotional capacity to have a healthy relationship because she was never shown how to and now she doesn’t know any different.

So after all of this time of being afraid of losing my family, I had to finally be the one to walk away from most of them in order to follow my moral compass.  When I think about my sister and I, it still hurts at times that I don’t have that relationship.  But now I know that it’s not her that I crave, it’s the idea of her and the relationship that could have been.  And the personal cost of having her in my life was now more than what I was willing to pay.  I can still empathize with her with what she’s been through and the abuse she’s endured but at the same time acknowledge that the abused has now become the abuser.  At some point we need to take accountability for ourselves and not use our past traumatic experiences to shield us from any blame from our own abusive actions.  But I think that kind of introspection is a bridge too far for my sister considering her continued behavior and denial about our families current state.

I struggled with writing this post, and whether or not I should share some of these details.  But I’m tired of secrets living and dying in our family and I no longer want to be complicit in the damage that it has done.  I’m putting it all out there, in hopes that it helps continue the conversation about traumatic experiences in our families of origin and how it affects us later in life especially if it’s never fully processed.  And more specifically, how different siblings can have different outcomes based on how much each is willing to examine the past.

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