Suddenly I see.
After looking at today's date, and remembering someone's birthday this weekend, I suddenly understand why I'm freaking out about everything, and why my brain won't shut the hell up.
My sister's anniversary is on Sunday.
I have a lot of mixed feelings about this, since it'll be six years now. I feel like the farther removed I get from her, the more I miss her, whereas with my parents I forget more and more as the years go by. I'm having a rough time, rougher than the past five years. I'm angry and upset and restless, calling people names I would never tolerate (especially in light of yet another roommate debacle), reacting badly at work to things that would normally never bother me, and, really, teetering on the edge of never wanting to get out of bed. I've been progressively later and later at work, going to bed later and later, feeling very alone. It's strange.
Also, it's forced me to put a lot of things in perspective. A lot of people reacted differently when my sister died. Some of her friends were fabulous to me for the first year or two, helping me and wanting to take care of me, and as life when on they just sort of forgot about me. It kind of hurts, but hey, life goes on. I don't belong in that world anymore, the longer she's dead the more removed I am. I think it's frustrating, though, to not have anyone to share her with from my perspective. There are some who knew her who talked about her like she was some sort of sainted hero, putting herself last to take care of me, to take care of Rob (whom she took better care of!); dropping out of college to give me a home and be my mom all over again when I was in high school, like some kind of martyr. The truth is, she dropped out of college to take care of Rob. I was an afterthought in her life for the most part, always there on the periphery of the "have to take care of this problem" attitude she had. In her snobbery, she thought I would be better off with her than with the Aunt I lived with in Queens, and perhaps she was right in some ways, but it was her choice. She chose to live with right before she'd even graduated from high school; she chose not to live in the dorms at Sarah Lawerence; she chose to drop out when Rob simply wouldn't get out of bed because his panic disorder was so bad; she chose to move me in when I would have been just as fine in Queens.
And yet, when people talk about her with me, I always get the same, "Your sister loved you very much," story. I'm sure my sister loved me, she was my sister and we'd been through a lot. But my sister resented me more than she loved me. I was only referred to by name if I was in trouble, and "Kid", while affectionate for the most part, was also not the loving nickname everyone seemed to think it was. There are people who still call me "Kid", which in some cases doesn't bother me, and in other cases makes me want to rip people's eyes out (Kind of like when people call me Nessa.). She was rude to me, condescending, and really rather intolerant. I wasn't allowed to talk a certain way, I was teased about how I dressed, what makeup I wore, what books I read, what things I was interested, for being freaking popular in high school, and was ridiculed for being different from her. Looking back, some of those things deserved it, like how I'd wear things two sizes too small on purpose, and the clown lips. But for heaven's sake, because I didn't fit what she wanted me to be, I simply wasn't acceptable. And she'd tell me, with no hesitation, that I wasn't.
I know people hold their own mini-remembrances of her and such, but I feel like sometimes they're a waste of time. It's less a reason to get together and remember and more a reason to get together and drink and have a visit. She would love that, I know, but I feel like it's so . . . hollow. I didn't know her like everyone else knew her, and I feel like I'm the only person who can't remember her being fun, or interesting, or even . . . dare I say, nice. The only times she could bring herself to tell me that she loved me was when she was drunk. I'm sure she had no problems telling everyone else how great they were, but she couldn't even bring herself to compliment me. People used her death as an excuse for behaving badly at times, because they were grieving. Well, I was grieving too! In fact, I was grieving in the way that my sister would have, and all anyone could do was say they were freaking out because they missed her. No one seemed to notice if I missed her. No one seemed to care, because they were too busy caring about their own grief at the loss of their friend. And I tried to care for them instead. I didn't behave badly; in fact, I think I handled myself the way my sister would have handled herself, and it went completely unnoticed. Yes, some people had other problems that I've been told about since then, that would help to explain their behavior, but my point is still quite valid. Because they're not the only people who've had breakdowns. Only, because I didn't have mine in a public manner, it's wasn't important.
Did you know the only time I got to spend alone with her was right before they took her away? Did you know that the only time I cried was when they took her away? Did you know that the only person who held my hand though that whole thing was a family member from far away? When I think about her, when I think about that night, when I think about everyone else's reactions to the anniversary, I think about all the comfort everyone else gave and got, and I remember how I felt like I'd been forgotten somehow.
I know that this is not about me, that it's about her, but still, I feel like too much of my sister has been forgotten for some romanticized version of her, almost like it's Jenna-lite. On Sunday, I will go to church, something my sister would have hated, because it gives me comfort. (Did anyone know, did anyone care that when my sister was in the hospital, people would follow me to the chapel to give me "pep talks"? I was allowed no comfort in that chapel until Teresa Nielson-Hayden put her foot down and told people to stop following me there, and even then, it was pointless because they'd still follow). I will do things that I feel like doing, and I will respect my own wishes and try to remember my sister. No one bothered to respect my wishes six years ago, and even now it grates on me to think about it. But I will go someplace where I can remember only her, and only the nice things about our lives, since some of them were so few and far between. I'll go visit an old friend, which soon won't be there, and hopefully she'll come with me.