Siblings

Of all of the chapters that I have written so far, this may have been the most difficult to write. I’m confident that not many would disagree with me when I say that siblings often have complicated relationships. While B and I had been as close as two sisters could be throughout the times that I have written about, and I treasured the bond that we shared, there seemed to be a slow shift between us towards the end of us working. Although I felt that tiny, almost-indiscernible pieces of our relationship were damaged during several periods of this time, I thought that we could overcome almost anything together. I certainly never imagined that anything that we went through could drive a sharp wedge between us. While I could blame her and she could blame me for our differences, I think that the small emotional injuries that we each suffered were simply due to the fact that everyone deals with traumatic events differently – even the closest of sisters, or the best of friends. There were times that I could not understand or possibly accept her point of view, and there were times that she could not understand or accept mine. We were growing up; changing; filling out the inner portions of ourselves which had previously only been outlined. Young women were emerging out of the girls whom we once were.

Even though I took a substantial ‘time out’ following leaving hospital, I needed to take this time to even begin to recover and rediscover who I was as a person. I used this time to self-reflect. By personally peeling back all of the delicate and intricate layers of what I had experienced, I started to heal. For me, this involved processing both positive and negative emotions through reading; writing; music; and making plans for my future independence based on fresh and exciting dreams and goals. This does not mean that I never made stupid mistakes again. I did, as you will see. However, anger was generally not how I dealt with difficult emotions – it never had been. While I did experience anger as a normal emotion, my fuse was generally long and I didn’t hold onto resentment or grudges. I simply didn’t like to argue. B was another story. I said to her, half tongue-in-cheek on several occasions that she was the ‘Queen of Revenge’ due to her formidable ability to take someone down whom she believed did wrong by her. It was a title which she proudly accepted and relished. Although she also used a variety of personal methods to rehabilitate at this time, I found that she tended to deal with her negative emotions by outwardly releasing anger that she felt inside. Perhaps this was because she felt more comfortable with external expressions of anger than I did. Nevertheless, sometimes this anger was directed physically and verbally at me.

I had learned after finishing work that B had been sexually abused by a teenaged female babysitter of ours in Townsville when I was only about 5 or 6, and she 7 or 8. Despite our closeness, she had kept this secret to herself for all of those years. While I had no memory of this – or our babysitter – B told me that the babysitter had never touched me*. I wondered whether an accumulation of this, along with everything else – including her tumultuous relationship with Nanna – led to a growing rage within her. Things between us would travel along beautifully for a while and then everything would explode. When it exploded, I was genuinely frightened for my safety. She would follow me around the house and I would try to walk away; shut a door; anything to get away from the fury that emerged from within her. Unfortunately, we did not have locks on most of the doors in the house, which only left barricading a door as a method of escape. Aside from my father enacting physical discipline on me as a child – as many children experienced in my generation – I have never been physically assaulted before. I had also never been in a verbal or physical fight at school, with either a friend or any other student.

The first time that she attacked me was actually an isolated incident when I was 17 – which was after we had both finished work, but before my hospital stay. It was a typically vicious hair-pulling and scratching type of incident that B initiated but which I defended myself against. As a result, we were both left with sore heads and marked skin. This hands-on combat occurred several times before leading to other weapons being used against me, such as a thrown butter knife or scissors, or being chased with an iron raised high above her head. At times I felt that she might kill me if she caught me in that state. If Mum and Dad were home I would scream for them, however it would often occur when we were alone. On the last occasion, I so feared for my life that I called the police. She was taken away overnight but returned the next day. Instead of just stopping though, she replaced the physical attacks with more fervent verbal ones; whereby accusations would scream out of her mouth at me for things that I had apparently done but which I’d never even contemplated. Things that I couldn’t even prove that I hadn’t done without the use of multiple lie detector tests. While at first I simply denied and tried reasoning with her regarding the mean things that she said to me, I eventually grew tired of trying to prove my innocence for the latest allegation.

I didn’t understand why she would seemingly hate me so much; why she would target me. I hoped that she would know me better, but she obviously didn’t, and it saddened me greatly. I wanted us to be the champions of each other; indestructible. Yet I felt that she increasingly found happiness in my discomfort and inevitable hiccups and failures in life; a sense of satisfaction in the slow annihilation of our relationship. Perhaps my face just reminded her of too many bitter memories. Our relationship has therefore been on-and-off much like many romantic relationships are; with us sometimes going for a couple of years without speaking and other times having so many things to say to one another that our chatting has caused our own children to be jealous of our closeness. The scales of peace and equilibrium between us tipped either extremely one way or the other – all or nothing; love or hate – with me at times feeling that our friendship is as strong as any I could imagine, and other times feeling like she is my pure nemesis. While this broke my heart, it taught me that no matter how much you may love someone, sometimes you just need to stop holding on so tight – sometimes you need to let go.

I wasn’t in solo company however in being figuratively dragged by the hair through the mud. Over the years B had multiple jealousy-fuelled altercations with women; mostly verbal arguments revolving around the only sexual or romantic partner that she’d had following us working – Connor. In her defence, he was not a trustworthy character to begin with, and he seemed to incite erratic behaviour in multiple women due to his cheating; deceit; and propensity for a living a double-life. Hence B was certainly not the instigator of all altercations. Nevertheless, on one occasion, in a moment of déjà-vu, she threatened to burn down another building, but just as before this did not eventuate. She did, however, inevitably trash the inside of this place. It was where Connor – being temporarily her ex-partner at this time – was living and sleeping with other women. I believe that even clinging onto him was a remnant behaviour from our time working in Sydney. She only wanted to be with one man too. Just as B never truly recovered from work or its aftermath, she also never recovered from the heartbreak given to her by this one man whom she had trusted, been with, and loved since then. Although she had several beautiful children with Connor and has been a brilliant mother – and if you met her you would probably meet a smiling, stylish and outwardly vivacious woman – she has not been able to work or fully function in a normal sense beyond those working days. I’m not sure which broke her more: work or him.