Severed Hips
I'm feeling a little blue today so forgive me for using this space to whine a little.
I miss my sister. Terribly. I reach for the phone to call her only to realize that I can't. I type in her old e-mail address to forward her a "funny" that I think she'll enjoy only to remember that she's no longer at that address. I drive past the street of her old apartment and tears well up in my eyes.
No, my sister isn't dead. She's married.
For the longest while my sister and I were joined at the hip. Where you saw one you most likely saw the other. In fact, most times if we weren't together at some function or another people found it strange. We shared many of the same friends. When I was a college freshman she took me around campus and showed me all the hot spots. Helped me find my classes and reassured me that those first couple of days when I wanted to quit would pass and it would get better. She was a sophomore, so she knew.
Seventeen months apart in age, a year apart in school, now a hundred miles apart. Her marriage and subsequent move to a little nothing town some hour and 15 minutes away has been hard on me. It's been hard on all of my family but for me it's like I lost an extension of myself.
She met her husband Thanksgiving weekend last year. I didn't meet him until the week after Christmas...the same time the rest of the family met him. They were engaged by New Years and married in June. For me, a person who before had always been an active participant in my sister's life, I felt cut off. Abandoned. Left behind. She had found someone who meant more to her than me and our formerly joined hips were viciously ripped apart. Suddenly finding myself relegated to the bottom of the barrel shook me because not only did she abandon me for him, she is now among the ranks of what Bridget Jones refers to as the "smug married couples" while I remain single.
She lookes at me in sympathy. Reassures me that I'll find someone someday and that I'll understand how she can compromise her former ambitions for him when I fall in love. Tells me with full annoying confidence that I can't possibly understand anything about how a marriage is supposed to work because I've never been there.
And she's right. I don't understand how a formerly independant minded person can become so depandant on another human being so quickly. I can't understand the complacency of "answering" to somebody and asking permision to do everything.
She promised me that when she got married things wouldn't change. When I told her that I felt as though I would never see her again she assured me that I would. And I have seen her a few times. But it's not her. Not the woman I used to talk to for hours about nothing and everything. Not the person I used to call during our favorite shows and watch them "together." Now she watches baseball instead of Big Brother and calling her for any reason not only costs money, but it makes me uncomfortable because she won't talk to me...REALLY talk to me if he's in the same room with her.
I miss my sister and I wonder if this severed hip will ever really heal.
I miss my sister. Terribly. I reach for the phone to call her only to realize that I can't. I type in her old e-mail address to forward her a "funny" that I think she'll enjoy only to remember that she's no longer at that address. I drive past the street of her old apartment and tears well up in my eyes.
No, my sister isn't dead. She's married.
For the longest while my sister and I were joined at the hip. Where you saw one you most likely saw the other. In fact, most times if we weren't together at some function or another people found it strange. We shared many of the same friends. When I was a college freshman she took me around campus and showed me all the hot spots. Helped me find my classes and reassured me that those first couple of days when I wanted to quit would pass and it would get better. She was a sophomore, so she knew.
Seventeen months apart in age, a year apart in school, now a hundred miles apart. Her marriage and subsequent move to a little nothing town some hour and 15 minutes away has been hard on me. It's been hard on all of my family but for me it's like I lost an extension of myself.
She met her husband Thanksgiving weekend last year. I didn't meet him until the week after Christmas...the same time the rest of the family met him. They were engaged by New Years and married in June. For me, a person who before had always been an active participant in my sister's life, I felt cut off. Abandoned. Left behind. She had found someone who meant more to her than me and our formerly joined hips were viciously ripped apart. Suddenly finding myself relegated to the bottom of the barrel shook me because not only did she abandon me for him, she is now among the ranks of what Bridget Jones refers to as the "smug married couples" while I remain single.
She lookes at me in sympathy. Reassures me that I'll find someone someday and that I'll understand how she can compromise her former ambitions for him when I fall in love. Tells me with full annoying confidence that I can't possibly understand anything about how a marriage is supposed to work because I've never been there.
And she's right. I don't understand how a formerly independant minded person can become so depandant on another human being so quickly. I can't understand the complacency of "answering" to somebody and asking permision to do everything.
She promised me that when she got married things wouldn't change. When I told her that I felt as though I would never see her again she assured me that I would. And I have seen her a few times. But it's not her. Not the woman I used to talk to for hours about nothing and everything. Not the person I used to call during our favorite shows and watch them "together." Now she watches baseball instead of Big Brother and calling her for any reason not only costs money, but it makes me uncomfortable because she won't talk to me...REALLY talk to me if he's in the same room with her.
I miss my sister and I wonder if this severed hip will ever really heal.
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