Wondering about normalcy

So I should be guest blogging for this other thing right now cuz the entry goes live on Tuesday but I don't really feel like doing that right now. You're stuck with me for now--

OH GOD GIANT SPIDER COMING RIGHT AT ME HELP. Oh blurg. Now it keeps moving around all fast and quick with all those legs and oh my god paranoid. -shudder-

Anyway. On Thursday I drove my sister to her appointment with her therapist, because I could, and I wasn't doing much of anything else, and I like driving. I brought comics to read while waiting for their session to be over, because I'm awesome. And I was out there for less than ten minutes when the doctor poked her head out the door into the lobby and called my name. Confused and nervous and shocked, I followed her back into her office where my sister was sitting, waiting.

I can't really go into detail about what we talked about in those forty minutes or so, namely because of a little thing called confidentiality and I can't go blabbing that sort of thing about my sister all over the internet, but it was... interesting. I've never spoken to a trained professional about myself and my problems and relationships with other people like that before. I guess I could have lied through my teeth about what I thought and all of that, but I didn't. I was honest, relating things from my childhood together with my sister that I'd never shared with anyone before. But it didn't feel like I was baring my soul or investing trust or anything like that. I was just relating facts and experiences and memories. Things that I know now, after 20 odd years of being alive, are not typical experiences one should have as a child. But then I get to thinking about myself, younger, and wondering if I thought it was normal then. After all, what other existence did I know?

I can say these things to people and write it off with a shrug of my shoulders and a laugh and an acceptance of fact, but the more I think about it, the more it bothers me that I do. And I can't quite pinpoint why that is.

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Congratulations

My little sister graduated high school today.

I'm all teary-eyed just typing that up.

Growing up, my sister and I never really had the best of relationships. I'd bully her, and she'd retaliate; it was more often than not a tumultuous whirlwind of pulled hair and name calling and crescent-shaped scars where nails dug into skin. But for every shouting match, there were two more instances of laughing about the stupidest things, or playing with Hot Wheels and Legos, or constructing a fort of pillows and blankets and stuffed bears in the narrow space that separated the twin beds in our shared room.

Our home-life has never been the best, and as middle child, my sister often bore the brunt of that. She's getting help now, for which I am so grateful, but I can't help but wonder sometimes about what would have happened if I had tried harder, if I had been a better sister and stuck up for her more, called my parents out for playing favorites. I know it's not my fault, but sometimes I can't help but feel that it is. I look at her arms, all riddled with pink scars and I can't help but feel that each one is a result of something I could have prevented.

Growing up was tough, needless to say. But as we got older, we've also gotten much closer. I also find it a mark of irony that, just like me two years ago, she didn't even know if she was going to end up graduating.

But she made it! And I am so happy and proud and relieved and a bunch of other things I can't even describe right now.

I'm also bawling my eyes out.

I don't even know if she'll ever read this. But I'm gonna say this anyway:

Jessica, I love you so much and I'm so glad you're my sister. Kick some ass and take names in college and beyond.

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