Without My Sister

Learning to do things without my sister is difficult.  She was my person...I was her person.  When I couldn't figure things out, when I was scared, alone, wanting to go to my unhealthy habit places for comfort, she was the one I called. She was the one who understood, very deeply, my need for escape. She understood why I chose the things I chose as escapes.  I understood why she also needed to escape.

My daughter told me this morning learn how to channel my sister so I could keep my head in the game and not run away from the hard stuff.  I'm trying. My sister said a lot to me.  She also held me accountable.  I knew that if we agreed on a boundary, she'd hold me to it.  I can hear her voice in my head, I can imagine what she'd say to me on days like today where I can't stop crying.  But the accountability piece is missing.  Since she's been gone I've been looking for her replacement.  Someone who knew all my secrets, who I could tell new secrets to and they would keep them.  She was my secret keeper - old ones and new ones.  She went to her grave holding my secrets...I live my life holding hers.

My very first boyfriend called me a few weeks ago.  It felt like life again...it felt like someone who knew stuff about me that no one else knew was here again.  I was so thankful, so grateful, so excited to have someone I'd been so intimate with at such a young age to be here and present.  I was trying to revive my relationship with my sister.  I was re-imagining what it was like to have someone that close, that intimate, someone with such longevity present in my life again.

But that doesn't exist.  There is no one like that in my life.  Eventually, I will accept the fact that there never will be again. I cannot re-imagine or re-create the relationship I had with my sister.  There is no one who will ever hold my secrets again...except me.  I'm my own secret keeper.  That kind of love can't be replicated.  There will never again be anyone who knows so much about me and loves me wholly for who I am.  That thought is so scary, so daunting...so excruciatingly painful that I am paralyzed with the grief of it today.

It's been nearly a year and a half since my sister died.  The entire year following her death was a year of repeated bad decisions.  A bad relationship decision.  A bad move decision.  A bad car purchase decision...A year of loss and grief.  Exactly a year after she died I left all the bad decisions behind and am making new decisions...although I still drive that bad car decision.

I have never felt so alone. I've never felt grief to this depth.  I've never experienced the loss of someone I love this much.  I don't know how long it takes to adjust.  I don't know how to live with out a secret keeper.

I miss my sister today.