Wow.

With the scarcity of time spent interacting with my sister these days, you never would have guessed that we spent the first 9 years of my life together, blowing bubbles, butting heads, and generally being assholes to each other. You’d also never know that she used to be my favorite person in the world. In those days, my sister was a religion to me. Yes, I wish I were joking.

She was 15 when I was 6 and as such took this opportunity to weave the most fantastical stories around the most mundanical things.

She once accurately, but misleadingly told me that the big, round pit in the middle of a mango was essentially a coupon for another mango, and explained that that is the reason why I needed to eat up every last fibrous sinew that stubbornly clung onto the thing for dear life. Looking back, she probably meant it as some kind of metaphor, but I pictured diligently cleaning it up and toting it to the supermarket where a cashier would instantly accept it and with a smile sans hesitation present a brand new shiny yellow mango to me.

Because come on, what is a free mango in exchange for an entire tree full of mangos? Which the cashiers could then pluck and get even more free mangos from other cashiers and thus grow more mango trees from?

Nevermind that I’ve never seen a mango tree in New Jersey, those adults probably had something figured out. Because anyone who was a few years older than me I viewed with absolute authority and awe, and that was true for my sister above anyone else.

Another time her story was less ambiguous, and in these days would probably get her into a decent amount trouble if I had told anyone about it.

One night, swaddled together in a bundle of blankets on a tiny twin size bed, in the pitch blackness, she whispered to me a story about Lilian, my long lost twin, but somehow older than me, sister. Lilian had died in mysterious circumstances involving a car accident of some kind. My mother had loved her and doted on her until that point, and apparently never spoke about her because of her wounded, broken soul. I don’t remember the words she used, but I was floored by this story. I remember quietly whining “Oh, poor Lilian.” and sobbing into the blanket. The circumstances were cruel, and that was the first time I ever remember connecting deeply with my emotions for someone I didn’t know.

Since then, my mother has told me that she aborted a child before me due to financial circumstances, and so, I still have a bit of heartache for Lilian.

But Lilian wasn’t the only ghost who wandered the halls of our home, there were also the various ghosts and ghouls that arose from the Indian Burial Ground our house was built on. And also whatever I missed seeing when my sister would look behind me wide-eyed at and go “Oh my God.” at. And now, as a 20-something, I still cannot stand watching horror movies of any kind without the images being permanently burned into my conscious for the next week or three or years (For instance, that achilles tendon part in Hostel. I can only be thankful that it didn’t ruin cutting into a beautiful Medium Rare steak for the rest of my life).

I have developed a kind of doublethink about my sister over the years.

On one side, though often cruel in her methods, she was caring and engaging, and loved to tell stories and interact with me. On the other hand, I know that her upbringing and the culture of my family stifled her creativity in other aspects of her life, and that since then, a stringent, studious outlook has replaced what fun used to exist.

Do I think she’s happy being a stress-ridden Econ phD married to a stress-ridden MD? Sure, for her definition of happy. But to me, that wedding dress doubles as a strait jacket.

I felt a similar kind of all-over pressure when she insisted that I had to have an internship my junior year of College and that I absolutely should not take a semester off to get my brain back in the game. Depression and anxiety are not excuses, they are something that you get through to progress in a timely manner. If part of your brain is an arm, and you’re missing an arm, you drag yourself by the other one and get through it, prosthetic or not.

You can’t waste half of a year waiting for that thing to ship, are you kidding?

I’ve only very recently realized that my sister is fallible. And that as much as I love her, she has so very many flaws. Though she may be happy, I would never be able to live with her specific type of happiness.

It would make me miserable.

I hope one day she recalls the magic of our childhood as fondly as I do.