Part One - a (little) background.
"Welcome to my office," the Doctor says, waving her hand in the direction of a rather comfortable-looking couch along one of the walls. "Please, take a seat, relax, and let's begin..."
See, I am the youger brother. I have an older sister. Growing up, I always thought she was a pain, being mean to me, spiteful, etc etc etc. We had some rip-roaring arguments between us, coming to blows more than once. In fact, I rather badly hurt my hand when I whacked her over the head.
It always seemed like she got all the attention. She would have an argument with Mum or Dad, and there I am, forgotten about, left to mind my own business, "We'll talk to you later...". As I got older, these issues became more and more frequest, often rising in the level of hostility between all parties involved. And, the more I got pushed to the sidelines, the more pissed I would become.
This kind of carried over into my "social" life. I always felt like I never really had a good, solid bunch of friends. I went from school to school, never really settling down, making friends, only to move to another school a few years later, and having to start from scratch. So, I suppose I always felt kind of on the outer. Thus, I would come home from school, into argument city at home, and my parents never really figured it out why I liked to spend so much time in my room.
I loved my room - it was my sanctuary, my little bit of me, my zone away from all the shit I had going on outside it. And to keep my mind level I had my hobbies - those that I could partake of in my room. Nothing dodgy, just listening to music, playing with electronic stuff trying to figure out how stuff worked, and building models and dioramas of those models. I must say, I was actually very proud of how some of those turned out. I guess I had a lot of time to perfect my craft...
Well, time goes by, and I'm at the end of high school, going into college, and still my sister is taking up way too much of my parents time and efforts. Shoot, she's even moved out by this time, living in a completely different city. But still..... Things kept on getting worse, even with the distance between all of us. It took a failed suicide attempt to finally get them to see that maybe there's a "problem" with her. Now, I hate that word - there's a stigma attached to it. But, what other options do you have? "Issues"? That's just a PC way of saying "problem". So, long story short, They took her to a place down in Palmerston North to have her "evaluated".
Turns out my sister is bi-polar. But was I informed of this fact? Was I given the chance to figure out what this means, what we can do to live with this, how we can change ourselves to help the situation? Nope, nuh uh...
Things finally came out in the open about three weeks before I was due to leave the country. Mum and my sis were having another contrtemps in the kitchen one evening. These had admittedly become less frequent, but when things did blow up, watch out Hiroshima. But, byt this time, I was 21, I was sick of it, I had had enough. When I asked what was wrong, Dad told me to leave. Why? Just go. Nope, sorry Dad, not going to fly. I was fed up, with my sister for flying off the handle, for Mum and Dad flying off the handle, for not knowing, not being involved, for being "forgotten".
My Irish came out. When Dad told me, again, to leave, I told him to fuck right off. That sort of shit dowsn't sit well with a guy like him, and when he firmly attempted to right my course, I pushed back. I was bigger than him, and after a second whereby he ended up against the legs of the kitchen table, and I opened my mouth up and, probably in one long unintelligible roar, told them all what the fuck was up, I left. I lost it, went on up to my room and just let it all out.
Part Two - Looking back.... ahh, hindsight's a bitch.
So, after all of that, turns out I finally did get my parents attention. Mum gathered me up after all was calmed down (weird how the storms always blow over), off to the liqour store, pack of smokes and out to the beach. There, over about a three hour period at sunset, we let it all out. She about her childhood, my sister, my Dad, what the problem was, what we could do, how it was (though hard on her) a good thing that I was headed 13,000 miles in a different direction from there with no agenda and no timetable. For my part, it was all about how I had wanted to be treated, how I had wanted my voice to be heard, my thoughts examined etc etc etc. It was a pretty rough time. But, we needed it. More than we thought. After a lot of tears, a teensy bit too much booze and some stress cigarettes, we were back home, determined to live out my last three weeks in peace and relative harmony.
"And now, what do you think when you look back?" she asks, gently prodding me along...
Part Three - What I think.
I think things could have been different. I regret now the lost opportunities that my sister and I didn't take advantage of, where we could have both become stronger together. It's unfortunate now, that, here I am entrenched in MN, with the chances to get back home so few and far between, and with my sister there being almost no fucking chance whatsoever that she would come here on her own (let alone be able to afford it being unable to work with various ailments and welfare etc...). Anyhow, it's strange, but I feel closer to my sister than ever. We don't talk much - she not having a reliable source of internet, me not being big on phone calls (yeah I suck) - but when we do we connect. She was my best "man" at my wedding nine years ago, and I can't wait to see her next year when my family now travels down there. It will be the first time (other than pics or video) that she will have met Gretchen (now 4), and London is a little different as a 7-year old that she was at 1 1/2 last time we were down there.
I wish now that everything was different. But then again, don't we all at some point in time?
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