The Thin, Thin Line

The Thin, Thin Line

I came across a quote on Instagram not too long ago and it mentioned something about cutting toxic people out of your life; that it’s ok to do so even if they’re family, something like that. I scrolled past it without giving it too much thought, but it stuck with me anyway. This one, unlike the million others I see every day, I felt personally. I’d cut someone toxic out of my life years ago, and sometimes I don’t know if it was the best thing I’d ever done or the worst.

When my sister came to live with my mother and I, she was still the cool sister. She was rebellious. She’d been my constant escape from a slightly strict household, always taking me on joy rides in cars she couldn’t afford or sneaking me cigarettes in the backyard. She was beautiful, impossibly smart, and so bold while being simultaneously manipulative and malicious. The truth I’d come to know was that my sister was both debilitatingly bipolar and a lifelong drug addict. She always portrayed this unashamed, unapologetic persona. It was exciting to be her little sister, before I knew who she was. Her breakdowns and bouts of sadness, suicide attempts and arrests were overshadowed in my mind by the veil of uniqueness she exuded. As a kid, even as someone ignorant of mental illness, you don’t notice the signs of someone who is so irreparably unhappy and yet seems to radiate excitement.

The first time that I peeked behind that veil was when my dad died. I remember hardly anything about his illness or his death, but what I do remember clearly, perfectly, are my sister’s desperate attempts at forgiveness as she kneeled over him, begging for it. I had no idea what she was asking forgiveness for. I could only imagine that she’d done something horrible to him that she would feel the need to scream at him that she was sorry, during a time when he could no longer even hear or respond. She leaned over him as he lay, almost lifeless, on his death bed, shaking him and screaming her apologies. It was terrifying. Him, so frail and her, so strong and overwhelming. Perhaps she’d waited until he was so close to death in the off chance that he wouldn’t forgive her.

I’m now of the opinion that she was asking forgiveness for simply existing as she was, for just being a constant burden, a constant headache. I have these thoughts and am immediately ashamed, because I know I should be more forgiving. I feel like the worst kind of human being for not being more understanding, for not being wholly accepting of my sister and the illness that has plagued her entire life. Then I think about everything she’s done, and I feel justified again, if only for a little while.

Our dad dying was a catastrophic event in my sister’s life. I can recognize that now as her tipping point. She would spend the next few years in and out of trouble, on drugs, abusing alcohol, avoiding medication and rehab. She would make herself feel better with toxic men and toxic friendships. That toxicity would seep into her most valued relationships; our mother, our other sister, every family member of ours who would eventually come to regret giving her a chance to prove herself.

And yet, she still represented this pillar of rebellion that I so admired.

When I got into high school, my mom and I moved across the country, my sister following soon after. Mom took a job that kept her away from home fifty weeks a year, and so my sister became my caretaker. Nothing had ever been so liberating. I was a teenager living in a house where no one cared what I did. My grades slipped, I dabbled in drugs, drank at home, threw parties that lasted entire weekends. I didn’t rise to the occasion. I didn’t become increasingly responsible and independent. I just acted on my worst impulses every day without realizing that there would be consequences.

My sister rarely cared who I was hanging out with or what I was doing. When the worst of the depression took ahold of her, she would always turn to drugs and responsibilities became a non-issue. I’d often find her in the bathtub soaking for hours or huddled beneath piles of blankets in her bedroom, a crack pipe on the nightstand and the room stinking of cigarette smoke. Her drug abuse, her lies and her fictional life had become so apparent that even I, her last, biggest fan, started to look at her in shame rather than admiration.

The day that I found her smoking crack or maybe heroin on the floor of her room, sitting cross-legged in nothing but her tee-shirt and underwear, was the day that I knew I couldn’t admire her anymore. She had two table lamps positioned around her on the floor, a spoon, lighter and drugs in a little collection in front of her.

“Get down!” she ordered as soon as I opened the door. I sat on the floor too, depositing my backpack beside me. There were sheets hung up over the blinds to give the illusion of darkness, but it was only three in the afternoon.

“Here,” she handed me a plastic water bottle filled with white smoke, and I inhaled it without giving it a second thought. I got high immediately. Her eyes were large and dark, her mouth twitching, her fingers shaking. I could tell she’d been crying for a long time, and I tried to remember if I’d seen her since the day before. She looked like she’d absorbed all the sadness in the world into her little body and it wasn’t sitting well.

The hardest thing to do was to admit that every time she went on a week-long bender like this, abandoned her jobs, screamed at me until her lungs were sore, she was showing me that she was ill. I was just too oblivious to realize. Mental health was never something discussed in my family. For us, it didn’t exist, and I couldn’t recognize it for what it was.

Eventually, I did get my shit together and moved out, but my sister remained in the same space mentally and emotionally that she’d always been. I distanced myself from her, “cut her out of my life” as the meme said. Every time I let her back in, she would ruin it in no time at all; stealing, sleeping with my partner, becoming abusive, trying to pull me back into her misery if just to have company there. I stopped forgiving her and started hating her.

It wasn’t that we completely ignored the fact that something was wrong with her, but that’s just the point. We were always there for her, but not in the right ways. We weren’t enough. We didn’t do enough. She’d made a handful of friends over the years, but her nature was to abuse their kindness and she lost them all. The disparity was that no one took her mental illness as seriously as they should have. It can be just as debilitating as any physical disorder and for some reason, no one saw that. Everyone, including me, still expected for her to just one day turn her life around.

I often wonder what it feels like to be her, and sometimes I recognize her in myself. When I feel alone, I wonder how alone she’s felt her entire life. I wonder how her brain works, or rather, how it’s broken. When I get angry and my anger starts to tip towards rage, I remember her sudden episodes of guttural screaming and terrifying force. When I spend all day in bed because getting up and being human just seems like the most impossible task, I think about finding her under her pile of blankets, dark eyes staring at me, through me.

Some part of me still loves her and pities her, but more than anything I think I hate her. We don’t speak. We don’t send Christmas cards. We aren’t friends on Facebook. I avoid her every time I go home to visit. When I hear her voice, even in the background when speaking to my mom, my face gets tight and my chest constricts, and my eyes burn almost as if I might cry. Before her, I didn’t know a person could provoke a physical reaction from another, but there it is. She’s the only person I’ve ever hated, and I do it passionately and with fervor. I make an effort to hate her, because the alternative seems impossible.

Am I a bad person because I refuse to forgive her? Probably. She’s sick, after all. And she’s family. I often think I’m a hypocrite because I encourage others to be tolerant. I teach my daughter to be understanding and patient and kind. I strive to understand bi-polar, depression and anxiety—just not in her. Every day I think I should forgive her and move on, make peace. I should be the bigger person because I’m capable of doing so, and she isn’t. I worry daily that I have made the wrong decision in abandoning her, but my hurt won’t allow me to move on from my hate just yet.

When I hear the term; “there’s a thin line between love and hate’, I know exactly what that means.