The Beginning of The End in Philadelphia

Sometimes I’ll think, “Certain things should destroy you.”

Certain things in life are so terribly, painfully & epically gruesome… that they are completely worthy of destroying a life.

The loss of a sister is one of these things.

My sister is not dead per se, but she is no longer present in my life.

The end of our relationship began with a hairpin trigger; her criticizing me for crying over something sad I saw online. Just like our mother, not only did my sister not appreciate my sensitive & caring nature but she belittled it, making me feel like there was something wrong with my feelings of sadness about something that was, in fact, sad.

We were on a camping trip together. An attempt to start something new. We wanted to start a profit-for-purpose business together. We wanted to make money while having fun and doing something good for the world. My sister is a Taurus. She’s good with money matters and I thought she would be an excellent business partner. I was on the creative side of the partnership. The whole thing was my idea.

A long-term relationship had ended in my life and I was crashing at a friend's house in Philadelphia when she came to visit me. The red flags were all there. She missed her initial flight, and I was upset, and she scolded me for being upset. Notice the pattern of me being admonished for my emotional state. She was only coming to visit for a couple of days and her missed flight meant she would now only be staying with me for one day. My disappointment was natural. I wanted to spend as much time as possible with my little sister and her missed flight cut our time together in half. I don’t remember anything specific from the one day we spent together in Philadelphia. I’m pretty sure there was no “I’m so sorry your three-year relationship ended”, no “How are you doing? Are you ok?”. I was so used to a lack of compassion back then and played such a good “everything is great” game, that I don’t think I even noticed when I wasn’t being acknowledged, much less respected. I wasn’t even acknowledging or respecting myself back then. I don’t think she nor I realized the severity of my deep sorrow.

A few days later my sister was gone and I was at the dog park. Part of the deal for crashing with my friend was that I would walk the dog while his girlfriend was away. What he failed to mention was that his dog was aggressive. It wasn’t her fault, she was a labradoodle cooped up in a tiny two-bedroom apartment all day. During our daily outings to the park, I’d let her off her leash & she would just sprint laps around the entire field for the first five full minutes just letting out excess energy. I felt sorry for her. On this particular day at the park, she attacked another dog, making him bleed. The woman who owned the bleeding dog recognized my friend's dog. She yelled at me “I know this dog! This dog needs to be kept on a leash!” I told her it wasn’t my dog and that I was just walking her for my friend. She asked for my friend's phone number and I gave it to her. My friend was pissed and yelled at me over the phone.

This event in itself was traumatic (seeing a dog bleeding from another dog’s attack is a terrible scene to witness) & then the subsequent getting yelled at by two different people, one being my friend, threw me into a deeply imbedded flight response. I was already in a tender place, not only from the breakup itself but from moving across the country (I had previously been living in Northern California). I was staying at an old friend's house, yes, but he wasn’t living there at the time. He was off traveling for the summer for work and I was staying at his house with his girlfriend who I’m pretty sure was not happy about my arrival. I felt like I was all alone living in a place where I wasn’t really wanted. Another pattern in my life.

I called my sister to talk about what had happened.

She agreed that it wasn’t my fault and said I could come to stay with her.

This is how it all started. This was the beginning of the end of our relationship.

My sister was living in Texas and picked me up late from the airport. I could tell she was nervous that I was there. We both bite and smell our nails (like my dad) when we are nervous.

It was a rocky time. As much as we are alike, we are different. She was working a job she hated. Every day when she got home from work, just like my mom, she would ask me, “What did you do today?” Not with a genuinely curious tone but with the tone: Did you just sit around and do nothing while I was at work all day? I was carless, jobless, and penniless. I understand it wasn’t an ideal situation (for either of us). She was my little sister and housing me. It wasn’t her responsibility to help me but I needed help and she had the means. Even though we’d had our difficulties, I believe we both deeply wanted to be close. I think we both thought it would be fun to reconnect and be in each other's lives on the regular once again. I had moved away when I was just a teenager and we didn’t get to see each other very often.

What makes my sister and I’s situation so very painful is that it wasn’t my or my sister's fault that we had these underlying issues with one another. I was the Scapegoat of our family and she was the Golden Child. This is a vicious system to grow up in and completely out of the child’s control. The fact that it was out of our control is what has haunted me. Neither of us had a chance. I honestly think it’s an equally nasty dynamic for both parties. The Scapegoat is hated and outcasted while the Golden Child ends up lost and living a life that’s not really their own. It’s absolutely, devastatingly heartbreaking. I think my sister and I could have and would have been best friends had it not been for our mother.

During this whole time, I had been going through what some call an awakening process. I was learning all about our global issues; becoming aware of the environmental despair; the corrupt government, etc… I was preaching to anyone who would listen and my sister listened. She was so smart and although I could tell she had taken on some of my mother's thoughts and beliefs (about myself and other things, like organic food for example), I could also see her heart so clearly. I thought I could help her break free from my mother's negative grasp. I had escaped from our unhealthy family at such a young age and rarely came back to visit. I was too young at the time to worry about my little brother and sister. I needed to get myself out. One day my sister said something to me that made me feel guilty for leaving her and my brother. I thought now that I was older I could do something to change things between us. I told her how a road trip had changed my life and how I thought it could do the same for her. She was feeling stuck in her job and her life and was completely open to change. I thought with her business-savvy ways and my passion & creative vision we could create something special together. Make an impact together. We started an Instagram. She quit her job. She bought a new car. And off we went.

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions”

I created our route from the original road trip I went on that changed my life. I wanted to take my sister along to all the same stops. I think mostly we were hoping to find sponsorship through the camping equipment we used and places we endorsed throughout our journey. The Ultimate Dream, right? We were winging it and hopeful. My sister was paying for it all. This is never a good dynamic as sadly I have had to learn through countless experiences. I always wanted someone else to take care of the money part of life for me. I thought, “Why not?” Some people love it! Not that I don’t love money itself, I do, greatly, but the managing and making of it is another thing entirely. As a sensitive artist type, it was only natural that I have a business partner to take care of all the nitty gritty aspects of money for me, right? Taxes and all that jazz. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with the idea until I put it into action. In reality, it doesn’t work. A power dynamic inevitably arises. Resentments build. And when the collapse comes, the one who has control of the money is always the one who comes out on top. The other one (me) is the one who ends up homeless, penniless, crashing with friends, and making impulsive decisions rooted in desperate need. Never a good thing.

The real root of this, of course, is shame. Shame around my gifts as a sensitive/intuitive (intuition is just sensitivity to higher frequencies). As a child I was taught my sensitivity was something to be ashamed of. I was humiliated & punished for the things I saw and felt, causing a loss of connection between me and my caretakers. It wasn’t safe to own my sensitivity. So my greatest gift was hidden under decades of shame, humiliation, punishment, loss & danger. These are no small things to overcome. Full circling back to my sister scolding me for my thoughtful tears, the hairpin trigger that ignited such an intense fight between us that it ended our relationship.

Not only was my sensitivity chastised as a child but my boundaries were deeply violated as well. The wounded little girl inside of me was desperate for someone else to save me. Asserting my own boundaries had so many times ended in beatings and loss; there was trauma built up around my independence, which caused the adult part of me to intensely fear standing up for myself, taking care of myself & being self-sufficient because I had learned very early on and throughout my young adulthood that these qualities caused me to be alone. The damsel in distress seemed the safest role to play. The strong, independent version of me always got her ass beat and lost the ones she needed (and wanted) to love her most. What often happens with this kind of suppression, though, is outbursts. Boundary violations bring up anger and when anger is suppressed for long enough it turns into rage and rage will find her way out of you. If you’re unaware the Universe will create a situation so that you become aware. The Universe knew my mother would never again be in my life but my sister was a different story. What I didn’t realize or expect was how much my sister would remind me of my mother. No one else on the planet could have brought up the deeply buried emotions that she did. It could only have been her. All those times my feelings were pushed aside, disparaged, trivialized and shamed, all those times where I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to lose the connection, all those times I bit my tongue, all those times I just let it slide and forgave and pretended not to hurt … all that suppressed energy came bursting out of me like a violent volcanic eruption. I became a fire breathing dragon and directed my fierce blaze at the wrong person.

One of my favorite quotes is by Ernest Hemingway and he says, “Everything is right until it’s wrong. You’ll know when it’s wrong.”

The burning of my sister was the end of our camping trip, the end of our relationship and the end of my days as a damsel in distress.

And yet, life goes on.