Ode to Our Sisterhood

-1-

My Dearest Marlette,

These letters are a gift I place as a sacrifice at the altar of your life. My life. They are addressed to all versions of us, a reflection of critical and pivotal shared experiences. Our story, that none other than you and I have borne witness too.

Only you can utterly grasp the detailed nuances, smells, tastes, and visceral understandings that are the days and nights that made up our formative and adult years. Those memories having an irrefutable impact on how both you and I engage on every level with and in this world.

And so, I commit to being honest and true and remembering our journey for what it was without reprisal and with candor.

I may be biting off more than I can chew, which I have been known to do from time to time. More often than I care to remember.

I hold fast in my heart that there is nothing that can separate me from you and that no matter what is held up in this Penmanship Mirror, we will always have each other as a soft place to fall.

There is a sense of gravitas around these reflections, and I cling to the hope that when all is said and done this process brings honour, respect, and a reiteration of the great love that you and I have shared from the day that I was born.

Always and forever yours,

Arlene

-2-

My Love,

I am back in the flat in Bella Vista.

I escape a nightmare to monstrous shadows shape shifting, their clawlike fingers running down the walls of our bedroom. They want to take me to their grotto, where I can scream as much as I want for help, but no one will hear me. No one is coming to save us.

I hover at the shadowed lip of Mommy and Daddy’s bedroom door.

Clutching my pillow, (which is bigger than me), I watch Daddy as he teeters and sways drunkenly on the edge of the bed. I astral project myself past him to Mom’s side of the bed. She is fast asleep with her back to the door.

No such luck. Half asleep he jerks awake as the coal of his unfinished cigarette burns his fingers. He sees me, despite my cloak of invisibility.

petrified

/ˈpɛtrɪfʌɪd/

Adjective

1. 1.

so frightened that one is unable to move; terrified.

"the petrified child clung to her mother"

2. 2.

(of organic matter) changed into a stony substance; ossified.

"petrified wood"

These definitions remain both applicable and accurate for us, don’t you think? He was as volatile and unpredictable as the North Sea.

“What are you doing there, Arlene?” he shouts. “Get the fuck back to your room and go to sleep. You have your own bed!!!!!” At nano-speed I cast a furtive deer-in-the-headlights glance at mommy, hoping his voice has roused her. In that spilt second, he half-falls, half-staggers, and torpedoes himself toward me as a reminder of just who is in charge.

I run back to our room as fast as my short, fat little legs can carry me and sneak into your bed. This is my first memory and cognacint epiphany - you are my haven and anchor.

I am two years old.

We have spoken about this and many similar shared remembrances, but as I write this love letter to you, I understand, for the first time that, in that moment my five-year-old sister had taken on a role as a place of refuge for me from that day on.

I bear witness to you having to take on adult responsibilities while still being a young and innocent child yourself.

The fabric of our lives is tapestried in this way – the dysfunction and dis-ease of festering bulging suppressed septic trauma litters every childhood memory I have. I know it is the same for you.

I see you. I love you.

How I wish I could wrap my arms around you and plant my lips and nose in the nape of your neck and feel safe as I breathe in your fragrance and feel the weight of your hands upon my back as you embrace me.

I can write and remember no more for today.

Always and forever yours,

Arlene

-3-

My Sis,

I had imagined that it would be a cathartic experience for me to jot down reminiscent terrors that hover ever present and ghost like in the purgatory of my mind. I have decided against it. The flock of birds that beat incessantly in my chest and throat after my last letter to you had me understand that I do not need to dredge up fine-tooth-combed recounts of that which contributed laregly to who we became.

I choose to reach out to both you and I, in every memory, in every moment as we forged and shared our lives to adjust and fit in, in this life. I choose to do so with kindness to all our versions, so that I can bring together the shards of fractured and unrecognizable selves back to where they belong.

I reclaim myself. I reclaim you. I acknowledge the journey, but if I am ever to drink freely and fully from the overflowing chalice that is life, I need to reinvent with kindness and empathy, all Me’s and hope that you can extend that love to yourself too.

In no way am I diminishing or sugar-coating the facts – that is madness. Suppression and denial are the mother of all fuckups by my measure – they have never served anyone well, least of all me.

I will venture into the recesses of my self. I will love, cherish, and comfort the terror stricken 2-year-old, 6-year-old, and 50-year-old. I easily find all of Her’s at the bottom of the dank, quicksand onyx-stained pit where I regularly sojourn to reflect on who and what I believe I am. (Real or imagined).

This time though, when I go to her, I shall level neither recrimination nor guilt, neither shame nor anger at her. Instead, I will whisper “I 'm here - it's going to be okay,” into the echoes of the darkness. I will lift her (as though she were fragile) onto my lap and ask her to show me where it hurts.

My hope my Sweetest Love, is that I can share this baton of healing with you. Above all others, you are deserving of all of the beauty, joy, peace and bliss that there is to be had for humankind.

Always and forever yours,

Arlene

-4-

Loveliest M,

As the idea fanned to flame in me for these letters of love to you, I had envisaged writing reem after reem, hoping to draw closure by the recanting of our story.

My predictable gusto and mantra “don’t care what it takes but the destination is going to be worth it,” reverberates through every cell of my being like a gong struck in the village square at midnight. I have never counted the cost of what it will take to realize the goal, or dream and destination. And, it has served me well. For, were I to have an inkling of an idea of that cost, I may well still find myself pressed up against the shadows in the doorframe, inert and paralyzed.

This Marlette, is my infinite love and gratitude to you. My Sister, I recognize you. I celebrate the magic of you without whom I am convinced I would not be here writing this letter today.

You are my everything.

Always and forever yours,

Arlene