I want to tell you something . . .
This is about my family. About my siblings, specifically. My brother and my sister. How they pissed me off a couple of months ago. How I was so angry, so full of rage (I was hurt, actually. The whole incident brought me to tears, but no way was I willing to admit that shit to either of them. Fuck that. I’m stubborn sometimes) that I sent them both an audio message on Whatsapp without preamble.
When she first heard it, my sister sent me a message sounding all innocent and wide-eyed (thinking she was doing me a solid 🙄)—hey, I think you meant this for someone else. Just because I didn’t say her name and I sounded like I was talking through my fucking teeth. Which I kind of was.
Anywayz! That’s not what I’m writing to tell you about. I already wrote about the dispute between me and my siblings elsewhere. No point in going into the whole thing all over again.
What I want to tell you is this: how things stand between me and my siblings now. Why? Well, shit. Because we’re all humans. And because everyone here has attachments to other humans, some of them family, some of them friends. And because misunderstandings happen and it might help if more of us came clean about these kinds of situations once in a while.
✦
After I sent that Whatsapp audio message, more texting ensued between us, and eventually we cleared the air. We worked it out. As much as a dysfunctional family can work things out. What’s important is, we all did our best.
The other part of what I want to tell you is . . .
I’m 57 years old. And I have been low-key pissed off and annoyed with my siblings since I was sixteen years old. Writing those words sounds just as irrational and ludicrous as it actually is. I’m at an age where I more routinely reflect on how I’ve been living. I’m at an age where I’ve been reconsidering my outlooks, my choices, my priorities—the whole nine. I’m a writer. I write to increase my understanding on things. I write to pause and evaluate the life lessons, especially if I feel suckerpunched by any of them. And let me tell you, I have felt suckerpunched a LOT.
My siblings and I are now well on into middle-age. Death or illness can stop any of us in our tracks without notice at any time. Of course, most people (myself included) don’t factor this into how they engage with their loved ones. More often than not, we let our pride and ego drive us around. Crashing into each other and burning bridges as we go.
I’m writing this because I had a video-call with my brother yesterday. During that call my brother said all the usual things that he’s been saying for decades, made the kinds of remarks that used to make me feel incredulous. Like, what the entire fuck? His opinions make me want to punch his face in! Some of the things he says are steeped in 1980s patriarchy. In our conversation my brother also said things that are rooted in old family scripts, based on old outlooks passed on to us by our parents who didn’t know any better.
But yesterday during our conversation, I noticed a difference in my body’s responses, the way it lacked tension. I felt loose, unbothered. Something has shifted between us. The shift happened after the three of us siblings haggled our way through to the other side of that misunderstanding we had two months ago. I know this sounds crazy, but my brother’s ignorance no longer sounds to me like a personal attack. And the reason I feel this way is because he says other things too.
I never stopped to consider this before, but along with the ignorant remarks, my brother has been sharing other words I haven’t been paying attention to. I used to get so hung up on what my sixteen-year-old self kept expecting to hear him say. All the stupid shit I used to want to fight him over. In today’s conversation, from one knucklehead to another, my brother inserted his own version of love-speak, subtle though it was. Huh. I have to admit, he was saying things that I’d heard him say to me before, things I used to roll my eyes at, things I used to dismiss because they weren’t fighting words. He would offer these awkward phrases which would turn out to be weird—sometimes backhanded—praise, a kind of kudos. I can’t explain it because it’s sibling language; and this language varies from family to family.
My sister does it too. She says things to me that seem to come from outdated family scripts. But she also inserts awkward, backhanded praise.
I feel their love, is what I’m saying. And I know that each of the three of us are doing the best we can as middle-aged people trying to find our way back to each other and simply hold on. Our parents didn’t mean to, but they fucked up our connections as siblings. Pitted us against each other. Treated us differently all while trying to appear impartial.
So now it’s up to us as adult siblings to figure it out. It’s up to us to reach out and hold on tight to each other. It’s up to us to somehow figure out how to find any little bit of grace we can muster for each other. Maybe it’s because I’m the oldest. Maybe it’s because I’m a writer. Maybe it’s because I feel so much of my life has already been stolen by fucking patriarchy rules. (Likely, all of these things.) But I want to find a way to keep the glow of love burning between the three of us.
I’m trying.
This isn’t to say that my siblings and I will eventually learn to live in harmony and walk off holding hands into the sunset and live happily ever after. Hell no. There’s too much mental illness in our DNA for that shit.
What I’m saying is, I get it. Life is short. Love heals. And we’re all just doing the best we can.
Remember when I said they pissed me off a couple of months ago? And how we ended up clearing the air? And then a shift happened? None of us are angels, my siblings and I. We definitely take turns thinking one of us is crazier than the other two. We’re also guilty of talking shit about each other. I’m actually kind of proud of us, proud of how far we’ve come in light of all the family dysfunction—all the violence and abuse and rage and alcoholism. I’m even proud of our crazy, the twitchy way our separate minds can still work. Which leads to random twitchy behavior with each other. Who wants to be normal anyway? Fuck normal.
I think what has caused the shift between my siblings and I is the softening caused by the aging process. We still remember ourselves as kids, even continue to view each other in this way. My brother is still jealous of my sister because he swears she’s my mother’s favorite child (not true). My sister is still jealous of me because she thinks my brother likes me better than he likes her (also not true). And I’m still jealous of both of them because they remained close to our parents in a way that made me feel like an outsider (I’m sooo not an outsider. My family has always loved me in their own weird way).
In the end, it all comes down to each of us wanting to feel loved. Which is what it comes down to for every human being on the planet: we all just want to feel seen, feel cared about, and feel loved.
Thanks for reading. I love you. I see you. Keep shining your light in the world.
Love, Mia 💕