Unhealthy

You are my sister. You are my best friend, my partner in crime, my go-to girl for everything.

And now you’re pushing me away. You’re demanding I leave you alone, ditching me for others, after nights and nights of promises. This isn’t some “we’re growing up and growing apart” scenario. We’re twenty years old. 

I know what happened, even though you haven’t told me. And it kills me to know you don’t trust me enough. I know you’re trying to handle it, or so you say; I know you’re ditching therapy whenever you can and not taking your medication. I know that you not telling me isn’t about me; it’s about you and the insanity endlessly circling your mind. But when all I have is the knowledge of you telling everyone but me what the problem is, people Iknow you don’t trust as much as me, what else am I supposed to think?

When your father abused you, you moved in with me. When my mother upset you, or other people made you feel worthless, I made everything okay. We may not share blood, but I’ve always considered you my most important person. You’ve always said that I was yours. Sometimes I wonder if that’s true.

My first tattoo was for you. It embellishes my skin in swirls of black and grey, a permanent stain of how much you meant to me, even though you insisted on getting its mate on your wrist without me. You went with a girl you hardly talk to anymore, yet were furious with me when I considered going without you. I forgave you.

You drove me from my own house, whether or not you meant to. You made me feel uncomfortable asking for time with my mother. You made me feel as if I was constantly wrong, inferior, a mistake, because I was raised with things you never had. I don’t know if I can forgive you.

You canceled an event that meant the world to me, and you knew it. Said you couldn’t handle it. But in reality, you just couldn’t stand the idea of me going without you, when I was the one that put all the work into it, when you put in nothing. I know you’ve endured so much; from your father to school to dyslexia to that night. I know you love me. But when you have a panic attack and say you can’t get over it unless I leave, I can’t forgive you.

It feels as if you hate me. As if I’m a curse, an affliction that needs to be cured. But I know I’m not the broken one. I’m not the one that manipulates their loved ones so I’m the only one in their lives. I’m not the one that flies off the handle over the smallest misinterpretation and attacks others over it for days. I’m not the one that lashes out at the only people who cared enough to take me in.

We took you in because we loved you. We wanted to help you, heal you, give you all the things you’ve been so unfairly denied. But having you in my life does me more harm than it does you good, and that’s not healthy.

You drive me to drink. Did you know that? The last two emotional blow ups have left me suckling bourbon from a bottle as if it were water, and you know I never drink. Yet here I am. 

You are my sister. You are my best friend, my partner in crime, my go-to girl for everything.

And I think it’s time you left.