On hindsight, I realize the true meaning of love comes from my siblings. Nineteen years old, when I came out of the closet and realized me and my siblings were “flawed”, or human. Seventeen year old sister—***. Twenty-one year old brother—rehab.
“Do you think it’s ironic that we’re doing this on a playground?” called a voice from the assorted group of friends sitting on the sea of pebbles under the monkey bars. Another voice replied, after a quick cough and croaked, “No, I’m pretty sure everybody does this.”
“I bet the teachers do it too,” agreed the voice of an eighteen year-old boy.
“I’m going to be a teacher one day,” spoke the philosopher girl, who drifted from the conversation into the fog of her thoughts. As a junior in college and an ambitious girl, she lived her life in paranoia and curiosity from the outside world.
As the college students rose from the pebbled area of jungle-gyms, swings and slides, they approached a basketball court in passing to return to the neighborhood.
“Look!” yelled the philosopher girl. “There’s a ball over there, we should play.”
Their evening plans were determined when one boy concluded “We can’t play. The ball is flat.”
Rather than attempting to relive the innocence of childhood, the students under the influence of marijuana watched the possibility of recapturing pure childhood memories diminish through their loss of interest in what was once a childhood gratification of positive reinforcement. Recess was very important to any child in elementary school. My earliest memory of recess consisted of the earliest bonding time with my sister. It was my fifth birthday, and back before my parents divorced my mother was very involved with the community at our schools. My mom set up a birthday party for me in first grade, and my two year-old sister was brought along. My sister, the adorable baby that she was, received all of the attention. On my fifth birthday I wanted everyone to pay attention to me, but my sister was stealing my thunder. I resented her very much for always being the more beautiful of us two, and she always had the most grace. I’ve always felt awkward, quirky, and possibly weird, but it never seemed to distance my sister from loving me.
On that day at recess, while everyone was cooing over how adorable my sister was, I was off sulking on the swing set. I was always the one ignored of my siblings; my brother was the oldest of us three and the only male, and my sister was the youngest and most beautiful baby girl. I was always awkward, alone and blending in with the background. This being said, I made myself solitary from those neglecting my absence and looked up at the clouds. Five years-old and alone on a swing, I watched the cloud pass in the sky and morph from what looked like a snail, to a tomato. Before my very eyes approached a wide-eyes toddler with brand-new teeth and smiling eyes.
Everyone was following her, but she was following me. When she was the one of us preferred, she never failed to love me and remind me she was there.
When recognized as attractive for the first time, I was eager to be wanted so I threw away my virginity.
My sister, always so beautiful and classy didn’t need to put out to be well-liked, desired or noticed. Classy like my mother, my sister determined my fate as the black sheep in my adolescent ****** rebellion.
When my sister and I smoked with work friends, playing on the swing-set together like we had fourteen years earlier, I found out that she was a ******. The illusion of the pristine, classy and virginal sister shattered, but welded back together with love. My sister was not perfect, and my insecurity to being the un-unique, unnoticed and boring middle-child had ended. My older brother always considered the most-intelligent and most-successful was sent to rehab after 4 months of turning twenty one. The self mutilation was concerned as a big issue, and a mental illness could have him removed from the military.
Flawed sibling relationships brings closer bonding and relatable experiences, so exploring life together builds a unique and covalent bond between siblings witnessing life together, having difficulties and disappointments with family. While fulfilling the all-time question of mankind for “the meaning of life”, life interrupts with irony.