my sister has always been above me
18 months older,
she's larger than life
a social butterfly fluttering non-stop and here i am, still trying to spin my cocoon
you can hear her laughter from the next room away,
(the next five rooms away, if she's with a friend)
always smiling, groaning about something, or ohmygoshhaveyouseenmyigottago-ing
she's got a mane of hair half her height
her keys jingle jangle on the state university lanyard she wears around her neck
she's always home before 1 am but some nights, she doesn't sleep
other nights, she's out like a light
she was always so good at sleeping
me, i'm short hair don't care
anti-socially awkward
perpetually clenched hands covered in paint most of the time
beat up toms on my feet, ***** glasses on my face
come winter, her forgotten beanie until it's on my head
i phrase things oddly, have a dry wit about me
i keep to myself because i hate the way i sound/look/talk
i have one friend my own age in real life.
the other ones are about 4+ years older or younger than me and our method of communication is typing on screens, thousands of miles away from one another
i prefer this method
today she told me how weird it is that my "real" friends are strangers on the internet "like ten years older than you"
i told her that's as weird as her being friends with guys a year behind me if i were still in high school
she says "ummm i don't know why you can't just socialise normally like a normal person"
she says she doesn't know why i'm so painfully socially inept
i remind her i've been out of school longer than she has and haven't been around anyone other than my doctors and mom for more than a couple awkward minutes in over a year
dramatic sigh "yeah but you like dropped out so that's different"
she's so very lucky she can't see into my mind
she'd be terrified and disgusted by what she'd find there
too many monsters, too many thoughts, too many girls, too many raindrops to pour on her parade
there are so many things she takes for granted like
smiling, laughing, talking normally, not having to stress over whether people will be able to understand her
"just go up to someone and say hi"
yeah sorry, i kind of can't.
one day i decided to wear my dad's old button down shirt and khaki pants
i gelled my hair into spikes, just to see what kind of reaction i'd get if i started dressing to match how i felt about my ****** orientation
"here let me roll up your sleeves it'll look cuter that way"
"ohmygosh you look like a lesbian you need to go change right now"
she was only half wrong
i didn't change.
she's short and muscular while i'm tall and freakishly thin
she's able bodied, athletic as heck and my body is slowly deteriorating but at least my mind is still sharp
when we were kids,
i followed her everywhere
when mom dressed us up alike
i loved it while she hated it
one time we bought matching dresses
i wore mine all summer while hers collected dust in the back of her closet
the next year, i bought it off of her for $4.
before I left school, we took an AP Psych class together
she thought Psych looked so interesting and wanted to major in it
i was in the middle of a downward spiral and just wanted to understand what games my mind was playing on me
my sister memorised and studied hard
i didn't and got a higher score than her
i started missing class, more and more and our teacher asked her where i was
she was too embarrassed to tell him the real answer
in bed, eating about 5 crackers a day, in a cloud of depression, sleeping and wasting away
the kids at school thought i had cancer
a year and a half later, she's gotten her diploma and i, my GED
we're both taking classes at the community college now
my end goal is art therapy
hers is undecided
i'm not comfortable in my own skin
i've been in the dark for most of my life, be it shadows or my own man-made perpetual nighttime
my sister has tried and is trying her hardest to look out for me
but i'm not some clay that needs to be molded into her perfect little box
i'm sharp edges and bony crevices to her soft welcoming shell
i am the dark to her light, the yang to her yin
and one of these days,
i'll be okay with that.
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-z.z