i am the center of the universe

my sister has quit on me. my sister is in georgia, visiting her boyfriend. my sister cried more in three days after he left than she did in three weeks after i did.

and i'm the one who speaks her language. i'm the one who has nicknames for her, i'm the one who shares her memories, i'm the one who can reminisce. i'm the one who was there for each time daddy was in the hospital (three times). i remember her asking for cheesecake for breakfast when SHE was in the hospital - and she was two then! i remember us moving into our house in new jersey, i remember her first halloween. i've seen her at her sickest, the sound of her nebulizer was my childhood too, visits to the allergist. i remember. we moved because she would feel better.

my relationship with my sister is complicated. we both think the other gets more attention, and attention is what we both want. she's cuter, and sicker, and cuter than me. she thinks i'm smarter than her. smarter doesn't get you shit when the family is fawning over your christmas-present-wrapping abilities. my sister and i have inside jokes. only we remember our house, and eating antonino's when the kitchen was being remodeled, and visiting one of daddy's houses for humanity when it was completed - he was nervous about taking em because the dust might bother her. i remember the day samantha died - one of the first times i saw our mother cry. being on the east coast reminds me of our childhood. our grandparents' houses down the shore, the windmill, the particular way our grandmother said "ruby tuesday".

and more recently. emily probably feels like i've been shutting her out these past few years, and maybe i have. i've wanted to be alone; it's like i've been in a cocoon (cross your fingers i'll be a butterfly one of these days). i've certainly kept her as close as i've kept anyone, and it seemed like she was confiding in and talking to me, and that was important to me (even if it wasn't always a two-way street).

but now emily and i aren't in our own personal bubble, speaking our language and reminiscing. now she speaks her secret language with someone else - right in front of me, like it doesn't even matter! i feel like our intimacy has been pillaged and stolen by someone else. my sister doesn't care as much about my life because she has someone else's life to be preoccupied with. at the end of the day, it is not me she wants to come home to and talk to while heating up rice and eating it before she starts her homework. it is no longer my responsibility to wake her from naps.

my jobs - nap waker-upper, witness of rice-eating - have been usurped by someone with whom she is more intimate, in different ways. they are now speaking a language i will never speak. they are in a bubble i can't even see into, much less penetrate. and i don't matter. i could be anyone, as a bystander to their relationship. me and the gas station attendant - we both witness the same thing, a couple in love - or who thinks they are. i am so fucked up, so heartless, so unloved and unfeeling that i don't even know. i trust their relationship far less than they do.

and nothing makes me feel more vile than hating what they have. nothing is worse than being jealous of happiness, and knowing it is wrong, wrong, wrong. i'm not even justified in how i feel. i'm a spoiled princess who's grouchy because she can't get laid and isn't the center of everyone's universe anymore.

and i want to reach out for my sister, reassure her, help her navigate this relationship. but i just can't. can't see past my own anger and hurt at being kicked off the throne at her right hand (or left, as it were). can't bullshit it, because this is too much. can't forgive her for not seeing any of it, not turning around and realizing how i feel.

i have no experience in this area, though that's hardly an excuse - human emotions are the same across the board, it only gets slightly more complicated when we involve other people. therefore, by living what i have, i know enough to help at least a little. so it's no excuse to say i haven't been there. i've been there enough.

i get so frustrated with her, i just want to slap her silly little hand and tell her to stop whining and pull her shit together and scream that i was never like this, never as bleedy and needy and pour-my-heart-out-y. no one has ever loved me like he loves you. don't you see that that leaves you with nothing to complain about? don't you see that he stole you and now i am completely alone and realizing how pathetic i am and that doesn't matter to you at all? don't you get it?

but this is all unfair. it is unfair to tell her to choose, unfair to take out my loneliness on my poor, sheltered, stressed out, immature sister. so i sit, embittered.