The Challenges of life

Six years ago, if you had asked me about my sister, I would have told you that she is my best friend. If you asked me now, I would say to you that I haven’t spoken to her in over two years. Don’t get me wrong, we used to be incredibly close. But that changed when I realized to her, I was nothing more than the person who cleaned up her messes.

Throughout high school and middle school, I often found myself covering for her, defending her, and trying to fix whatever problem she created. When she’d skip a class we shared, I’d tell the teacher and my parents that she wasn’t skipping, she was just in the library and lost track of time. If she had a secret boyfriend, she always made sure I had the perfect cover-up story to tell, just in case. I became her puppet. She made me believe that if I didn’t obey and do as she ask, it meant I didn’t care for her.  I realize now, she had just manipulated me and disguised it as love, but at the time, I didn’t know any better.

Her manipulation tendencies went on for years until eventually she got caught up in her own lies. She began to spiral as she lost control of the narrative. Her loss of control resulted in her loss of control over me as the truth began to make itself known. I began to realize I had been giving love and letting her tell me what to do while not receiving anything in return. I had let her words control the person I was, the way I thought, the way I behaved, everything. I wasn’t myself. I decided then to no longer let her control my life. While it was hard, I started to say no. The more and more I did it, the easier it became. Eventually, I was able to say it with ease. My sister, however, began falling down a never-ending hole of bad choices. Those bad choices wound her up in a behavioral facility nearly 3 hours away.

         The facility was supposed to help her, but instead of taking her treatment seriously, she decided to treat her time there as her own little personal vacation. On multiple occasions, my parents received calls from the facility about her latest adventures and rebellions. For her first little performance, she started simple, of course, as one typically does, by throwing a 5-pound weight at the $1,000, 10-foot-tall mirror in the gym. That one made my parents oh, so happy, as you would expect. Then there was the one time she gave us a nice lesson on how just because the hand sanitizer label says it has alcohol in it, it does not mean it can get you drunk; I found that one funny, her stomach, on the other hand, did not.

         Each time that phone rang, I always hoped we would be told something good, and yet, we never were. As time went on, and incident after incident occurred, I realized that holding on to her was only hurting me. As hard as I knew it would be, I had to start letting her go and start living a life that didn’t revolve around her. So, I did. I let go. Even though everything within me told me not to. I don’t hate her, I don’t regret caring for her. What I do regret is tolerating the ways she hurt me. 

Throughout life, we face these challenges, some larger than others, but also some small ones too. It’s all part of being human. The challenges we face change us for the better and sometimes for the worse. Through witnessing my sister’s challenges while also experiencing my own, I was able to learn so much about people and life. I learned the difference between love and manipulation. I learned that sometimes we give oceans of love to people, only to later realize how truly shallow they are. I learned that sometimes, people come into our lives to teach us how to love. And sometimes, people come into our lives to teach us how not to love. How not to settle. How not to shrink ourselves ever again. Yes, sometimes people leave, and sometimes you have to let them go, but that's okay, because their lessons always stay, and that is what matters.

It's a liberating experience, you know, to release the lingering hope of our connection and embrace the possibilities that lie ahead. By letting go, I found love and freedom. I finally found myself, and each end was just a new beginning.