I wish I could talk to you.
Dear Sister, I wish I could talk to you right now, but it’s clear you need space from me.
You made it clear you are angry, and right now, it’s pointed at me, and I need to stay away. I need to give you space and let you come to terms with things.
You were the first person I told of my big news, I am pregnant. After decades in a committed relationship to a man who was probably sterile, spending thousands of dollars on something that had a 14% chance, 10% chance, and after years of hope and dream and wanting to be a mother and not having the money, resources, or support to manage it. After years of desire and wondering if I had missed my chance, now at age 40, I am pregnant, for the first time.
I am so happy. I know you are happy for me too.
My whole life, I’ve been closer to you in a way I don’t think anyone except us understands. You are so special to me. We grew up closer and more bonded than anyone understands. I want to share every detail with you. I want to ask you for your advice. I want to tell you all the changes in my body, the fatigue, bloating, cramping and how I feel like a prepetual state of PMS. I want to speculate with you what my child will look like, no one in our family has ever had a baby this way, through sperm donation. I feel so weird and normal and strange and excited all at the same time. I want share with you the fight I had with our Mom, and talk it out with you like we always do. I want to tell you how scared I am of miscarriage. I want to ask you how you would like to involved in the process, and find ways to connect with you right now.
When we last spoke, you were calm, but you couldn’t hide the resentment in your voice. I heard it. You were clearly not happy with me. I’m glad you explained what was going on. You’re feeling the emptiness, loss, and grief of me living in a different state during what’s a special and rare time, my pregnancy. You told me how much it hurt that when you were pregnant, and after your daughter was born I was also living in a different state. You felt that loss as well. How much it hurt you that I worked as a private nanny in my new city while your daughter was young, and you felt replaced. How much hurt you felt that I wasn’t around, living near you when you were pregnant and you first became a mother, and now the opposite is happening to me, and I’m still not around.
I know these are your emotions to work through, and you are taking ownership, saying you plan on speaking to a therapist and talking it out. Good for you sister. I’m glad to hear that.
I want you to know, that even though we were far apart, I did my best to be there for you in your pregnancy. I made plans to fly up at your due date, and spend time with you and your daughter when you gave birth before that. I talked to you all the time while you were pregnant. I did my best to be there for you, down here. I heard all about the severe morning sickness that turned serious. How worried you were about money because you couldn’t work. I heard you worry about your husband, your fatigue, and the stress you had about having a nanny. Today I have a relationship with your daughter, and I write my niece letters. She’s a great person.
But that’s not what you want. That’s not why you grieve. You grieve I am not there with you.
That job I got was a coincidence. It was The Great Recession, and I lost my previous job. I called my former collegue who was out on maternity leave to say goodbye, and she asked me to be her nanny. I had little choice, there wasn’t much work around, and I ended up working three jobs during that time. I was so happy to spend my entire day changing dippers and singing songs and feeding a baby girl and go home and hear all about how you had done the same thing. I was so happy we had something in common and could share notes on. I loved that we had spent the day doing similar things. I had no idea talking about these things was painful for you. That you heard me talk about these things and thought my job was replacing you and your daughter in my life. If I had lived up there, I don’t think I could have been your professional nanny for a number of reasons. I needed more money than you could offer, you live on an island that would have been expensive to commute to, and anyway, you had different needs in a nanny than I had to offer. But still, if that hurt your feelings, I would have not talked about it so much. I didn’t know.
My knee-jerk reaction, is wondering if you understand, that I had to leave. I had to leave that place we grew up sister. I had to come here, I had to start over. I needed to. Do you know that? Do you respect that I left, that I needed to leave? Or is it that you know this but are just still sad that I left? All I know, is I had to leave.
Growing up, things were not easy for me, and I know you understand this. It was much more than our controlling-dominating mother and depressed father, there was my nuerodiversity that added another layer for me. The effects of my undiagnosed dyspraxia, ADHD, autism, and others that couldn’t be fully ignored, and their effects on me were emotional as well as challenging. This was further complicated by the fact that I am the youngest of three siblings, and I was always in someone’s shadow.
I know this was a burden on you too. I remember you sitting down and reading with me when mom got too tired. I know you were older, and told that there weren’t many things I did well and how you excelled at things while I didn’t and how you were shamed for that. How we learned not to be competitive with each other at all. I remember tagging along with your friends because I struggeled making my own. I remember your boyfriends, who I embraced and hung out with, how I was the little tag-along to your dinners and adventures with them. You made it clear I wasn’t your third wheel, but instead a cool person everyone liked. You were happy to have me come along.
I remember everyone worrying about me, because of all my challenges, that I might never mature and be an independant adult who could function in the real world. I remember my mom playing victim to my challenges, as if she would have to carry the burden of all of this into her old age. I saw myself being groomed into a large adult-child deemed incapable of having her own life, independence, or growth. I wanted my own life.
I wanted friends of my own, not ones who were hand-me downs because I tagged along. I wanted my own place, my own job, my own career, my own city. Everything I had, every achievement, it felt like someone else (Mom) would take credit for. I did make my own friends, moved out in a cool place, and worked hard at junior college. But I knew if I had to really make a life for myself, for it to my life, I had to go away. I had to start totally over and do something totally new. A new place, where I knew no one, where Mom knew no one, where I could make a life for myself, and everything would be mine. No one could take credit for my life. A life I earned myself, where I was forced to figure out how to life, autism and all.
So I did it. I moved here. I made a new life for myself. It’s my life, with my mistakes, in a town where people embrace who I am and what I have to give. I’m in no one’s shadow, and I do feel I have made it. I made the life for myself I wanted. I had to do this. I had to have my own life and the truth was, it wasn’t possible in my home town. Not with anyone else hanging over me, not with people knowing me as someone’s little sister would I feel the accomplishments I have made in my life.
And now I am having a baby.
I remember when I first got a boyfriend, you didn't approve of him. You were not interested in tagging along like I had done with you. You still invited me to tag along with your boyfriend, and I asked if mine could be invited, but of course that idea was absurd. I thought we could just double date. That changed when I moved away.
We both changed, we grew up, but we remained close.
Those early mom days I would call you. You sounded tired, and obligated to talk to with me despite the fact you were tired. I felt like an obligation, not something you’d enjoy. So I told you it’s okay, you didn’t have to talk to me. I would be fine on my own.
Who is it that you grieve?
Do you grieve me, or do you grieve a little sister? Do you grieve the tag-along, who didn’t have a life of her own yet? Who couldn’t have a life of her own because of all of her struggles. Who needed you to help her with everything.
Do you grieve that I grew up and became my own person? Because that’s what moving away was for me. That’s what happened.
Are you hurt that I didn’t stay up there, where Mom would have bullied me into letting her make every life decision for me to the point where any success I had became hers? Where I would still be known as your little sister, and would run to my family for help? Where I would need you for everything, because you’re wiser, older, not as disabeled as I am?
You grieve that I’m not in your life, physically living up there, when I call you constantly and do my best to establish a relationship with you here.
You never visit me, only I visit you. You came a few times in the early days, my wedding, graduation, and a visit or two. But in the last decade, I go up there to see you and that’s it.
Are you hurt that I live far away or are you hurt that I went and became me? Because that’s what I needed to do. This wasn’t a ‘phase’ or a temporary state while I was ‘finding myself,’ this is a wonderful life I created for myself, and I want you to be apart of it.
And now you’re pulling away.
My therapist says you are grieving, and that anger is apart from grief, and that anger is currently pointed at me, at what I had to do, at what I needed to do.
My friend says you’re making my pregnancy about you, rather than being there to help me. I don’t know. But I hope you will be there for me and want to meet my baby. I hope one day you could visit me. I will of course bring my baby up to you. I wish this would bring us closer rather than pull us apart. You’re my sister and you’ve been through this and I wish I could share it with you. I want to share it with you.
Hopefully it will happen another day.
Update:
This was originally written in July 2022. My sister make to clear she respects my decision to move, but wish I could be in her life the way people who live close to her are. She threw me a baby shower, has met my baby, and gives me parent advice. We are still close.
