We Called Her Sissy

We called her Sissy, at least that is the name that stuck to her like her healthy image sticks to my mind. What used to be, and how I forever want to remember her. When I was born she was a teen, and for a little hint of time she loved me enough to stay in the house.  But I was the only person keeping her there.

My mother, a single mother for 13 years by that point in time had little control over her. I don't think an iron fist would have been able to contain her.   It was her way or the highway. And in some ways it still is today.

When I was an infant I got pretty sick, in the end it was my tonsil's who were the culprit and eventually came out. Looking back from what I am told I was eighteen months old.

As the tale has been told, the only person who could ever get me to sleep during that time was my Sissy. If I would cry, she could calm me, if I wouldn't sleep, she would rock me. And once I had completed my recovery she was gone like a ghost. A figment of my imagination. An image I wanted but couldn't have.

It is not that I can remember these events, but this is when it all began. I always wanted her by my side, but she would have rather gone out on a three week crack binge with the latest fool who would foot the bill to look at her beautiful blond hair, and baby blues.

She has always been able to get by on her looks in life, although I would compare her body these days to that of a twelve year old boy.  When I reached my teen years unknowing to me she was suffering from HIV, I gave her my hand me down clothes as I grew out of them and she continued to get smaller, and smaller.

Even though I don't remember these days for myself, I have pictures. Family pictures which even include our brother who has since removed himself from it all, as I try daily to do.  Unfortunately for me, this pain of an on-again off-again relationship will continue until the inevitable end which will be when our family buries her.

No one wants to bury their sibling, especially the one you are closest with. No parent ever wants to bury their child. No child ever wants to bury a parent prematurely.

- Little Sister

Her Story...

It sounds like a vague title but the meaning couldn't be any deeper in my life. I am just the voice behind the tale, but the life in question is that of my older sister. An older sibling who fled home at fifteen years old right after I was born almost three decades ago.

Writing without a name attached to me has become an outlet for the emotions life has handed me in these difficult days. A life that has withstood disease, heartbreak, and more near death experiences than Evil Kenevil.

An amazing person with a troubled soul. A wife, mother, pathological liar...
A gold digger, manipulator, and the most mild mannered lady attached to these sociopath traits.

The sister that would take the shirt off her back to keep you warm, but not without a knife right inside that shirt for the eminent stab right in the back.

I am the type of person who always wants to see the good in people, but with children of my own and a soap opera of a day-to-day life because of her lack of conscious, the good has long fled from my sight.

Instead now I am filled with anger, and bitter thoughts of a woman I went above and beyond for, and in the end she opted to take a man over her family.

Her story starts back as far as I can probably remember or the early 90's. Salt n' Pepa was the jam on the radio and my sister was that on-again off-again presence in my life. She would always come stumbling back to my parent's house when she had no place else to go. Near death from whatever recent crack binge she had been on, but the child in me didn't care how long she slept for in that spare bedroom because when she woke up my sissy would be mine until she fled again for another month long vacation of self destruction.

A trip to the toy store for candy was the typical activity for the day. Mainly because she would want to stock up on candy for herself. Strangely I never recalled her ever having a job so the origin of the money was always a mystery to me, at least in my younger years.

I can clearly remember days waiting in the office during lunch at school waiting for her to come pick me up, never showing up. Leaving me hungry with another promise broken. I later on learned the worth of her word.

But I plan to break the history up into posts. Experiences I remember the most. Memories I wish I could forget. And the wasted life of someone who could have been great and changed the world, but clouded their life with drug addiction, prostitution, and disease.

-Little Sister