When we were kids, I should have been a more loving, kind, supportive, and involved sister. Some parts of me wince at the thought of reminiscing over the past and the kind of person I used to be. Why didn’t I do more? Hug you more? Tell you it would all be okay?
Still, I was a child. As I sit here today, I am an adult who handles the little girl I used to be with gentleness, compassion, empathy and care. I was coping with indescribable pain and uncertainty, just as you were. I know now that it wasn’t my responsibility to “raise you” or ensure that you were adequately cared for. That was never my job, but guilt and shame are silent, relentless waves that crash into my heart that tell me somehow, some way, I could have done better for you. I often wonder if it would have made a difference in your life today. I wonder why am I the one in recovery. Why am I experiencing healing and love and laughter and peace? Why do I have a warm, clean place to lay my head down at night? These kinds of questions flood my mind more often than anyone realizes.
But the truth is, our lives would have been different had we been cared for as if we were precious little human beings, loved wholly and fully, and unconditionally. The kind of love that is tender and poignant, that notices the details of the expression on our little faces and the language of our growing hearts and developing minds. The kind of love, that in an ideal world, children would all receive and experience.
I look back without regret on my own life, but I wonder how you felt through those same years that left me as a shadow of the person I could have grown into. How did our experiences shape and change you? I wish I could hold your face and wipe your tears until you believed the words I said to you. That your life has always been meaningful. You deserved to be loved and liked, cared for, and thought of. You have always been deserving to have opinions and thoughts, and you are smart and capable, and talented.
Now, I sit. I know you are struggling in your mind. That you are a stranger to inner peace. That you rest your body on pavement or in jails. I have an overwhelming sense that it is too late for me to play a part in your life that could make a difference. That I am not going to be that person in your story. I pray that there are people who you interact with every day who cause a smile to form on your face, or who remind you that there is still good out here and that you matter. Who speaks truth and life and love into you.
I want you to know that I have always been in awe of the way you can cut hair with so much care and love, the way you sketch and draw so effortlessly, or make people laugh everywhere you go no matter where you are.
You are an incredible, capable person. I am proud to be your sister. I love you. I hope you make it out.