No Day for This (Day 99)

Tomorrow is Siblings Day. 

And it is this memory (it is always April 10!) that has been clinging to my finger tips all week. It is the source of much of my disconnection and mental isolation. 

Funny thing, I wrote two pieces this week about Siblings Day for work--without realizing how writing those pieces triggered something within me. It was only after seeing a Facebook memory from a year ago--when I was recalling my brother that it dawned on me: Siblings Day, that's the fucking problem. 

I hate this damn day. I don't have siblings anymore--one dead brother and one con artist sister who is now mentally ill and wandering Florida. That's what I've got. There is no day for this. Not one. Dead and estranged Siblings Day is not a fun celebration on the calendar. 

And what infuriates and defeats me the most is that maybe everything could have been different. It is an insane, futile mental exercise I undertake as often as I can. What if. . what if my sister had gotten her life together and wasn't so broken and bad? What if I found a way to help her? What if my mother opened her heart to Beth and rose above Beth's criminality? What if Beth actually loved me as a sister? What if my brother never suffered a brain injury? What if he never choked? What if I let him live with us, like my mom wanted? What if I had been a better sister to the two ghosts that haunt me everyday?

I either forget I had siblings or remember and do the above or spin yarns and laugh darkly at the drama of it all. 

Again, there is no day for this. 

And, truly, no one ever really asks me how I am. No one asks because they forget. No one asks because it is hard and they don't want to go down this path. My mother has never once asked me how it feels to be the one left--the responsible one, the one in charge, the one who carries the burden of the things the other two cannot manage because one is dead and the other gone. 

And truly, even if you ask, I won't tell you. The pain is almost shameful--I know it shouldn't be, but I have this nagging sense that somehow all this darkness makes me unworthy--makes me cursed. I know this is not true; but the truth is hard to hold sometimes. The grief and sorrow is louder. 

All around me I hear and see so many people just casually tossing away relationships with their siblings and I am filled without absolute desperation and rage. They must not know what it is like to have been so close to having that bond and then having it continually ripped away. The disappointment makes my chest hurt. I can barely see through my tears as I type. 

And I know this not what anyone comes here for--and I am sorry for that--but I am not sorry for the brokenness of grief that will never leave me. Grief is born from love--and I loved my brother with my whole heart and I failed him so. I love my sister with my whole and I've failed her too. 

There is no day for this.