I’m going to do some free-writing. Let’s see where this goes:

It’s Sister2’s birthday.

Anyway, she’s coming over. I invited her over. Much to my surprise, I’m happy about it.

See, Sister2 and I have never gotten along. She’s so conservative, so certain about the superiority of her ways. And of the latter, she would probably say the same thing about me. Except, I’m the liberal one. What did she call me over the phone the other day? “A literary type.” I lost my train a thought for a moment after she said that, stopped in mid-sentence for several seconds to contemplate that. She thought of me as the literary type. What did that mean to her? I knew she was calling me strange. In fact, it seemed nice coming from her. She was trying to say, “I don’t understand you, Lulu, but I wish I could.” I said the same thing to her. She’s a traditionalist and lets her bad moods take over. I’m a post-modernist who tends to let her moods take over. We love each other, feel sympathy for each other. We understand, on a very deep level, that no one else will ever know what it was like growing up with our parents. We know the emotional battles we lost, the defeats we survived in those first twenty years. And still we fight with ourselves, with each other, with our world.

That’s another aspect of it: we’re both fighters — intelligent, yet unflinching. We’ll argue a point to our dying breath. But we’re also weary. So we avoid each other. My sister and I literally lived four blocks from each other for three years, and we saw each other maybe six, no more than ten, times total. Talking to her about my past is difficult. We both get upset. This is often more painful than the event I’m describing.

I don’t understand it. I wish I could change it. I wish I could love her. But our defense mechanisms keep getting in the way. And we can’t put them away; we can’t stop protecting ourselves. Just seeing her makes me think of the abuse. My stomach tightens from the memories of my childhood. Oh, God: the screaming, the hitting, the oppression and the suffocation. It was unavoidable. I couldn’t be me. I couldn’t express myself, except secretly by writing in English — this language my mother couldn’t read. Unable to read it, she couldn’t know what I was doing.

She was always suspicious of it, asking Sister1 to translate it for her. Thank goodness, Sister1 is my father’s daughter and not my mother’s. Like Sister2. Maybe that’s another reason we don’t get along. We all knew my mother was sick. We knew she wasn’t right in the head. Sister1 explained to us that Mom was an emotional child and a depressive. Sister2 and I nodded our heads. We understood Mom had to be coddled and comforted. She could hurt us any minute, and she often did. The instability hurt my sister deeply. It hurt me, too. But I think she took it personally, where I took it as something I had to get through. When my Dad tells his daughters, “Sister2 isn’t as smart as you two, but she’s made up for it by applying herself harder than you two ever have,” I saw the ridiculousness of that statement. Sister2 heard, “You’re not as smart as them, so you have to try harder.” She was always trying harder. Her studies could drive her to tears. Her drive to succeed often kept her up nights, even in high school. Now, she’s getting her masters in architecture, and she doesn’t even like the field. The things our parents did to us. She was my reluctant ally in the trenches. Several times, she turned on me. I don’t think I turned on her, but I’m also not ignorant enough to believe I’m as innocent as I think I am.

All this runs through my head as I wait for her to arrive at my apartment. I bought her a cake. Sang is bringing a balloon. I’m actually excited. And I think what I wanted to say all this time is this: I showed myself to my sisters and other family members when I posted this site on FaceBook. A few days after I did that, Sister2 called me up crying, asking if it was true. She extended her support to me. In short, I put my defenses down, and she embraced me. She said to me, “I know we’ve never really gotten along, cuz I don’t understand you–you know, you’re a literary type–but I’m here if you need me.” The acceptance. The effort. She does try. I do know that. And I try, too. She fucks up a lot. I do, too. But we trust that we can always call each other up, say, “I fucked up,” and have our sister help us fix it. We know it wasn’t easy for the other to admit her failure. It isn’t easy for the person doing the helping. But knowing that she’s going to be there for me, knowing this is a reliable, albeit sometimes painful, barter system: that’s something I can’t get from any other human being in this world.

Happy birthday, sis. I’m glad you survived with me.

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