This song came on the radio this morning and before I knew it, I was thinking about the day that my sister had her first sisterly love talk with me.
We didn’t grow up together. I am the oldest and my father has a large family. I grew to resent my siblings at a young age because I was jealous and didn’t understand. My dad did his best to explain compassion and generosity to me but as a child that dealt with getting made fun of for being poor all my life only to transition into getting made fun of because I was a lesbian – it just didn’t seem fair that my dad helped kids that weren’t even his but that’s another long drawn out story – today, I just want to bring light to the fact that my sister spent about 10 years in foster-care until she aged out. This makes her view on family a lot stronger than mine – because I take everything for granted.
My sister moved in with me in July of 2013 because she had been living out of motels with her boyfriend while my parents struggled to take care of her kids for a few months. When she moved in with me – we were pretty close. She paid attention to things that a brother would never notice. She watched me fall in love with a girl and then she watched me fall apart with confusion. At the time, I had spent the last 5 years of my life protecting my heart and then I met her. Suddenly I forgot to play defense and it was over in no time – but my sister know what happened 5 years prior. She knew that I was not really interested in caring for anyone because I knew that they would just hurt me eventually, so she was shocked when I was quick to forget all of that just a month prior when I met her.
At this point a few months had passed. My sister knew lesbians better than I did by now just because she was a good listener – and a woman. There are not many people left that will try to tell me what to do or give me advice because they know that I will just do what I want to do anyway and this was no different but my sister tried her best to be the best sister possible and I feel like I pretty much called her a liar or suggested she was confused. Her facial expression said it all (Something like – well, I guess I will have to tell her I told you so later…) It was a sad defeated look. There are a few people in the world that absolutely hate when I get my heart ripped out and she is one of them.
She had been at Walmart that day with my oldest niece, which was about 5 at the time. They saw my love interest from afar and my niece yelled her name and wanted to chase her down – she was equally as excited about her.
My sister noticed that she was with a guy and as she gently put it to me, ‘she was sure they were more than just friends.’ I didn’t believe her and told her that she had to be wrong or misunderstood. We were no longer dating and hadn’t been for quite some time but I was still holding my breathe for the next moment I would get to spend with her and my sister was watching from a distance. At the time I had no idea. I couldn’t reference a time frame but it had to be within a few months of meeting her. By December, I had dug myself into an internet hole called craigslist and shot myself in the foot – but I learned a valuable lesson that day – well many. The first one is – Don’t get mad and leave work when your rebound tells you that you can’t be her side chick anymore. AND Don’t get overly excited when you see photos of someone that you are pining over and instantly message them without reading the actual post – because it might just surprise you. And you might wish you had just stayed at work with the other problem that you created. That was December 17, 2014. Next I will go see what I wrote about that.
Prior to that she was at Walmart buying a bike – and my little niece that loved her saw her and my sister started playing defense all around. Kid – don’t interrupt them right now. Sis – there’s something you need to know. At least the 5 year old listened. My dumb ass didn’t think twice about it and told said lady that they saw her at Walmart that day – excitedly – when she mentioned the bike… I may never learn.
Anyway – here is some damn song that made me think about that crap this morning.