heartsmith

Dear Heart,

The ache I feel in my chest grows more acute with each passing day. I long for healing, and only hurt seems to find me. I reach for love, and instead am battered by pain. 

My entire life, I have felt the odd one out, the spare, the second fiddle. First and most especially, with my sisters. I spent my entire childhood begging for the time of day, yet my sisters found refuge with only each other. I suppose that’s natural with twins. Their bond is beyond what I could ever hope to share with them. Still, I yearned for their acceptance, their affection, a drop of their love. 

When they turned outward for friendship, I was again ignored. They seemed to spend every waking moment outside the home, and acted as though they were ashamed to call me blood. ‘Sister’ wasn’t even a word they could say without visibly cringing. 

I internalized every grimace, every casual insult, every neglect until it molded my behavior into that of a desperate, lonely girl. I somehow found myself seeking reassurance in every relationship- especially female friendships. I poured every ounce of myself and who I thought someone wanted me to be into the relationship. And while it should be common knowledge that friends come and go in seasons, I remember the utter devastation and emptiness I felt every time one left. I think I saw the twins leaving me, over and over again, a wound that has still not fully healed.

While relationships have improved with one, the other still sees me as…

Honestly, I don’t know how she sees me. I have spent years and many tear-filled nights struggling and searching for any words to describe how she sees me, and still I come up with nothing. 

I grasp for understanding when all I get in return is a cold shoulder, an empty text box, a hollow heart. 

Over the years, I noticed how the two of us have shared similar wounds and although we deal with them in polar opposite ways, I always wondered why we couldn’t lean on each other and support one another through our shared pains. After I once remarked this to her, she told me that she didn’t want to admit that I had suffered the ways she had and when she couldn’t ignore that I had suffered likewise, she still rejected me. You are not my safe space, she said. 

Six little words should not cut like daggers, but they do. Even three years later, they still do. Coming to terms with the fact that my relationship with my sister might never be how I imagined–how I dreamed it would be– is still just out of reach.

For years, I have been the one to initiate contact. Calling and texting as regularly as I could, showing her that even without reward, I am her sister and I love her.

I wanted to be there for her in her darkest moments, even if she wasn’t aware when I was having mine. Vulnerability goes both ways, and yet since I had been burned before, I held the brunt of my pain at a distance, trying to respect the boundary she had set for our relationship. You are not my safe space…and she didn’t have to be mine. 

I finally got the hint. I stopped initiating every failed attempt to communicate with a sister who never saw me as one. I reached out one last time to let her know I was always here for her when she was ready to talk. 

Suddenly the cold shoulder was cranked up to a freezing degree. An abyss yawned between us, greater distance than I had ever felt before. I thought it was because I stopped reaching out my hand. I found out that it was because I was now the villain in her story. I abandoned her when she needed me most. It was my fault that I respected the boundary she had so clearly erected and reinforced for years. 

I finally take the hint, and it’s my fault? I am the villain? It doesn’t matter that I suffered in silence, knowing that my shouldering her pain as if it were my own was the last thing she would want from me. It doesn’t matter that I prayed for her healing every single day. It doesn’t matter that it killed me that she wouldn’t let me be there to support her. It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter.

All she sees is what she wants. Not me trying to respect her wishes. Not me drowning in grief for her loss. Not me spending years killing myself for a one-sided relationship. All she sees is what she wants, and all she wanted was an apology.

I wish she could see. I wish I had the chance to explain. I wish I didn’t have to bite down every angry, betrayed, helpless, hopeless, raging, grieving feeling clawing up my throat. I wish I didn’t have to swallow all the pain and misery and neglect I have felt in the absence of a sister. 

I can’t imagine a world without the sisterly bond and love without end I had always dreamed of. That dream may die every day, but somehow it always finds new life. Without hope, beyond hope, against hope, I will love her even if it burns me from the inside out. Even if I have to rage all day and cry alone at night, my love for her and hope for her healing will be infinite. 

The lack of what I wish–what should be– will no longer steal my joy. It may burn like rage in the daylight and fall like tears under the moonlight, but between the rage and the grief, I will find joy. 

Your hopeful Heartsmith