one moment.

dear sister,

i woke this morning thinking of not you but other things, how my hands might heal but only if prayer works, or something similar. yet i couldn't go back to sleep. unbidden, the picture of you with a close friend, visiting my neck of the woods, came again. my neck . the woods. you didn't call or in any way let me know you'd be this close. just another instance in a long string of them that i'm putting together into a necklace that begs to hang on my neck. it wants to choke ignorance from my vision  of you and i . i had thought we were close, that circumstances kept us apart,that we were friends that would make time for each other when the opportunity arose. however, over these many years apart, any attempts to do that by me were met with lukewarm enthusiasm which quietly died. it never occurred to me that despite loving me, you just don't like me. odd huh./that i wouldn't attribute to our relationship the giest of our family's relationships with each other.

i have lost so much childhood memory. i don't know if it's consequence of having to shut off- twenty years of marriage to an emotional abuser that i can't recall details of our common bond, but i'm sure that selective memory helps me survive with small bitterness. i miss the details i didn't know i'd miss. the last time i forced myself into your life, i thought we'd had a great talk and you gave me back some memories i will cherish despite them being melodramatic. we stayed up way past your bedtime, talking, smoking, laughing. the next morning you woke up with chocolate on your shirt, due, you said, to midnight sleeping munchies. in the same breath you told me never again. i thought you were joking at the time but now i know you were quite serious. i have determined to stop setting myself up for these kinds of encounters. stop expecting your friendship just because we have the same parents, to stop asking you to come on weekend excursions. what i hope to accomplish with this is to let you live in peace. i don't want you to have to make up excuses or feel fretful about a deadline you have no intention of meeting.

we can't help whom we like. we can sometimes find reasons for the liking but it's a consequence of our total experience more than reasoning. you have friends you've had since high school, some longer. i have memories of friends that disappear. it appears to me that i am easy to leave, easy to forget. if it weren't for the accidents of our births, we wouldn't have known each other at all.we have wildly different interests and ways of looking at the world. although my personality revels in these differences, yours feels uncomfortable with them. i wonder if you wonder how we even came from the same country, much less the same upbringing. i would attribute that thought to you, but i think it may be projection. it's awfully arrogant of me to assume any thought on your behalf. after all, i don't really know you. we haven't shared a home in over thirty years, much less a neighborhood. i abandoned our hometown as thoroughly as you integrated it. you cherish those gone days, honor them by keeping up with people from the past, visiting our mother's and sister's graves. i have not been to that cemetery since the last burial, when were both still teens.

 truthfully, i don't think we did have the same upbringing. i was the middle child and you the youngest. sociology says we had different roles to fulfill, that our parents treated us differently. common sense says of course they did, we are not clones, merely siblings.

let me just say i miss the things you held onto. i would spend a whole weekend listening to you recount them if i could. but i won't be begging for your company anymore. i will be satisfied to see you a few times a year as required by holidays and or birthdays and or other celebrations that demand both our presences.

there is a certain amount of freedom for me in this decision. i no longer will worry about my chronic lateness or being scolded by you. that will be an inevitability i'll force you to accept by not apologising either. dad made that perfectly clear to me last time i saw him. it doesn't matter that i've been surrounded by people that force that lateness..no, i'm not excusing anymore. it's me, a part of me you don't like but accept because you have no choice. i will no longer set myself up for disappointment by requesting audience. i will accept your invitations when they are submitted if i can, but i won't expect them. i will not invite you to events that you would have to wiggle out of in advance. i won't extend the hand, so you don't have to shake it or ignore it. i think it's probably better for both of us that way. i let go demands and expectations, which frees you from any guilt i may have unwittingly placed on your head. i love you. i even like you, despite your flaws. i have many acquaintances. i will remember that you are one of them.