Scene 24 - My Sister's Story

****************Scene 24 - My Sister’s Story*********************

You may have noticed, that I haven’t spoken much about my sister -
At the start of the story, I dropped her off at school and then…
well, she hasn’t been hardly mentioned

Now she was a large part of my recovery, and involved in the process,
but,
her story is just so different, it doesn’t easily fit into the frame of my story that we’ve been using,

but I want to highlight her story here,
because my sister tells the story of a girl -
- a young woman -
who witnessed her brother’s accident and rehabilitation.

Witnessed.

I was half way through my eighth grade year,
he - my brother - had just dropped me off at school,
when it happened.

And I witnessed the whirlwind of action and drama surrounding the accident.
Witnessed how hard both my parents worked - I hardly saw either of them for two months.
And I witnessed the explosion of joy with my brother’s return

from the hospital.

He was coming Home from the hospital, that must mean that he’s better, right?
maybe now things could return to normal,

Maybe even a better normal.

And I witnessed the return.
Inconsistency of his moods -
anger.
I remember getting into fights,
being afraid I was going to be hit…

The hand would raise,
pause,

and I witnessed the struggle between rage and reason.
You could see it on his face  -

And he did hit me,
once,
not hard, but it hurt.

and I wanted to help -
to be part of the recovery process.
I wanted to bring my brother back.

because That, was not my bother,

but I never knew what I could do,
what my job could be,
I felt I was always just getting in the way
Until, one day, it was a Saturday afternoon, and I heard my brother and my father fighting downstairs.

and it was loud, so I stayed upstairs,
but after the fight was over -
the screaming had stopped -
I went down,

and I saw my father,
curled up, on the red couch, like…
Crying.

And my father saw me, pulled himself together, carried on…

and that’s when I knew my job.

I had to be strong.
I had to be, Independent.

I had to Stay out of the way so that my parents could take care of my…older…brother.

It didn’t make sense, but I knew what I had to do.

And my sister took on that job.
Displaying maturity beyond her years.
Finding solace in her friends, her community.
Remaining True to Who She Is,
and becoming an inspiration for her older brother.

************************Commentary*************************

My sister and I do not have the closest of relationships.  That’s not to say we’re absent from each other’s lives, just distant.

In the scene above my sister expresses how she felt about her role in my recovery — that she had to “stay out of the way so that my parents could take care of my older brother.”

When my sister first shared this sentiment with me almost a decade ago — as the storytelling piece was being composed — I heard her words as inspirational.  As I narrated the story, I felt that this moment showed my sister taking on remarkable dignity and responsibility.  But now, as I take the time to reexamine these moments with a matured scrutiny, I recognize deeper layers of emotion tied into my sister’s words — not to diminish her aforementioned dignity and responsibility, I now see that with her recognition of a need for independence, she also needed to get distance from me.  She was seeking to be independent not only to relieve our parents, but — and perhaps more importantly — to give herself the space for personal growth and youthful enjoyment.  For years I have viewed her claiming a need to be independent as her attempt to assist in my recovery, and it’s only now that I recognize her actions may have been personal sanity and safety. 

I will acknowledge that these thoughts are mine — I attempted to contact my sister multiple times, but she has not responded — I believe she has been too busy, as she is a new mother. 

Also, as stated above, my sister and I are not close — though sometimes I wish that we were — or at least closer — that we could keep regular contact — and when I softly mourn not having this connection, I tend to select the time period during my early recovery as the reason why we are not closer.  This reasoning presents itself as a mishmash…me piecing together an argument…digging into the logic of events …citing created causes for our relationship beginning to dissolve following my accident — and I tumble down a rabbit hole of self-blame and pity, placing the initial blame for the loss of our relationship on my accident.  It’s an argument along the lines of — my sister had trouble understanding and adapting to my new mental state while I had difficulties with emotional control, and thus a rift began to develop between us.  This rift grew over time and is now what often feels to be a canyon.

When I began trying to write this article, this was the habit of my thought process — and as I began to reexamin the scene, my mind circled like a vulture around the idea that the accident was the cause — seeking to snarf up any scraps that confirmed my hypothesis.  Dozens of hours were spent creating cause and effect charts, beginning drafts that outlined the relationship’s decline, yet my writing did not feel honest.  Words and emotional confessions were forced onto an outline that supported what I had convinced myself to believe, and these words rang hollow — and so I begin again — back to sketching outlines in notebooks — back to not finding the honesty I hope to share in these writings…And damn me if it wasn’t frustrating!

And then an epiphany — my accident is part of my life.

To adjust the emphasis of that epiphany, my accident is Part of my life. 

Part Of

Life is a jigsaw, and my accident — along with the attached recovery — is but a section of the puzzle — to grant one segment too much importance is to not see the entirety of the picture.  Perhaps the distance in the relationship between my sister and I grew with my emotional instability following the accident — perhaps my sister’s fear for self-preservation created a fissure that has not yet fully healed — perhaps it is even likely that the abundant snags in the recovery process marred our relationship — but the accident cannot be the entirety of our story.  As I realized the truth held in the words “part of”, I found a release — to grant the accident as the thing that caused a distance between us is to grant an undeserved power to that accident — to events that have passed.  Furthermore, granting this power to the accident presents the consequences of the changes that came from the accident as finite — and this is simply not true.

My accident happened — that is a truth — and to some degree the effects will resonate within my brain and body for all my life — but that does not mean I must accept difficulties that come from these effects as “consequences of my accident”.  Instead, I must recognize what limitations these effects may have created, and — if I choose — work within my current abilities to alleviate the consequences of such effects.

Notice what I’m doing — separating “effects” from “consequences”.  “Effects”, as termed here, are the physical changes to one’s body and brain that come after a traumatic event.  While modern medicine is consistently finding new ways to heal the body, some physical “effects” from injuries are not yet able to be fully remedied.  These effects, however, are not “consequences”.  I hold that “consequences” are how we allow the effects to affect us.


To explain with a hypothetical, Sandra broke her spine and lost the use of her legs — that is a tragic effect of the accident — and due to her impaired ability to walk, Sandra has not left her house for the past three years — this is a consequence that Sandra allowed the accident.  Granted, without the use of her legs traversing the world is now much more complicated, but with technological and/or human assistance, remaining stationary is in no way necessary.  For her to claim, “I cannot leave the house because of my trauma,” is false.  It can be viewed as a consequence of the injury, but that consequence is a choice.

The emotional instability was an effect of my accident, and it may have encouraged a distance between my sister and I.  As the years passed — with this distance unaddressed — we may have continued to drift apart — not maliciously, but ignorantly — and this is a consequence.

Working on this entry helped me to realize how easy it is to become hyper-focused on a traumatic incident as THE creator of consequences — it is the creator only if we allow it to be so.  To blame negative consequences on the effects of a trauma is a choice, but to embrace life and direct it toward healthy goals is also a choice.

My sister and I don’t have don’t have the closest of relationships — now — but there is the possibility of change.  The consequences of the future will come from the choices we make.