wow. So I think I am going to speak to my big sister on Sunday.
It has been around 7 yrs since we last spoke, I was still pregnant with my daughter and living in a women's refuge. And even then, it had been 5yrs prior to that, that we had spoken to each other. This is a deeper chapter into my life away from home at the beginning which isn't in my bio, but you've probably heard me mention bits from this time period. Anyway...
This is my ex muslim older sister who left home when I did. When my parents put me in hospital, she had already been attacked during that beating session but she ran up the stairs after kicking my step mother, which only made my step mother angrier, so when she turned to me......well you all read how that turned out.
But the thing is, I don't think my sister loves me. I don't think she ever has even though I idolised her and loved her deeply.
When we went into foster care together, well she was never really that good to me. I was 13 and she was 15, and for awhile we did things together. More like I would hang on to her because I was scared. She was the one pressing charges on my parents, whilst I was too scared and guilty to face them, either way I clung to her because I was alone and she was the only family I had left now.
One day our foster father smacked me, so we ran away together. This was when I was 14. We lived in squats with druggies, or slept in the park if the police didn't catch us. She was such a rebel, short skirts, make up, boyfriends, and smoking. It was her that gave me my first smoke, and my first spliff. She was a chicken though, so I would do the stealing most of the time.
I was a theif, its how we got food, and clothes. I would steal food if I could, which back then was a breeze to be honest (I had been shoplifting since I was 7), clothes she wanted, make up and accesories, shoes, bags, you name it, if she said she wanted it I would go and steal it for her.
To make money I would hustle for us, because I would steal things we had no use for either. Like one time I stole 15 hard back copies of "The Joy of Sex", but she was a virgin and so was I. Infact I had no interest in boys, in school, in anything, other than making my sister happy. She was like everything I wished I was but wasn't. She was pale, she was beautiful, she was popular. I was brown, I was ugly, and my friends were my friends because they were scared of me, or wanted my protection. As sad as it is, at 14 my only ambition was that my sister would love me. Anyway I took those books down to Charing Cross train station and sold every copy to red faced couples who had to face a young teenager questioning their sex life and offering them a £15 book, for a fiver to improve the quality of their sex life.
I gave all the money to my sister. Its what I always did. I didn't care about nice things for me. I lived in tracksuits and trainers. I looked like a boy. My hair was still growing back after the hopsital had shaved it off, but it was still boys length, and I had scars on my head. Infact I looked so much like a boy that I lost count of the amount of offended women who ran off to get the security guards to come escort me out of the womens toilet. (I used to go stare at the men peeing in the urinals after being escorted to the mens room, and make them feel rreally uncomfortable
).
So because I knew I was nothing, and she was everything I doted on her.
Then she betrayed me. I may have been a thief, but I was a thief with a robin hood honour. I never stole from friends.
One day she took me over to a friend of ours house, along with another moroccan girl who used to hang out with us, whilst I and this other moroccan girl were downstairs chatting to this girl we were visiting, my sister went upstairs and robbed all the jewellry. When she came downstairs she said it was time to go, and so we left and said our goodbyes. I quite liked this girl, and she was always nice to me, never treated me like my sisters ugly little sister, but like me.
I had no idea what my sister had done until we were on a train home.
When we were arrested, my sister blamed everything on me and this other moroccan girl. She told them I had done it, and I guess the halo effect of her beauty meant it was never gonna happen that I could convince anyone that I hadn't done it. That was the only time I ever got a caution and it wasn't even down to me.
She betrayed me though, in a heartbeat to save her own skin.
However I loved her. A very sick dependent love. When my mum ran away she was all I had, her and my baby sister. My dad had put us in care, and again she was all I had. My replacement mum almost. So when the other moroccan girl and her sister caught up with mine and beat her for what she did. I caught up with them and beat them for touching my sister.
I never saw my sister again though. Not for a year. She went back to the foster parent that had hit me, and I ran away from the children's home the police put me in and lived on the streets alone for a few more months.
I would call her but she wouldn't take my calls.
In the end the police found me and took me into a home, I stopped running then. I was tired of being so alone.
I heard from my sister again when I was 15. She wanted money, I gave her everything I had.
Again she ignored me once she had the money. again I heard from her when I was 16, again for money, only this time we played happy sisters for a few weeks whilst she fleeced me, then went back to ignoring me.
I used to write her letters at 14, 15, 16, LOL I was sooooo pathetic. I just wanted my sister. I had no family, I lived with strangers and I was actually pretty unhappy, very suicidal most of the time. Hearing from her brightened my day, even though I knew what was coming, I kept thinking this time round I would somehow prove I loved her and she would stop treating me like that.
One day when I was 17 I went to visit her. She had a friend coming over and she asked me not to say I was her sister.
She said because of my colour, her friends would know she wasn't spanish, which is what she pretended to be.
My sister was deeply ashamed of being a moroccan. She rejected everything, became a roman catholic, had a baby at 17 with some asshole portugese (sp?) guy, who knew she was moroccan but preferred her to lie and say she was spanish, and she was happy to do so.
So anyway, when she rejected me again because of my colour, I told her to go fuck herself and switched off my wish for her.
The next time we saw each other was because our real mum had found me, and I called her to tell her. I was 18/19.
Things never changed. My sister used our real mum for a few years and then dumped her, much like she had done for years to me.
Needless to say, things have been wrong between us for years.
But how sad is it that her duaghter messaged me and told me that she wanted to speak to me and would call on sunday, that part of me wishes she could be family to me again?
Writing all of that, I think it made me realise that my love for my sister was unhealthy and dependent, and her rejection of me? I wish I could understand it because it hurt so much for so long that she would be like all of the people who ever mattered to me, and just dump me like I was nobody.
But I have to ask myself, is it even worth talking to her on sunday? should I even care? how could it possibly be any different in the end?
I know this was a long post, if you have actually read it through to the end, then I commend you, and thank you. Nothing worse than making a tl;dr post.
I'd see her, but keep my distance.
Topic: From the mouth of madness - My blog