Family

Family is God's way of showing you that He's got you. Imagine at a day old, a mushy bundle of joy with no means of communicating and yet God provides you an angel that will understand you, hold you, care for you and love you. You come into this world already knowing all the important things about her, you know her voice, her scent and importantly her heartbeat - all from the inside of her. As you cringe your face and cry at the unfamiliar world, you eventually get to meet compilation of people who have something in common with you. You share the blood bond. There is the dad, grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles and many others. You the new addition to the clan and already you belong. 

Yet how do we move from that moment into abandoning our families. Not talking to our cousins. Petty family drama that we allow to define our lives. We chose to let go of those who held us when we needed someone. Why do inherit the hate or misunderstandings of others and absorb them into us? Because suddenly we have our own family that we created for ourselves, our friends. While they are amazing and seem to love us and be there when no one will. Yet we are more willing to let them get away with hurting us more than we would ever let our family. We hold our family with a higher standard of conduct yet we easily hurt them, because we know what can they do? Ostracise us? 

Being so far away, I seem to see everything clearly and differently. My mother was right, we should try and make friends out of our family, it deepens and strengthens the bond. To be in a place where you can make as many friends as you want yet have no one to call your own, is a foreign feeling. I catch myself searching for my mother's face in a strangers face. The snoring of my husband from the next door neighbour I can hear through the wall. The laughter of my child in all children I meet. The bickering of my cousins in the carefree gossipy teenagers. Sometimes I feel so lost. The loneliness gets overwhelming when you have always been surrounded by loved ones, always a short walk or drive away. I have gained a deeper appreciation and understanding. I tend to gravitate towards the people who are in the same predicament and we find ourselves giving each other love that we miss.   

Fire and Rain

I wish my sister was my best friend. I don't know what has inspired this sudden urge to come clean about my relationship with my sister. Maybe I am going to die soon or something, just kidding hopefully, it's more because I miss her. I feel like I have been an only child for so long and its not the case. I have always been jealous of people who get along with their siblings, because I am not that lucky. 

Sometimes when I am having one of those honest one on one conversations with myself, I try so hard to make sense of the mess that is our relationship, I don't quite know how to place the blame, or understand the reasons. Is it because we were brought up by a grandmother who had 10 other kids to look after that we never got close as kids? Or is it because we were brought up to be competitive, repeatedly compared to one another in everything? Was it because she was always such a daddy's princess and I was such a rebel? Or was it because she went away, and with the distance and growing up, we couldn't quite breach the gap?

Me, who finds it so easy to pour my heart out on paper, and craft rhymes and rhythms cannot find the right words to explain why my sister and I are like fire and rain. When one is dominant, the other has to depart. I have so many best friends, I have been told countless of times that I am such a great friend, patient, understanding, loving, caring, sweet, thoughtful, confident, considerate - yet why can I not be all that to my sister? The weird part is that all my good friends know the deteriorating nature of my relationship with her, and they havent done anything about it thus far to help.  She is a lost cause they tell me, and to just let it go.

Yet mum is always on my case, reasoning with me on why don't I use the same psychology I use on everyone else with her - my only sister. She says she will die a very happy woman if the two of us could just get along. Heck, there are just the two of us, her extra pair of eyes as she lovingly calls us, why do we insist in making her one eyed? Always making her having to pick sides? She was hoping that we would have outgrown out childish ways, and yet we are still frenemies to this day. 

I am not writing to glorify my decaying relationship, but its time to be more to be honest. To acknowledge the way things are so maybe I can try to change them. Sometimes when in writing it feels more real, because I want to make a promise to myself to make it better and I have appointed you to be my witness. You may know what its like, to have that person in your family that you know you supposed to get along, it would be great if you could - but you just can't. For some people its the father, the mother, the sister, the brother, the aunts, the cousins - we all have some sort of skeletons in our closets and I am just cleaning out mine. 

I am sorry my dear sister that we have not been the kind of supporting of each other. I am sorry that I value my friends more than you. I am sorry that we don't always see eye to eye and refuse to reach some sort agreement about almost anything. You always say I am daddy's favourite, well you are mom's favourite, can we just both live with that? You are one of strongest people I know, so I am sorry that I misread your patience as weakness. You are always positive, always full of hope and faith, you are definitely the saint and I, the devil. 

I want us to try and put our differences aside. I may be the fire and you are the rain, can you drizzle gently and I promise to only smolder brightly so we can live together side by side.