Just now I was upstairs in my room talking to my sister as we do most nights. It's nice. I love my sister and we get on wonderfully well. I could devote a whole blog post to her...and maybe I should because it was her birthday last Tuesday (the day of the earthquake actually). In fact, I think that's exactly what's about to happen. Why the hell not?
Brothers and sisters know you better than anyone in the world - they've known you from birth and they share the same set of parents, which is the most formative element in personal development and a relationship that can never be understood from the outside. All of this is to say that I can talk to Carlee about anything. She has been the best person in the family throughout my whole "ordeal" this past year. She asks questions calmly and shows concern without treating me like I am mentally unstable. She really is amazing. All of my life I've looked up to Carlee (5 years my elder) more than anyone else in the world.
Some of my earliest memories are of sharing a room with her. We would talk every night until falling asleep. I remember that I couldn't go to sleep if she was angry with me and we always used that time alone in the dark to make up if we ever had fights. During the day we would fight and bicker about everything (she is SO BOSSY), but when it was just the two of us in the dark after bedtime we were sisters and stupid squabbles would be forgotten. Sometimes I would be the one to whisper "I'm sorry" first, sometimes she would speak first. But we always fell asleep with a sweet "Good night." Even after she moved into her own room and we had different bedtimes, she would still come into my room before going to sleep, wake me up, sit on my bed, just to chat and say good night - two sisters in the dark.
Of course, the squabbles were so annoying. She would lock me out of the room during the day to talk on the phone and wouldn't let me back in unless I had one of tickets she had made up. Yes, I would need a ticket to enter my own room. But then at night, if I woke up from I nightmare I just had to cross the room and crawl into Carlee's bed and she would keep the monsters away.
I don't know what I would do without Carlee. My mother was never one for life talks. She never even gave me the sex talk (seriously*). So my sister just took over on some of the Mom duties when it came to sensitive, personal issues. God, I don't know what girls without older sisters do after they have sex for the first time. A big sister is the perfect person for such a situation (better than any friend, no matter how close).
And now I've written a whole post just about my sister. I was planning to write about how I've been feeling manic all night. But this was better.
*And because my parents are very Catholic they kept me out of the school's sex-ed class. I literally learned about sex from a novel, TV and friends filled in the blanks. Thank God, my parents let me start getting books out from the adult section much too early. I had read my way through the kid's section by fourth grade and this was before my library even had a YA section. I moved straight onto adult books and I just happened to be going through an intense historical fiction phase at the time. Philippa Gregory's The Other Boleyn Girl taught me all I needed to know. Good thing my conservative parents weren't big readers. They were used to my nose being in a book and didn't really take all too much interest in what book it was. They would ask what I was reading and I would just say, "A book." They accepted the answer and moved onto their other more troubling children.
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