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caesarandthecity · 1 month

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Dear Sister

How is your family? What is your relationship like with your parents, siblings, uncles, and aunts? Tell me what it's like because I don't know, I don't have one, and today I choose not to have one.

After six years living alone here in North America, I found out that my sister, her husband, and two kids are moving to the United States. We started talking again instantly, as if it were the old days. I brought back many memories from our childhood, many of which she doesn't remember, or to her, they were so simple that they didn't mean much. At first, during the first few days, everything was magical, beautiful, and pleasant, full of love, tears, and laughter. It seemed like we would be happy as a united family. Wow, I really believed it was beautiful. Everything seemed perfect, but other childhood memories also returned.

I remembered all the times my sister left me behind when she had something better to do, even when I had canceled my plans at her request. All the times I worried about doing something or giving a birthday present, while on my birthday, there was never that concern. I remember all the times I thought she was my friend and confided in her, only for her to tell her mother, who then confronted me. Or the times she hit me for reading her diary, but supported her mother and read mine.

I remember the time she, for no reason, claimed I went to her husband's store and stole products. But when her mother saw that I wasn't carrying anything when I got home, she explained that it didn't make sense. My sister then said I must have stopped in a favela and sold the products. To this day, I can't understand human malice. I understand and accept that no one is perfect, but I don't accept people inventing things about me. What's the point of that?

It hurts, my sister, but I remember all the times your mother and father made me sleep outside the house. I cried, knocking on your window for you or your sister to let me in so I could sleep inside instead of in the cold yard, but you told me to shut up because you wanted to sleep. And didn't I want to sleep too, my sister?

I remember the times you took advantage of my kindness to the point where your mother made fun of me. The person who should have protected and loved me made fun of how I forgave you even when you hurt me too much.

My sister began to show who she really is little by little. First, in all the photos she sent where her house was a complete mess. At first, she would say "don't mind the mess," but soon she assumed I would get used to the mess and stopped saying anything. But, dear sister, I am not used to the mess and find it strange. It's strange to me. Her house is dirty, messy, things out of place, the walls are black with mold, and the text message I receive most from her in the late afternoon is saying that she was sleeping. She sleeps every afternoon, regardless of the mess in the house.

I kept observing, even though they were saying I should go and everything inside me was showing that I should go to Orlando. But today, I know that having contact with my sister will not be the best thing. Their true intentions begin to show slowly: living together and splitting rent. I am alone and don't have to pay anyone's rent but mine, doing everything in my name. My sister started showing narcissistic traits, just like her mother, and it’s not strange, given that she was raised by Isabel. She constantly manipulates her husband, decides everything, and prevents him from doing anything. I just observed.

She questioned my decision not to eat rice and beans anymore, saying that I would eat them again. She said that living together, I wouldn’t need therapy anymore. How can someone think they have the right to decide something about the life of a person they haven’t seen in six years, believing that their choices are better than the other’s, and that the other’s life experiences and preferences don’t count? What counts are the choices she wants to make in others' lives. She seems like... my adoptive mother, her mother. Like mother, like daughter.

The idea I have of family, of siblings, of father and mother, is completely wrong and unfounded in reality. Shaped by the image created by television, I lived in a huge dissociation because I never managed to have or live what they sold as the idea of a happy family. Every time I went to a friend's house and saw their relationship with their parents, the love they received and gave, and their relationship with siblings, it became clearer to me that there was no love in my house and that I was the problem. I confess that from a very young age, I always judged my friends with loving parents. I always believed that these friends never appreciated their parents enough. In my child's mind, I thought that if my parents did what my friends' parents did, I would love them even more, I would thank them all the time, I would remind them of how happy I was to be loved that way. And I would remind them that they were the best parents in the world. All this happened in my childish mind because inside me, I was just looking for love, looking for a family. And this search made me look for brothers and sisters around the world, intensely loving strangers, calling fake people friends and siblings, but I never received love in return. I was used and discarded. Maybe I searched wrong, so I started looking for a mother and a father. It took me a while to understand that I would also never find someone who loved me like a son.

The greatest and most intense pain that an orphan carries is the pain of looking for their family in others and never finding it.

I lived an immense pain, looking for love in my own family until I discovered they were not my family, and that’s why there was no love. But I never gave up. I looked for it first in a marriage and couldn’t find it, looked for love in other families, calling them mine, and it never happened either. The worst feeling, without a doubt, is giving love and not seeing it returned. I swear, it’s the worst thing in life. Seeing with my own eyes someone showing through actions that they don’t love me, but with words, yes.

My sister tried to get close. The first few weeks were beautiful, a beautiful story to be told and remembered. But in truth, in reality, there was more pain than love, more hurt, more denial, more invalidation, more misunderstanding than love. There was a lot of lying, a lot of use and reuse, there was never love.

In all of this, my mind was racing, and as always, I didn’t understand much about how to deal with it. And I decided for myself, I decided to follow my plans, to go alone. Dear sister, all the pain you caused became a memory, it doesn’t hurt anymore, it just makes me understand better everything I went through and suffered in the past. Yes, my inner child still cries because, for him, the perfect family still exists, the love my inner child didn’t receive from the family is still missing, but it won’t be you, my sister, who will heal it. Dear sister, you are narcissistic, manipulative, and a liar just like your mother, and for me, that is not something I seek to bring back into my life. That’s why I go alone.

I don’t care about living with you, knowing how your day was, or your husband’s, or your children’s. I don’t care what grade your kids are in, what they want to be when they grow up, or what their favorite show on Netflix is. I don’t care if you are immigrating to the USA and need help. I don’t care if you are suffering or happy. I don’t care about meeting your new child, I don’t care about being present at birthdays, holidays, I don’t care about making plans.

I remember almost three years ago when I told an acquaintance, “I’m doing everything for a sister who I know wouldn’t do any of this for me,” right after I hung up a call with you. And that echoes in my mind. It echoes when I called a friend as soon as I got out of jail, and she said, “I called your sister to ask about you, and she was more interested in finding out how to immigrate here than about you.” And my sister, I remember the times I helped you financially, you never returned the favor. I remember when your son wanted a special edition of Lego, and I bought it. I remember the money I sent as gifts all the time. I never received a call, not even on my birthday. The lack of respect for me was always present.

But you never needed to respect me. I never had boundaries; everyone could use me and then discard me. No problem, Cesar always has a huge heart to accept it again, and again, and again. But something inside me changed, something much bigger woke up, and if you don’t know how to give me respect and values, I’ll show you who I am now. That’s why, and for everything else, my sister, I withdraw from your life. In fact, I was never really in it, and I’m happy for that.

Dear sister, you were a wonderful memory of my childhood, even though that memory had MUCH pain, the little good that there was, my inner child keeps with affection, and I follow my journey. I think that’s forgiving, it doesn’t hurt, even knowing there was pain, it doesn’t weigh on me, I don’t want to carry it. I prefer to go alone, free, far from this family and you, dear sister.

Today I stop being your brother, today I stop being your family. With all my love, C

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