Sister Act

They say that you can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family.  They also say that blood is thicker than water.  Both of those sayings are equally true.

The difference between friends and family however is that you can break off a friendship, but the breakdown of a relationship with a family member will take a little piece of your soul with it.  Grudges are held in the heart rather than in the head and something you can forgive in a friend, hurts ten times more when it’s family.

I have a sister.  She is twelve years older than me and we haven’t lived in the same house together since I was seven and she was nineteen. 

We have always had complicated lives.  A combination of a twelve year age gap, misinformation, misconceptions and a lack of proper communication between the both of us led to a fractured relationship.

Each thought the incorrect things about the other and with each passing year, a wall was built between us that was so thick and high that it was starting to resemble Fort Knox.  Impenetrable.  The thing with families though is that with a friend you would have abandoned the relationship long ago, but blood ties keep you in the relationship because you “have to”, except you are both still hurting and it gets worse all the time.

Why am I telling you this?  Because that wall has been destroyed.  It took twenty years to build it and a conversation to demolish it.  I’m telling you because it might spur you on to fix what you thought was irretrievable too.

So what do you do?  You start by honesty; brutal honesty.  The kind of honesty that you can really only have with your family.  You each tell the other what you don’t like about them, what you don’t understand and what hurts the most.  You hold nothing back.  You each admit your faults.  You discover that they are hurting just as much as you are.

The good thing about families is that you might sometimes be on different paths, far away from where you started, but somewhere along that path is always a bridge that leads you back to one another. 

I have my big sister back and it has made me so happy.  The gap in my heart I wouldn’t admit to is filled again.

Build those bridges!  The gap between isn’t as far as you think xx

Creative Corner 7

It has been a long while since I have done anything in the Creative Corner series.

I find myself happiest when I write an opinion piece but somehow the creative writing draws me back in now and again.  

This is actually a rewrite of one of my earlier stories, which had been taken from a writing prompt of "The First Step".  

So here is "The Second Step".  

They say all you have to do in life is take that first step. One step and you can change your direction, your purpose and it can take you somewhere you only could dream of before.

I disagree.

I have taken many first steps in my life and I can tell you that it isn’t the first step that counts at all. It’s the second. The first step is tentative, non committal and still uncertain. The second step is your decision.

My marriage has been a series of first steps. In the beginning, the first steps were always taken with excitement as to what was to come. Our first date, getting engaged; buying a house.

As time moved on however these first steps changed. The first time he hit me, the first time he used my body without my consent; the first time I threatened to leave him; my first hospital visit. None of these steps were taken with my permission but they definitely took me to places I had never been before, nor wished to be.

There is another first step, sitting hidden away at the back of the wardrobe in the guest bedroom. A step of my own making. A bag, packed with clothes, some money, my passport. My bid for freedom.

The problem is, I have taken so many first steps, do I have the courage to take the second?  The one that takes me out of the door and to a new life. My hesitant first step has been sitting there, whispering to me in the black of night to escape.  Fear is my constant companion.

You need mettle for the second step.

So why I am I telling you this?  It is merely to tell you what you already know; that the second step is harder than the first?  No.  I tell you because you can waste your life away debating on that second step.  I tell you because I've taken mine, and you can too.  

I have left him.