I’ve been thinking about necessary family estrangement and what happens when relationships breakdown. I’ve been thinking about last chapters and what they look like. I’ve been thinking about endings.
Yesterday I heard the news that a friend’s sister had died. It was completely unexpected and very sudden; they’d had dinner the week before, she was on a jolly visiting friends, her heart gave way, no one saw it coming. I knew her, too. We’d holiday with her when the children were small, Easters in Polzeath, she would collect mussels at low tide and serve moules marinières to sandy guests in the house on the cliff, huge bay window to the sea. The crossword and shaky put-me-up table. The sloping garden and volcanos of sand that exploded at high tide. The low wall to the rocks below. She was full of smiles to guests. She was welcoming. I know my friend had a chequered relationship with this open-armed, Cornwall holidays sister, they rode that sibling rodeo many times, and many times, fell off. But they also got back on and I know their relationship was bonded, it had found its accepting way. They didn’t hurt each other. There was love in stepping around the difficult bits.
There’s no need to be friends with our siblings. There comes a point, especially easy to see with both parents gone, when it slips from enforcement to choice. The blood link is unchangeable, but do I like you? Do I want to hang out with you? If a non-blood-related person treated me like you do, would I carry on taking their calls? I was talking to an old friend yesterday about this and he said, “It’s always a good measure, to ask if a friend did that, would you accept it?” Because excessive rope is given to siblings, along with a normalisation of treatment, and things can get way out of hand. It’s worth asking, as I’m over fifty and with both parents dead, what’s the contract now?
I met with my therapist this week, she who I saw through divorce and debut novel, the two big events of my forties. It was wonderful to be in the therapeutic space with her again, an evenness of keel I know so well; despite almost a decade passing, we slipped right into it. I talked to her about sibling breakdown and she asked, “What does the last chapter look like?” This I don’t know. I couldn’t answer.
There is five year old me searching for the person she loved most in the world, the person she looked up to, followed, idolised and believed in. There’s ten year old me hanging on their every word. There’s teenage me trying to be them and young adult me devastated when, four years older than me, they went away. There’s hearing of their glamorous life and, unable to compete, running in the other direction. There’s watching their relationship with our father, and unable to compete, trashing everything. There’s the slow dawning fact of our competition. And this: six years ago I was faced with a binary choice. Publish and be damned, or pull the book and remain belonging. History says what I did and there’s the year of silence that followed.
All of this, from all-in love to shocking realisation things are not what they seem has been the colour of this autumn into winter. An arm’s length empathy won’t work anymore. Taken as a whole there’s a treatment that, if from a stranger, I wouldn’t tolerate for a single minute. “Put up with it”, “eye roll”, “siblings” - all these are okay when balanced with enough of the good stuff to make them minor burns. I’m not easy either. I know I annoy the hell out of all of them. I know they wish I’d shut up. Another sibling said to me earlier this year, “I don’t always agree with you, but I’ll always have your back” and it was one of the - no, in fact it was the first and only time I’d heard those precious words. It was a landmark moment. I cherish it.
But this other is different. With them the balance of good stuff to upsetting doesn’t apply. With them, the base line is corrupted. It is not safe. They hurt in unimaginable ways. Five year old me doesn’t want to believe it, ten year old me is still searching. Teenage me misses the thrill of their company, and young adult me feels keenly their rejection and shame. They have a story about me. It’s unshakable. It’s nothing like the truth and I’ve had enough.
Eleanor
