If you have a brother. If you have a sister.
Don’t you feel lucky?
Don’t you look at only children and think, gee, that looks lonely. I’m glad I’m not you…
I have no idea what it’s like to be an only child… to have all your parents’ attention on you, all of the time. To be the chosen one, the ONE beloved. My stepson is an only child, and he is not selfish or spoiled (at least no more than my 3 children), or particularly lonely.
But I always cherished having a sister. I always felt I was lucky.
But I wonder sometimes… am I? Do I really get more fullness from that relationship?
There is laughter. There are shared memories. Someone to connect with no matter the configuration of this particular family gathering.
But then again, how often am I stuck feeling lonely? Like no one understands me. Drowning in my loneliness, and she is the last person I reach out to. Sorry, I said that wrong. She isn’t the person I reach out to.
Truly, I reach out to no one. Really. No one from THAT place of open bleeding. My best friend is my chosen sister. But the wounds she licks, they are morphed. They aren’t the child’s, she didn’t know the child. She loves me now. And my husband, he looks for who I am at this moment. He doesn’t reach for my past.
But who loved me unconditionally then?
I wonder, like really wonder, if there’s anyone but a sibling who can understand. If a sibling might truly understand.
What is keeping us from holding that togetherness? That eternity of understanding. If our childhood wounds define us (and they don’t have to, but for so many of us they still do, at least in part), why not reach out and heal with the one person who has the same shaped wounds.
Why, why. WHY? Is it so hard?
