For now, it seems the answer is yes.
Today’s flavor is ruminating on Valentine’s Day and how, as I have for all of my prior years of life, I am doing nothing special on this day because I am not in a relationship or even in something that could be one. It’s just Sarah, out and about on this normal Wednesday.
And then I think about my sister, and the fact that she would have been—should be—doing something sickeningly cute with her partner. She wasn’t a toy on a shelf hoping to get picked—she was actively part of building a future with someone else. So why is that I am still here, on February 14, and she is gone?
I’m really messed up around the topic of love right now. I would genuinely, truly, entirely be delighted to have a partner. I don’t want to be single forever. But whether it’s timing (as many have told me) or not having found the right person (as close friends chime in) or the fact that maybe I’m broken and unlovable (which the darkest part of me says in the quiet moments when I’m alone with my thoughts), the fact remains that I am single. With the exception of two real relationships and a bunch of murky question marks, that’s always been true.
The grief of losing my sister compounds my feelings about it all. I used to be very vocal about being okay with being someone’s perfect second wife someday, and until then living a cool life on my own. It used to not freak me out that this major life stage seemingly passed me by when it didn’t pass most of my peers. But now there’s this insidious idea in the back of my mind that the time I’ve always assumed I had is a mirage. If tonight I go to bed and never wake up, like my sister did that life-altering evening in May last year, I will have squandered every last chance and not even realized it.
I guess if I die, though, I won’t really care or know it anyway. I know that’s a very dark place to leave this post at, but that’s how it is today.
Unmoored Sister 