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The meaning of this loss changes—daily. I lost my oldest friendship, my closest confidant, and the only person with whom there were no misunderstandings about where I came from and how I became who I was.
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I’ve lived almost two years now unable to shoot my sister a message and get a response. I thought that by now I would stop having moments where I feel the urge to text her—moments when I have forgotten that I live in a world without my sister. But it still happens. Not as frequently,
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We were two, a dynamic duo, a complete set. Everything about how I fit into the world was shaped around this truth. My understanding of my future was built upon the foundation of my sister’s existence. I don’t think there’s a single life milestone I imagined that did not include her in it. My sister
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Whenever I try to explain my sister to anyone, I inevitably tell them I wish they could have met her. It’s a sentence steeped in meaning, as everything feels like it is lately. I wish you could have met her… because that would mean she is still alive. And no matter how much time I
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Meeting new people has been harder lately. I incorporate a lot of things from my sister into my life—I have a tattoo in her honor, I wear fingerprint jewelry, I have some of her clothes, and I have things from her throughout my home. I don’t think about it on a daily basis, but I
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Instagram’s algorithm started showing me 30th birthday content the other day. Which cuts deep, because in just a few days, my sister should have been turning 30. The joyful parties, jokes about being “over the hill,” and one reel of a girl lying in a fake coffin while her friends and family all eulogized her
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I never know anymore whether I should attribute struggles to the grief, or whether they’re normal struggles I would have faced in the alternate universe where my sister was still alive. All I know is I am hurting—a lot—and I feel like it’s starting to suffocate me again. The melancholy filter over everything is back,
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Three months ago I wrote to someone on a forum who asked me whether sibling loss gets better or easier. I had forgotten about my response entirely, but that person recently resurfaced and started that conversation back up. The answer is still valid, and my new self is still forming. I think that might be
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That title may be sensational, but I am less than what I once was, and I can’t pretend it isn’t true. I’m way worse at responding to text messages and emails, sometimes taking days to reply. I am flakier than I have ever been in my life. I am lazier than I used to be.
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80 days ago*, I moved to an entirely new country on the other side of the world. That had been the plan since before my sister’s death. And so life marches on. In those 80 days I’ve lived life—nested in a new home, tried to start building a new social network, had my heart damaged
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Sometimes I forget just long enough that I select her username on Instagram or I start typing her nickname in the text “to” field. In those brief moments of suspense, she’s alive again. Sort of. But then it’s like that feeling when you think you’re on the last step, but there’s another. You fall—just a
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This post is a snapshot of what grief looks like on our parents. It has been 400 days since we lost my sister. I didn’t set out to commemorate the specific day, but it worked out that way when I sat down to write. Our father’s grief is quiet, subdued. His phone wallpaper is a
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On the one-year anniversary of my sister’s death, exactly four people reached out to me. Two of them are people I have never met in “real life” but connected with on grief spaces online. There was something profoundly lonely about the lack of recognition of the significance of the date. Or, I suppose, about the
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I am on the precipice of moving far from home again. To a new place, but to a life and situation that will have the echoes of where I was a year ago when my sister died. I don’t know what to expect from myself or whether this new environment will set me free or
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I am three days into the second year of my existence without my little sister. I spent her death anniversary with our parents and her former partner at a lake we went to every year as a family growing up. I had never been to this place without her, and the fact of her absence
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“Shōgun” is a beautiful work of art, and two brief parts in particular so perfectly express a complex reality.
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If I use language to represent my heart and innermost feelings, she still is. But if I need to clearly communicate undeniable reality, she was but is no longer.
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What I need changes daily, sometimes hourly. But a constant is the need to be truly heard.
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I am trying to prepare to move, take a final exam, and say goodbye to the city that I consider my second hometown. I’ve got a lot going on, and I am busy. I don’t have time to open Facebook and meltdown because a memory from 11 years ago reminded me of when I was
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“Is it just me I just do not want to even want to acknowledge May is coming?”
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Grief is a filter, but you can’t change the settings anymore.
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I’ve been playing Baldur’s Gate 3 lately, and I’m bad at it. This isn’t relevant, except to say that I have often had to reload the game from a prior save point after I single handedly get the whole adventuring party into an impossible pickle. In the escapism of the game, I have let my…
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Walking deliberately through the fire sucks a lot but sure feels better than sitting in the burning room and trying to convince yourself there’re no flames.
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Every holiday seems to bring a unique chance to feel my grief come at me from a new angle.
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Unmoored Sister 