Author: Sarah

It’s been an amount of time that I can’t make sense of today. How does it feel like decades of this new reality but also no time at all?

I didn’t go to work today. I put a lot of dates on a lot of documents at work, and the thought of staring this date down hundreds of time felt overwhelming. Maybe the third time around I will be able to treat the day like any other, but today I needed the solitude.

I slept way longer than normal. I was lethargic getting out of bed. I mourned and then got restless, switching to chores before a new wave of tears pulled me from the task. I had lunch with a trusted friend, but only because another friend alerted them to the day and its importance—I would have left myself cloistered away from the world alone today, even though I didn’t want the isolation, not really. I feel like the new burden of the time since my sister’s death is that I feel like my pain is now an inconvenience to raise to others. I carry it quietly so as not to bother them. No one could possibly want to have this knowledge, let alone put aside their own lives to sit with me as mine stands still.

For the record, I would never tell a friend to be like this. I do not recommend walking through life with the belief that no one around you wishes to be given the chance to step up and be there for you. My logical mind tells me there are plenty of people who would offer, but I do not create the space for them to try. And then I tell myself I am alone. Because I am alone. Because I have made it that way.

Tonight I will eat something frivolous that reminds me of my sister. Then I will get myself dressed and go join some good people for a weekly Tuesday hangout. Because the only way I can convince myself I am not alone is to not be alone.

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, and when it does, the re-realization doesn’t hit quite as hard as it used to. But the sting is still there.

I just finished an incredible two week trip. I did brave, bold things I’ve never done before. I leaned in and lived life fully. And in the most central part of my being I wished to be able to share some of it with my sister. I wanted to update her on the number of kilometers traveled. I wished I could send her egregious typos I found on public signage. I longed to buy her silly tourist trinkets that reminded me of her or inside jokes. But I can’t. That part of my life is over, and I never even knew the end was coming until it did.

In the almost two years, I’ve finally passed the point where I impulsively buy all the things I would have bought her, because I don’t need the random stuff in my life. I’ve also largely ceased sending messages to her now-defunct accounts and lamenting at the ever-growing length of the one-sided conversation. But there’s this hole nestled in every new experience, and it’s the exact shape of sharing the story with her.

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 was just as essential a component as the sun in the sky.

But then she quietly exited the frame, never to return. This structural pillar of my reality was just suddenly gone, and I found out the hard way that the engineers hadn’t tested for this scenario. I honestly didn’t know for a long time whether the rest of me would collapse. These days, I don’t worry about a complete cave in. But I feel now like I am walking around an apartment unfamiliar to me in the dark. I keep bumping into obstacles I didn’t know were there and tripping in holes I didn’t realize my sister’s absence left.

I feel sort of boxed in, at times. The spectrum of options has narrowed, because I lost my partner when she died. There’s a pressure, most intensely from our parents, but also from others, about all the things I now “must” do.

Sarah must pick her job assignments and the places she lives to optimize her safety and closeness to home.

Sarah must answer messages from family quickly and consistently, because there’s now only one person to respond.

Sarah must find love, get married, buy a house, be happy, and live out the most perfect life journey possible, so everyone can pour all the emotion and excitement into one life when it was meant to be shared among two.

Sarah must be prepared to not only bear the legacy of the older relatives, especially her parents, but now also her sister. Her sister that was supposed to be right there alongside her.

Sarah must be okay, because everyone worries about Sarah’s parents but sees Sarah as just the support to prop up her heartbroken parents.

Sarah must constantly figure out the right amount of honest to be when talking about her sister, still. Sarah shouldn’t make anyone uncomfortable; she should hold that all herself.

And honestly, sometimes Sarah must sit in front of her laptop writing and crying the kind of ugly cry that makes your whole face stuff up and stay red for half an hour. Because someone else probably knows exactly what Sarah is trying to say, and she wants that person to know they’re not alone.