Another Apple I-Card

I got an Apple I-Card from my sister the other day. They come periodically and are chatty, usually containing 2-3 sentences, updating the family members on her latest adventure. When I see the I-cards in my email, I am filled with anger before I even open them.

She and I were never really close growing up. Five years separate us and our interests have always been very different. When I came out, I had hope that with time and education, she would come around. Things went horribly bad one day when I was around 20 and she asked me to do something unspeakable and I declined. From that moment on, she started saying mean comments that only I would know were directed at me and everyone else would laugh at. From there, she became more and more distant and ugly and mean.

I am not a saint but honestly, for many years I tried to find a way to connect to her. Even when Peaches and I were planning our church wedding, I was willing try again and asked her advise on wedding stuff and even asked her to do a reading. She honestly admitted that she could not do the reading but wanted to come and watch from the pews, which I respected. However, when my parents freaked out at my engagement, my sister stopped all support. She did not come to the wedding nor did she acknowledge it in any way. Years later, when we kind of forced her to look at our wedding photos, she hardly said a word. And just recently at my younger brother’s wedding, she told Peaches and another guest how she and her husband would never miss a family wedding. She told my wife that after never coming to our wedding or acknowledging our marriage. I could go on but I type way too much as it is. *

I get so angry with my sister because she lives in this façade of happy family with chatty I-cards. She carries this forward in her interactions with others when I am there, smiling, being all chatty with me when people are looking, etc. But under the thin veneer of chatty, happiness is ugliness, out and out mean behavior, and a void where all substance of relationship is lacking.

And you know what is the pisser? Up until recently, if she said, "Wow, Hashbrown, I was messed up and I was wrong to be mean to you all these years." I would forgive her and try again, granted she was in therapy. But now, I am done holding out hope and trying.

* Please understand that despite the fact that I write much about weddings, there are many other instances where horrible things happened between my family and I. However, two weddings were sentinel in my life in regards to my family, my church wedding and my younger brother's wedding. They are a veritable representational culmination of all the other crap.