INTERNALIZING MY SISTER’S RELATIONSHIP

I have denied for many years that my sister’s relationship with her husband has not affected me, because I did not want to add to her pain and guilt. I have learned pretty well how to blaze my own path and define my own intimate relationships, but I can still feel the residues of the unresolved effects of her marriage that remain unhealed for her and for me.

My sister and I have a 10 years age difference. In my memory, we were never really close growing up until she went to college. It was the summer of 1994 —during the economic embargo imposed on Haiti— my parents had sent my sister, brother and I to spend the summer abroad at my aunt and uncle’s house in Long Island, New York with our cousins and family. We must have been more than 12 cousins, of different age groups, that came from Haiti and were bundled up together into one house to spend time with our family and grandmothers that lived in the United States. It was one of the most memorable summers of our lives. I remember it being the first time my sister and I really got close. She was my brother and me’s protective little mother, making sure no one messed with us. She had taken it upon herself to watch over our well-being on behalf of my parents. It became a role she would continue to take on long after that summer. When the vacation came to an end, I remember crying and being saddened at having to separate from my sister as she stayed behind to head over to college in Florida. I felt I was leaving behind a role model.

A couple of years later, when my sister had settled in into college in Fort-Lauderdale, my parents sent me to visit her over a holiday weekend. I was so excited to spend time with her and was eager to see how she lived independently from my parents. I was excited for the opportunity to visit her school, to hang out with her friends and long-time boyfriend. I had met her boyfriend — and husband to be — years prior in Haiti, when he had come to visit her at our family home. I had famously snubbed him, and given him a lesson in humility when he had teasingly asked if he was better looking than Tom Cruise. I had boldly reassured him that he wasn't. I laugh at it now, but even at such a young age, he and I did not click. It was not love at first sight between us. But 8 years later, I had figured since they had been dating for so long, that I could learn to like him too because my sister seemed to really care about him. I told myself to make an effort to accept him because what mattered most was that my sister was happy. I loved every minute I spent with my sister, really getting to know who she is, getting a glimpse of how she lived and the woman she was becoming. I looked up to her. Growing up in Haiti, my parents were very protective of me, they did not let me go out with friends or even extended family if my sister and brother were not there to chaperon. So, that holiday weekend meant a lot to me. My sister took me everywhere with her, I felt I was discovering the world, I felt free. Soon after, my parents began sending me every summer to spend more and more time with my sister.

I loved every minute I spent with my sister, really getting to know her, getting a glimpse of how she lived and the woman she was becoming.

My sister had quickly taken the role of protector, watching over my brother and me, because I believe she had quickly realized we were looking up to her. I idolized her and put her on a pedestal. Then came my formative teenage years, where I was trying to build my own identity, make sense of my surroundings, observe those around me and began to make deeper reflections about who I was in this world. I began to observe my sister's relationship with her boyfriend more closely because I was beginning to be more and more interested in boys. However, I had quickly realized her boyfriend was a broken soul, that seemed lost and in constant internal conflict with himself. The smallest things would jump at me. Like his incapacity to hold a conversation with anyone for too long, his inability to look someone straight in the eyes, and then there was: his family. The presence of his father, or lack thereof, seemed to hunt him and his sister in everything they did. Their fleeting relationships with their stepfamilies, on both his father's side and mother's boyfriend's side, felt like they were constantly fleeting the dynamics of family structure. His loving and big-hearted sister, who quickly became a friend and sister to us too, seemed also very scarred. She gave so much of herself to others, especially to men, like a soul constantly searching for love, belonging, validation and acceptance to fill a void. Then I met his mother! Having raised them as a single-mother, she was an authoritative figure, that masked deep scars and insecurities, with a know-it-all attitude. A striking beauty, her fears showed by the way she rested her value on her physical beauty. Her need to manipulate and control others made our first encounter as eventful as the first time I met her son. "You have to do your hair like this. You have to wear it like this. A young woman as to do this…" she rambled on. I stared right at her in defiance and set the record straight, I wasn't one to be manipulated or defined by someone else. And she knew it. My sister might have subjugated herself to her frivolous whims for the "well-being" of her relationship with her son, but I saw no added-value for me to adhere or listen to her shallow rhetorical orders. However, what was more perplexing to me about these encounters, was, I wondered how did my sister fit into this tumultuous and toxic environment? I know we were blessed to have grown-up in a "normal" family, —although it had its own complexities— but my sister's boyfriend's family was so fundamentally different from ours, I couldn't understand then what the attraction was and why she had veered off so far from what was familiar.

As time went by, I would learn more and more about my sister’s relationship. Her boyfriend’s infidelities throughout the years, the lies and the drama she endured. I can even recall the times she tried to hide and protect me from having to witness her catching him cheating on her. She was always being a protector, but I would wonder sometimes, who was she really protecting, me or herself from the truth? As I grew older and entered high school, where hiding the truth about her relationship was no longer enough, she began to try to reason with me about her choices to stay with him. Now that I reflect on it, was she reasoning with me or with herself? “Not everyone grew up lucky like us. We have been very sheltered. This is not the reality of the world. Most people come from broken families and we have to learn to accept that,” she would try to explain to me so I could understand the actions of her boyfriend and her own. I did understand that people were different and not to be so quick to judge, but deep inside I felt a resounding sentiment to want to ask her “But is that how you want to be treated? Is that what you want for yourself?” Nevertheless, I kept it to myself and just observed. I also found myself reflecting on those questions for myself: What type of relationship do I want? How do I want to be treated? What kind of life partner do I want? I internalized these thoughts and my sister’s relationship.

But is that how you want to be treated? Is that what you want for yourself?” I thought.

Then came my senior year of high school. As we were celebrating Christmas Eve with the family, my sister’s boyfriend proposed to her and she said “Yes.” Her engagement became a pivotal moment and shift for the family. My parents were for the first time beginning to learn about her fiance’s indiscretions and family history. They couldn't understand why my sister had accepted to stay with him despite all his infidelities, and why she wanted to enter into a family with values so stoically different from ours. They disapproved of their marriage to the very last second.

To say my sister's wedding was eventful is an understatement. Nevertheless, despite how I also felt about my sister's relationship, it hurt me deeply to watch how, as a family, we judged, isolated and abandoned her because we didn't approve of her choices. The one person who had always stepped up to care and protect us when we needed to be and without being asked to, was left all alone when she needed us most. I felt ashamed of how the family reacted towards her relationship and had caused her to emotionally shut down. I felt the need to protect her, and like my brother, I felt the need to keep the family together. I would put aside my sentiments and make an effort to hang out with her husband and his family, to be there with and for her. Meanwhile, my brother and I also tried our best to be in our best behaviors, in desperate attempts to please our parents and appease their fears to have to compare us to our sister.

Then came the announcement of her first pregnancy, that set aside our family's differences and brought us together for a brief moment. In spite that my parents still didn't approve her marriage, when she had lost her job, and her and her husband were having some financial difficulties during her pregnancy, my parents had decided to help pay for hospital labor and delivery costs under some conditions. They would help set up her own company, help with the necessities to take care of her child, but she had to take some serious decisions about her marriage. She accepted the help, but not the conditions. After giving birth in Haiti, she moved back to Florida with child, penniless to try to rekindle things with her husband. He had not been too keen about her soliciting help from my parents and taken his distance. I still don't know how painful that decision was for her, but I was hurting to see her alone again and to feel the strain within the family once more. My brother and I tried our hardest to be the bridge in between, carrying the burden of a broken family. Then came one of the most painful and life shifting experiences of my life. I received a call from a trusting relative, notifying me that my sister's husband had cheated on her and was expecting a child with another woman. Something deep inside of me knew she wasn't aware of this yet, and I would have to be the one to tell her the news. A college student then, I still felt like the little sister having to muster the courage to have an adult conversation with my older sister, the person I once looked up to for guidance. It was up to me now to be there for her. It took all of me, my soul to tell her; it is carved in my memory. Her silence at the end of my sentence, her crackling voice as she tried to find the courage to murmur "I have to go" and then the deafening ring tone after she hung up the phone. I felt I had failed in stopping her hurt, but also hopeful that it might have been the big break, the doorway out of a toxic relationship. Her relationship with the family was further severed with the birth of her second child soon after the news of her husband's child out of wedlock.

Her crackling voice as she tried to find the courage to murmur “I have to go.”

I knew then I had to let go, I had to stop making my sister's life and relationship my cross to carry. For my brother and me, we had to learn to stop making the rift in the family our burden as well. We had to choose to accept her decisions without making them our own and accept that the family won't ever be the same. But despite that decision, I had already subconsciously internalized my sister's relationship and it would take me years before I would realize it.

My inability to trust a man, my fear of being cheated and lied to were all fears I developed. I had many frivolous relationships with men because I thought they were incapable of feeling anything. I would project my fears of being cheated on, rejected and abandoned on them. Then for six years, I too found myself in an abusive relationship, emotionally and psychologically, because I didn't know my own self-worth. All throughout my relationship, I would find myself reasoning with myself, as though I could still hear my sister, "Not everyone grew up like me. This is the reality of the world," as a way to cope with the abuse. Everything I had feared became a reality; I was lied to, cheated on, impregnated and abandoned during the abortion, unloved. And like my sister, I latched on to the relationship despite all that had happened like an addiction. For me, I thought, I could love past the pain, love enough for both me and for him. What an illusion! Because I did not truly love myself and the relationship was a reflection of that truth, however much I tried to reason with myself.

I was living out old wounds I had internalized from my childhood. My sister’s relationship, my mother’s and all the women that surrounded me. I was living out my pains and theirs. I was addicted to my victim story like a kid to sugar and an addict to a drug of choice. It took a lot of time and courage to break out of the cycle. It takes incredible strength and clarity to realize that life is not happening to you, but you are happening to life. Life reflects your truest intentions. So I had to choose what I wanted to see, the life I wanted to live. I am still learning and having to heal some old wounds in regards to relationships.

It takes courage to realize that life is not happening to you, but you are happening to life.

My relationship with my sister hasn't healed yet. In my journey to heal myself and my personal relationships, I was regaining courage and no longer related to being a victim. My sister and I clashed verbally and even physically, as we no longer saw things the same way. Today we are still unable to truly talk to each other comfortably. She fears I will judge or not accept her choices, and I use to fear I was not going to accept her choices and shut her out because I feared to make her problems mine again. But now, I know with certainty and clarity when I want to allow my sister in or not. She calls it "Being selfish", and I call it "Peace of mind". I find myself more accepting and open to allow people to be themselves when I am able to preserve and define for myself what enters my sacred space.

To my sister, know that you have led me by example, your darkest times and difficult moments have been life lessons for me. They helped me return to my own Truth and to Love myself first so I can learn to receive Love. I hope one day, you know that you don't need to fight and prove yourself anymore. I hope you can truly Be yourself, embrace your darkness and light, and surrender. Till the day comes that we can seat together again and truly pour our hearts out to each other again, know that I love you. I hope you find the Peace, Joy, Love & Acceptance you are longing for.