Navigating the Relationship with Your Sister: A Bipolar Perspective
My little sister is almost exactly 10 years younger than me. This decade’s difference has led to a lifetime of conflict and resentment. Truth be told when I was 9 years old and my mother told me she was pregnant I had hoped for a boy because I believed that my parents would love a boy equally but different to how they loved me and somehow I knew being a highly emotional kid I would need a lot of love and attention in the years to come. It turned out that my mother had a little girl a few months before my 10th birthday.
My sister and I have never been close. We have had moments of closeness, periods of peace and harmony but for the most part our differences have always divided us. When she was 12 years old and I was 22 years old both of our grandmothers dies but with one fundamental difference: She was very close to my father’s mother, having been raised by her from a baby and I was extremely connected to my mother’s mother so I know each passing had a different and ultimately detrimental effect on how we navigate our individual lives going forward. I can’t really say how these deaths affected her mental health but I know I became drug-addicted, depressed and subsequently struggled with mental illness.
When I was diagnosed with Bipolar I disorder in 2006 my sister was just entering highschool. Anyone who remembers the highschool experience can attest that it is a very challenging time in an adolescents life, now add having an adult older sister with a serious mood disorder diagnosis and that makes a messy complex soup. Being the older daughter who had gone off to university there was a lot of hope wrapped in expectations for my future success and although I did graduate with an honours degree I was no longer the daughter or the sister that my family recognized.
I was emotionally volatile, often having mood swings that went from euphoric and disruptive Mania to lows that had me locked in my room for weeks or months at a time non-communicative with my family including my little sister.
I remember there were several episodes where in my delusional state I believed my little sister was my daughter and when I would approach her with wild love in my eyes she would run into the closest corner of the room and scream for me to leave her alone. Looking back on these moments I realize that my sister was exhausted and scared from the chaos my unchecked illness created in our home. Living in my own reality then I was completely unaware how unsafe I made hers. I have a lot of regrets along the way to wellness but my greatest is the damage my mental illness did to the relationship with my little sister.
Final Thoughts
My sister and I are still not as close as I’d like us to be. We are on different paths in life and I’m not sure when and if those paths will cross again on my journey to wellness. We share a connection with her parents and I am blessed to have a good relationship with her two daughters. My sister once said to me if we weren’t related we would not be friends and I think she’s probably right. It's more than just years that separates us, it's also life experiences and how we have chosen to handle the challenges they present. I love my sister dearly and I hope one day we can find our way back to each other but for now we live by the invisible boundaries that we have both had to set in order to exist in the spaces we share.
.png)
.png)
No comments:
Post a Comment