Surely, I can’t be the only girl out there who doesn’t have a sister. And by that I mean that I once did but not anymore. Even when I did have her, we were barely sisters. You know what bugs me about all of this? Not only do I not have a sister, I have nothing to relate it to either. Ever since I was born, I’ve been watching movies and shows wherein every pair of siblings is thick as thieves. Many of them have differences in personalities and age gaps, but it makes no difference. I can’t recall one single movie where it was displayed that the reality of it is that sometimes siblings simply despise each other. Sometimes it doesn’t work. Because of this, movies like Lilo and Stitch have brought me to actual tears. Lilo and Nani are so far apart in age, yet their relationship is so whole.

My “sister” and I are nine years apart in age. I can relate to an age gap but I can’t relate to overcoming it. That, and my sister is not a very good person. Matter of fact, she is an awful person. Never thankful, or caring, always spiteful and full of lies. She always had something to say about someone. Even small children have met her wrath even if it wasn’t to their faces. She may have called many ugly, but I guess she never understood the meaning of the word seeing as she never saw how ugly she was. Not on the outside, the inside. For years, I felt a bitterness from her. When she left and betrayed my parents, her true demon colors showed in full. With her gone, she played like she loved me. Said it multiple times. But I never believed her and I still don’t.

In May of 2015, a small fight between my mother and her incited the long battle that we’ve been dealing with for a year and a half. But before describing this, I will start from the beginning.

My sister (let’s call her Bertha because I don’t like that name) had always been a problem child. She was spoiled rotten because she was loved to death. She threw tantrums and lied and stole. Basically, Bertha always got everything she wanted. And then she wanted a sister, and my parents obliged, wanting another child as well. I was born in November of 1997. For the time being, since she was still pretty young, she was happy with me. She played with me and loved me. Then again, she was only nine and things change.

Going into preteen years, jealousy started to take affect. I never noticed it, but my grandmother did. It was even only in the last few years that I was made aware of this. I still don’t see it, but I guess it was true, judging by all the malice she has for me.

Moving along. Into Bertha’s high school years, she was the worst nightmare my parents thought they would ever encounter. She had really bad anxiety and never wanted to go to school. It made my mom sick every day and she lost a lot of weight. Not only that, she was just trouble overall, back-talking and cussing and stealing a credit card to buy concert tickets. She still got everything she wanted, though, and never got into trouble for any of her misgivings.

This is the part of the story where her disliking for me was made prevalent with all of the things she did to me that went ignored. When I was four, a black eye. When I was five, having to be paid to watch me. When I was six, dragging me to my room by my hair. This list could go on, but I feel it’s unneeded. You get the point.

As I got older, we started to fight a lot, even if over small things. I would come home from school and want to watch TV or chill on the computer but I couldn’t because of her. We used to fight about who got the shower first, and she would push me, a very small, skinny girl, out of the way to get there. She never really treated me the way a younger sibling is supposed to be treated. By the time I realized this, I had been gypped of ever having a true sibling experience. If I had ever been a big sister, I would never have treated my little brother or sister so horribly. It’s too bad I’ll never have that chance to showcase how good of a sibling I could be.

This next part of the story deals with Bertha’s lovelife. She had loads of problems finding boyfriends. By the time she did find someone suitable to her spoiled needs (because he was a computer technician and made ample money) and got engaged, I was twelve. Before leaving the house for good, she found the time to do one last thing to me, who was still a kid, and she an adult. It had to do with something stupid, I think. I don’t remember. But she stood above me with her 5’8” height and strong build and pushed me to the ground. I believe I ended up with a bruise on my arm or something and it scared me when she did that. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but between a twelve year old and a twenty-one year old, there was no competition. She stormed from the house and stayed at the place she and her fiance (we’re gonna call him Matthew because that’s his real fucking name and I really hate him for enabling Bertha) had just bought. They got married and she finally moved out for good. Our relationship got better, but it was never smooth-sailing. I would try to spend time with her and she would find reasons why she couldn’t. My mom would try to set things up too, but it was never a go. When I did finally get time with her here and there, she was never real with me.

And the summer after she moved out, she and my mom had a big falling out, in which they didn't speak for months and Bertha said so many hurtful things that I don’t know how my mother ever forgave her.

Right, so we’re going to jump ahead now. I’m about fifteen when she decides she wants to adopt a Korean child. Good deed, right? This’ll make up for her being not very good, right? Wrong. Because she wanted this child for literally all the wrong reasons. Quoted from my very own mother, it was like Bertha and Matthew were picking a puppy out of the window the way they were choosing a child. Not only that, but she had (and probably still has) an unhealthy obsession with Asian people, and Matthew was allowing for it. (This has a backstory I’ll tell now. My mother, hoping to boost Bertha’s almost non-existent confidence, once told her that an Asian boy was checking her out. This was the beginning of it. She started buying Asian paintings, hangings, dolls, blah. Started watching Korean dramas and, after she got married, revealed to my mom and I how many dreams she’d had about being married to an Asian man or having Asian children. She started learning Mandarin. This is when she starts pretending that she always wanted to adopt, when that just wasn’t true.)

So, they pick their child. They save up a lot and plan ahead like nobody’s business. My mother tried her hardest to accept it, but she just couldn’t understand why they didn't want to have their own and give her grandchildren. This built up a lot of irritation in Bertha, leading to her going on about how she would tell off anyone who didn’t accept it and even badmouthing women who wanted their own kids by calling them selfish and that “they only do it so they feel validated as a woman”. Of course, ask her and she will deny she ever said this. But I was there. If only memories could be shown to other people.

(Another small pause for explanation. Around all this time, Bertha became very materialistic. She would say things about money and buy extravagant things and show off and talk loudly and pretend she was a millionaire. She also had an identity crisis. She could never be herself, but had to try to take the identity of others. My mother was the main focus for a long time. Bertha tried to be just like her, but she never could be. Bertha used to draw a lot and the drawings were amazing, but since my mom also did and we never saw Bertha producing these masterpieces, we suspect she may have been tracing. One last thing, Bertha thought she was always right and there was not one person on this earth smarter than Matthew. If you contradicted anything of their beliefs, you were an idiot. “You’re wrong” must’ve been one of her favorite things to say.)

This, though, was not the only thing unhealthy about Bertha. I’ll go on to describe her marriage to Matthew. Two words: loveless and sexless. She cried the day she married him, and not because she was happy. They didn’t even have a wedding, but married at a courthouse. She was very unhappy. She didn’t love him, told us she didn’t want to have kids with him because she thought he was ugly, never slept with him, abused him mentally. But he loved her a lot. You see, these two were a match made in heaven, because they are exactly alike personality wise. Or rather, a match made in Hell, since that is what they have put my whole family through.

Now that you have a picture of what their marriage was like, I’ll move on. They go on for a long time trying to get this kid, filling out paperwork, getting pictures of him, sending him gifts. The stress got really high around this time. I was older, around sixteen or seventeen, so this was only a couple of years ago or so. My anger with her starting reaching its peaks. I started telling my mom I hated her and I knew she hated me too. There were irreconcilable differences. Bertha started saying things that I could’ve sworn was just to get a rise out of me. Like insulting one of my favorite authors or calling hockey (a sport I enjoy thoroughly) a dangerous, stupid sport. Then this one time, I snapped. I remember it so clearly.

It was the day I was getting my driver’s license. We went to her house to eat lunch and started talking about her adopting and such. I made up an argument about why some of her thinking is wrong and this went back and forth until she said “and your point is?”. Bertha’s condescending attitude shoved me right off the edge at that point. I no longer had any control over what I was saying and flipped my shit. I called her a monster and an awful person and sister and every name you could call someone and stormed from her house. I didn’t talk to her for a while after that until I decided to get over it. Around that time, she still saw me as a stupid kid who didn’t really have an opinion because I was too young. What’s funny is that while I was a kid, I was still more mature than her.

A couple of months after that, we got into a smaller disagreement about adoption again. She told my mom she was irritated with me. The next time I saw her, I tried to apologize, but all she told me was that she was still “really mad about it” and basically wouldn’t accept it. For being as old as I was, I hadn’t hiccuped while crying for a long ass time. But that’s what happened when I went to wait in my mom’s car with a roll of paper towels and waiting to leave. I will never forget that day, since it was a really awful time for me. I couldn’t stop crying for at least an hour. Just reliving this makes me want to cry again.

Well, that passes eventually and everyone gets over it. A little while after that, she makes some remark and we start arguing again. This time, it’s at my house. She tells me “you’re wrong” and I fly off the rails, screaming at her and pounding my fist on the table. This is the only time in my life I felt myself lose as much control as I did. I wanted to hit her. I know, this may sound like an anger issue. But, rest assured that it is not. She is the only person who has ever had that effect on me.

So, I go to my room to wait for her to leave and “get the hell out of the house” or so I’d told her. Again, we don’t talk for a bit. The only thing I’m leaving out here is all of the small squabbles she and my mom have had. (Oh, I almost forgot. The first time I snapped, it was because I was defending my mom.)

Things get really shaky. Bertha stops coming to the family holidays and hardly wants anything to do with anyone. We let it slide. That’s just her, anyway. Mother’s Day rolls around and my mom gets Bertha to agree to having a little thing with her, my grandmother, and my mom. When that ends up getting cancelled for whatever reason, Bertha became livid that we’d ruined her first Mother’s Day since she and Matthew had initially made plans they’d cancelled for my mom, even though she didn’t even have the kid yet and was not a mother.

This tiny, nothing-fight brings us to where we are now. After that, my sister has not spoken to my mom at all. She spoke to my father once and wrote him off as well when he defended my mom. She changed her phone number. This is when I went to see her for the first time in months. My mother told me the number had been changed and started crying that her first-born could do this to them. I became so angry that I hopped in my car and drove right over there. By the time I got there, I was only nervous. It had been five months since I’d last had any contact with her. I’d refused to be part of her game since she was hurting my parents in an awful kind of way. When I get in there, I cry to her and I ask her why. Why? And what she tells me is a kicker. My parents were abusive. My parents… abusive. Abusive and unaccepting of what she wants and unaccepting of her. She pulls out a thick hunk of notes she’s taken on things my mom has said and tells me a load of bullshit about my mom saying things she has never said. I hug her and leave. I’ve always been the kind of person who tries to see both sides of things. As for this, I am dumbfounded as to what to see or believe. All I know is someone is lying and it definitely isn’t my mom.

I go home and my mom demands to know what went down. It hurts her even more. After this, Bertha and my dad’s mom had an argument. Matthew butted in and said that my parents weren’t deserving of Bertha (and hell yeah, they weren’t deserving of a traitorous daughter). My grandmother told them to get the hell out of her house. After that, she tried reaching out to apologize with a letter in their mailbox. And you know how Bertha replies to apologies… the letter is returned unopened with another attached, saying how they will contact my grandmother if they ever want to and don’t try to get in touch again. It’s written by Matthew with his name signed at the end. My grandma is sent into tears. Not only my parents, by my grandma always did everything for Bertha. Buying her things, driving her to Chicago in freezing weather, etc, and all to get kicked to the curb.

This is where I come in. I start having to fill the roles of two daughters. Me and my dad became really close through all this, I spent more time with my grandparents, I always reassured them that I would never do what Bertha has done. My parents tell me how happy they are to have me since if they didn’t, they would have no daughters.

Life rolls along. My mother can’t stop talking about Bertha and has so many questions. My father almost never talks about her, as do I. In what I believe was May 2016, we’re notified that my sister has moved. Yep. Gone and told no one where she lives with no phone number to contact her. My mother starts telling us about her multiple dreams she’s had about Bertha coming back and making amends somehow.

We go months not knowing where she lives, until I get tired of it all and pay twenty dollars to a website to get the address. It gives correct information, just to ease our minds. I search this house and it makes me want to vomit. Bertha is still pretending to be rich. Bought a huge house with hardwood floor and chandeliers and a grand staircase. They are one couple with a few cats and dogs, yet they need all this space? All that makes me cackle is she has no one to show it off to anymore. When she ditched my parents and grandparents, she ditched my aunts, uncles, cousins, and everyone else from both sides of the family.

I start to worry for Bertha. She has essentially reclused and lost everything. I wonder about her health. So I email her, as that’s all I have to get in touch with her. The person on the other end is nothing short of a robot. I don't know who it is, but it’s not my sister. It spews facts like a machine, calling my mom a narcissist, calling her and my grandmother by their first names. When I decide to test her and tell her I’m depressed, she brushes this off and turns it back on my mom somehow. Test failed. She tells me there is no need for me to know her address. She tells me she loves me at least three times in the exchange, all lies. When it takes a turn and I get serious with her, she tells me, and I take this to an exact quote “these emails have taken a bad turn and it is not in my best interest to continue to respond”. And after that, the conversation is dead. While I’m not clinically depressed and it may have been tasteless to test her as such, I do have anxiety. And she gave me my first ever panic attack that night. I didn’t sleep a wink.

I’ve promised myself this was my last contact with her ever, but I am worried about her mental health. She has something very very wrong going on inside of her that I hope she will recognize someday and fix before it’s too late.

So, there you have it. The worst sibling relationship to date. The date is September 30, 2016 and still no sign of her. It has been a year and a half. My head is killing me now.

I will continue to post things to update or as I remember things that have happened.