Past Present or Present Past

I dreamed I saw a young woman who had red hair in a long thick braid like my sister used to wear her hair when she was younger. I didn’t dream of my sister – just a stranger.

What did that mean? Anything? Nothing?

I’m stuck in this wanting place. I recognize it but I don’t know what to do about it.

Why am I hanging onto the past? What do I think is there? Maybe it’s a kind of protection from the reality of now.

The past is long gone – I know that. I know there’s no going back, nor would I honestly want to. It sucked back then – but I was a part of a tribe.

A fucked up tribe, but it was as fun and interesting as it was terrible.

I didn’t know how to live this life. I only knew how to react to it.

I dreamed of being famous because it looked like an inoculation against the hell of life as I saw it.

I didn’t know that they were just people in another kind of hell. Some of them were genuine and good, and some were shit in reality. I wouldn’t know that for many years. I only saw the fantasy and the potential ticket out.

The older girls I got to hang around with seemed worldly. My sisters didn’t want me around them, but they were overruled by the clan leader. She was the arbiter of all things back then – at least to me.

She deemed me worthy, and so I was – at least when she was around. Mostly the older girls, including my sisters, kept to themselves, but I always got to hear about their adventures.

One of the girls, just a year older than me, was a true friend to me, but even we seemed to pass in and out of each others’ lives. We had a bond beyond time and space though. We belonged to each other without having to declare it – although we did become blood sisters by cutting our fingers and pressing them together to mix our blood.

She pierced my ears when I was 12. She was a mother hen toward me and did what she could to protect me.

I didn’t know that I needed protection, but she saw how I blew with the wind. She kept me safer than I would have been on my own. The wolves were always at the door.

She left the world last May and I so wish I could talk to her about my sister’s death and hear what she would say to me.

I keep thinking I should just go join her, but I can’t for several reasons, the biggest being that I don’t know if I would find her out there. What if suicide fucks you up on the other side from here?

My therapist said to hear what she would say to me, but the thing is she almost always said something I wouldn’t have thought of. She also didn’t judge me or tell me to have a better attitude or that everything would be alright. Just that she loved me and was here.

But she’s not anymore.

I have to figure it out from here.

I guess I always did figure it out anyway, but knowing she was in the world helped.

My sister was a jerk to me quite often. It was how our family abuse twisted her, but she came into this world with her own essence just like I did – just like we all do.

It feels stupid to miss her. But it’s complicated. She brought fun & high adventure in our early lives regardless of her prickliness.

I don’t know if anything truly exists after this life, but her story has ended.

The ringleader of the group of older girls died a few months after my friend died, and then my next oldest sister a few months after that.

I’m worried that I’m just going to see all my friends and loved ones die before I do, but I have no control over any of that.

I wish we would all just leave this world on the same day and have a plan to meet on the other side – if there is an other side, but it’s not my deal.

Being here at all was never my deal. But here we are, so, good luck, I guess?

I’m not pondering or railing against anything that hasn’t been pondered or railed against before, I know.

There are thousands of books and programs and gurus and religions who all say different, albeit similar, words and thoughts about the why of this place, but the bottom line is that no one knows – and anyone who tells you they do know is deluded or lying or mentally ill.

“Life is pain, Highness, and anyone who tells you different is selling something,” from The Princess Bride.