A sister's love

For a long time, I've been jealous of the relationship my two younger sisters have. For a long time. I'm not going to lie, I wish I was as close to them as they are to each other. But I'm not.

But this Christmas I realized that we are closer than I thought.

It's amazing how sometimes they don't seem to know anything about me, but other times, they just seem to understand everything without me having to say a word.

Sometimes I think I may be too honest here, and share too much detail. But honesty is important, right? So let's be honest.

I'm overweight. I'm working on rectifying this, but it's a long sloooooow road. Frankly, it sucks. But I've talked to my sister about this periodically over the last few months, and she has been so supportive. In fact, December was "Give the gift of health" month at her gym, so L took me twice in the three days we were together at our Mom's house. She just understood. She didn't pressure me, she didn't criticize me. She knows what it's like. We've got that shared history. She's been overweight most of her life, too. Not as heavy as I am right now, but enough to know where I'm coming from.

It was actually kind of fun. So much so that instead of the rowing machine J was going to buy as our "big" Christmas gift, we are going to look into a gym membership instead. It would probably be cheaper than the rowing machine, and we both need to get our lazy behinds to the gym. Whatever we decide on, though, we're going to get healthy...together.

As if it's not embarrassing enough to talk about how fat I am, now I'm going to tell you about how mean I am. The morning after Christmas we were getting ready to leave for J's folks house, and I was in a bad mood. I didn't really know why I was in a bad mood, but I was. L and I went to the gym for an hour and a half, and when I got back, J was still in bed. Granted, we got back at 8:45 a.m., so it wasn't like he was lounging all day in bed, but I was annoyed. If you asked me that morning, like J did, what I was so angry about, I couldn't tell you. I didn't know. All I knew was that I was pissed off.

Guess who bore the brunt of it?

Nothing he did that morning was right. It didn't matter what it was, J could do no right. I snapped at him, I ignored him, I stomped around the house yelling that I wanted to just be left alone. I think I startled my mom and my sister. I was behaving irrationally and immaturely, and totally unlike me, and I knew it. But I couldn't stop, either.

Until L came and gave me a hug. She asked me what was wrong and I burst into tears. Turns out a lot of things were wrong, none of them important individually, but together they added up to a lot.

The straw that apparently broke the camel's back was that I was experiencing a huge bout of low self-esteem, and was not looking forward to the clothes shopping sprees sponsored by gift cards courtesy of my family.

She understood. And she took care of it for me. She explained to J why I was being such a royal witch. She explained to my mom, too. She then took the clothing gift cards I received from me, and told me to just go to J's folks. She would shop for me, and mail me stuff later. In fact, as soon as J and I left, Mom jumped in the shower, and she and L went shopping before L had to get on a plane back to Vegas.

It was such a relief to have someone who just understood. Who just knew. I didn't have to explain because she practically took the words out of my mouth. She knew that I was upset, but she also understood. She knew that I felt stupid for being upset by something so silly, and that it was making me angry. Words can't explain how that felt.

She took care of it.

She took care of me.

She understood.

Our bond is much stronger than I thought.