By Amy Sampson-Cutler
Published in Wow! Women on Writing. So honored to place second in this contest! Click here to read my story as well as the other amazing winners!!!!
My sister is the kind of person who, when she is mad at you—for even the slightest infraction—makes you feel like you don’t exist. Like you would do anything to make her like you again, because existing in a world where you are bending to please other people is still better than not existing at all.
My sister is the kind of person who could be taken in off the streets by strangers, and still find that their taste in decorating is terrible, and she would wash the stall before taking a shower, even if her own body was covered in filth.
My sister is the kind of person who refuses to go to church on Sundays, not because she doesn’t believe in God, but because she can’t stand someone else telling her how to believe.
My sister is selfish, and arrogant, and narcissistic, but if you tell her any of these things, you would have to throw yourself in front of a train because the thought of getting run over by a train—having your body ripped to shreds and your shoes found in a mangled mess in the woods somewhere—is somehow less frightening than telling someone what you think they most need to hear.
Because my sister thinks that she is kind and caring, if perhaps a bit smarter than some.
This is not how I think of my sister at all, but it is what she thought of me. Those words are the words she spoke to me, holding her head high as we walked through the city streets, having what was our last, and final, major fight.
After my sister spoke those words to me, she stepped out in front of a moving bus, the tiny silver elephant charm I got her for her 17th birthday torn from her ankle and crunched under squealing tires. While her pink converse shoes were not found in the woods, they were definitely missing when traffic was finally stopped, and I sank to my knees beside her body.
I wondered after if the bus was a fill-in for the train, if she stepped out into the street on purpose, or if she was just upset and not paying attention.
The converse, the bus, the blood on the sidewalk and in the street, and on my hands as I held her crumbled body, all meant one thing.
I was not a sister anymore.
I was none of the things that she thought I was, because something can’t exist if there is not someone to think it.