“It cuts like a knife…”

Family relationships can be some of the most complicated interpersonal relationships you face in life. How you interact with your siblings, uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents, and parents affects your life down the road. These interactions define your personality, for better or worse.

Growing up my sister and I were inseparable and we did everything together. When she went off to college things changed. I saw her less, I talked to her less and that effected me. I missed having the person who I was closest to.

In 2000, she got her undergraduate degree and I graduated from high school. I made the decision to attend the same college she was going to for graduate school. My first year I was required to live on campus, but she gave me a key to her apartment so I could have somewhere to go that wasn’t my dorm.

I would clean her apartment, do my math homework on her couch while watching my favorite anime on cartoon network, Gundam Wing. I made her dinner a few times. I stayed with her after I had to have a wisdom tooth removed that was causing me to have migraines.

I stopped doing these small things that made me happy, because her boyfriend was making a mess of her apartment. He was there when I stayed after a tooth extraction. He was critical and harsh.

After the first year ended, my parents wanted us to share an apartment. My sister had broken up with her boyfriend. I returned to school to visit a friend and when I checked her apartment, I found that her boyfriend had broken in and was living in her apartment.

I called my sister and told her. My mom called me wanting to know what I told my sister to make her so upset. I did not tell my mom anything and I told her that she would need to ask my sister.

Later, my sister called me to tell me that she could not live with me, because she could not trust me to keep a secret.

I had not broken confidence, but that did not matter. I returned to school in the fall and returned home after spring semester. My dad lost his job and I stayed home and started going to a community college.

But after that one incident, things never returned to how they were with my sister. She still doesn’t really talk to me about anything. The only words that I can use to describe the feeling it gives me is that it “cuts like a knife”.

I suffer from Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), which has many parts. One of the major parts of the disorder is a fear of separation. This disorder forms from the relationships that you have growing up and becoming an adult. What happens around you affects how you develop.

When I was working through a BPD workbook, I discovered that what happened between my sister and myself had effected my outlook. It affected how I let people in and my inability to really allow myself to be a close friend to someone.

I continue to try and reach out to my sister, trying to rebuild our relationship. But there are times when she gets mad about things and the anger hits me. I don’t think she knows how much she hurt me, and how much it still hurts.

Be kind to the ones you love and the ones who love you, because you don’t know how much your actions will affect or hurt them.