“And“/&
My husband and I have set a date. We are moving! Away from Chicago to Traverse City, Michigan. Couch will be ready, recovered and new. No more unhappy springs poking me, yelling- We have had it hard, too! No more blanket covering its rips and frays. Couch has been embarrassed so I promised it by September it will go to the shop. “Why so long?” “Because,” I answer like a parent to a child. Couch had to promise me not to lose our twenty-eight years of memories, especially the bad ones. “Why?” “Because the bad ones help me remember I can live through hard things, like a depressive episode.” Couch slouches back as if shrugging its shoulders. It doesn’t understand why I can’t just let things go. I shrug my shoulders, too. Next June, Couch and I will have lived in three states. It brags about this to the other furniture who have only lived in one, and how it will be looking brand new. Couch is looking forward to new material. A man whose name begins with the twentieth letter of the alphabet will be pulling back Couch’s skin, the sadness and shame, its decaying fabric thinned by the storm. I will keep a piece of its old fabric as a reminder of what we have been through- B, Couch and me. I plan to frame it and hang it on the wall of our future bedroom. I told B about this. “I know it’s hard for you to let stuff go.” This is true. No matter how many times I look up move on it doesn’t make sense. Letting go is scary, even if I will also take with. I feel melancholy. Exciting is too far in the distance. It is sitting in place with found.
Traverse City is far, not too far, but you can’t walk there. Walking would take seventy-one hours, biking twenty-nine hours. Driving takes four hours and fifty-eight minutes, without stops. It’s not the worst, but it’s not as close as the 1.1 miles my sister takes to the coffeeshop where I work, the place she frequented during the height of the pandemic, where I asked about a job and will be leaving in a week. “I’ll miss you here,” she says over a text.
Her name begins with the eighteenth letter of the alphabet, a letter far away from mine. Together our initials form ER: Emergency. For over twenty years, especially from my teenage years through my twenties, emergency has been accurate. Emergency is an unforeseen combination of circumstances or the resulting state that calls for immediate action: an urgent need for assistance or relief. Emergency could be defined as Bipolar. Recently I have been rearranging its letters to spell emerge- to move out of the way from something (depressive episode, a bipolar identity, shame, incapable). It also means to arrive from something, come into view as in out of a storm.
My sister and me. And links us together. It is a conjunction used to connect words of the same part of speech, clauses or sentences that are to be taken jointly. And joins colors or favorite foods: chocolate and peanut butter, bread and butter. It joins ideas and correlations: sickness and health; Lost and Found. A conjunction linking B and E, mom and dad; sisters. Husband and wife are best suited for conjunctions, so is mom and dad, yet And connects me firmly to her, like barnacles to rocks. This linkage must feel heavy and when my husband and I move, will she feel relief?
&. A symbol. A mark, sign, word that indicates, signifies or it is understood as representing an idea, object or relationship. And and &. Sisters. Sister can be in relation to family. It can also be a close female friend. Through the past two years since the beginning of the storm this symbol has joined us closer, less space inbetween names. She has been with me on my journey from lost to found.
At the coffee shop she is greeted like a regular, a person who comes in daily, and she does. “L- your sister is here!” My coworkers call out and for a moment the shop feels like home, a sort of familiar which makes it harder to leave. Her smile is crooked, the side of her lip pulls down like mine when I smile for pictures- L- smile straight! A slight hesitation in her eyes as if she has done something wrong such as say hello while I work. I see her every weekend, the most we have seen each other since we lived together: before, during, and after my bipolar diagnosis. Since leaving the coffee shop I miss her as if we already live in different states. I can hop in my car and drive twenty five minutes from W. Eastwood, but it’s not the same as 1.1 miles.
She drinks a Skim Vanilla Mocha and in the summer she drinks it iced. She usually will drink what I suggest and then make it her own and when she does this I sometimes feel I am losing something(I don’t tell her this). Recently she cut off her hair after I asked, “What do you think about me cutting off my hair?” “Let me think about it,” she said, later doing it herself. I get angry at her, often when I feel I shouldn’t. Jealous, too, like making so much more money than me, or not having bipolar. Last year I became really mad, or was it hurt or judged, after I told her I was scared to go down in days at group. “You don’t need it so much anymore.” I talked about this in group. She later apologized but I had already said it aloud and felt bad for that. She supports me, I know, she always has. I have been practicing latte art. If I am steaming milk for her drink I try extra hard to make a heart with the foam. When it comes out misshapen she still says, “it looks great.”
It’s not fair to say she doesn’t have anything. She has a horrible general anxiety disorder and OCD; she had been treated badly for being overweight. R, when you read this, I know you suffer, too.
She is special: a rock found on the beach, the cake you only eat on your birthday, something to keep in a keepsake box. I have a picture of us when I was twenty and she was nearly seventeen. We look really happy. I have the picture framed and it sits on my dresser in between the pictures of my two deceased cats. When we walk outside I often hold her hand. I just take it, rubbing her knuckles and fingers. I have needed her more than she has needed me and thus resulting in an imbalance in our relationship: teetering, an uneven walk due to a shorter leg. She doesn’t prefer this but how do you make something longer or even when part of it has been cut off?
She has been there for all my biggest moments: the hospital for a suicide attempt, my one woman show in L.A. And she has travelled with me: 40th birthday in New Orleans to see Foo Fighters; Southeast Asia for my graduation from graduate school; 50th birthday to Greece this summer: my life with Bipolar.
When contemplating big decisions I frequently think of her before my husband. I feel bad about that. I will text her long winding texts where she can’t see the end of the thought. I’m sure she has awaken to them and held her breath wondering, what now? Or the information has been too much and the words too heavy and when will my sister send these words somewhere else! When will she send texts with- Hi, how are you? Have a great day! And when I tell her I am writing a blog about us she won’t hesitate and ask- is it bad? No, R, it’s not bad. It’s just us, you and me, R and E.
She told me the other day the first time she witnessed real depression. “Your were on the couch because you hurt your back and watching a movie over and over. That’s when I saw for the first time what depression looked like.” The movie was Reality Bites. This happened back in the 90’s, in my early twenties. I feel bad about that. Bipolar consumed our family. My mother went to her when in distress. My mother and I went to the wrong people, someone too young to take care of our emotions with no room for her own. Somethings are unfair: people who keep kosher and can’t eat a cheeseburger, or are allergic to cats. Memories can be unfair. I often wish I could erase our bad memories, leaving happiness as the only thing we knew. When we would read sad books or see movies of people struggling we could sit back on the couch or in the theatre and say, “What’s that? We’ve never experienced this.” This is the lottery ticket, the million dollars my husband and I are trying to win for our bed and breakfast, looking up struggle or sadness in the dictionary to understand their meaning rather than living through a lifetime with bipolar and a recent depressive episode and then two years and counting in group therapy to be found, or nearly all our years of being sisters with my sickness the dominant theme.
My sister’s face is tight around her eyes and mouth:cracks in a tall glass, fingers pulling back skin. They are not age lines like mine. They’re crevices holding feelings. She doesn’t like me digging in. I fantasize about what’s in them when she talks (she has been in therapy and has begun to share more). When I think of her I think about a woman who hasn’t needed anything but only because she never asked. She must need things, too, yet I forget because my needs have pushed in front of hers. I think back to our childhood house on 3235 N. Volze when my sister still had the large brown birthmark on her cheek, talking and crying to my mom, afraid for her to leave. She needed our mom to stay home, when And was a healthy, normal conjunction between a mother and daughter. She has been saying she needs space and to be away from the chaos our family can have. I haven’t always thought of it as chaos. We are full of emotions, and energy and excitement. We talk over and through one another, lots of Ands and not enough breaks. And, or is it But.
We are alike: So much to say! and when we are in conversation we both ask, “Have I talked too much?” We can’t watch movies where animals are hurt even though we know it’s not real. We worry more than we should. We bring our parents to us when really what we need is space.
We are funny (but I am funnier:)) Her face is as familiar as my own and a person who makes me feel safe. When she tells me things- I believe in you, your writing is so good, you will have a great bed and breakfast- you are the healthiest you have ever been, I believe her more than I believe myself. I am reversing this and that’s where I think the healthy comes in. Healthy is leaving with my husband to build a new life, letting go of and.
And we are different, too. I live in an apartment with a deck and she lives in a house with a yard, something soon my husband and I are working to have. She has a dog that searches for things underneath the house and I have two cats who burrow themselves underneath our bed. I have nine tattoos and she has three. My hair is red and hers is brown, although she dyes hers and it teeters on cranberry with a little pink. She is a psychiatric nurse practitioner and I am a writer and planning to open a b an b. I have seen her as successful and myself not as much. I live far away from the coffee shop and she lives close. I have been sick and she has not.
I look like our father and she our mother but with age and her losing weight our faces look alike. A customer whose name is the six month of the year recently ran into her at the gas station and asked, “Are you related to Liz?” My sister liked this. We have similar smiles, slightly lopsided. You may assume we are unsure but we are not. My eyes are hazel and hers are brown. Mine can lean towards brown or green depending on the light. She is proud of my emergence, finally at fifty-two. She appreciates when I am aware of the texts whose words are so weighted they could drown in a pool, or when I realize my own capabilities, or, when I apologize for an illness that isn’t my fault but acknowledge its effects on her. She has started therapy and emerging from this. We talk with our faces close so nobody else can hear, drinking our skim iced vanilla mocha. We smile with eachother and on occasion she cries. We have become closer through the storm, through lost and in found. And is moving toward =.
And is joining, it combines two things. Joining is to come into a close association or relationship; to come together so as to be connected: two pieces of paper, two halves of a hotdog bun, head and heart- E and R. I am learning about separating. Separate is to make a distinction between, to keep apart, sever. Sever is too severe, keep apart extreme. To separate does not mean let go.
R, you will read this and I know you will wonder if we should separate in its true definition, or retreat altogether. Dad asks me the same thing. It doesn’t need to be as extreme as that. I want to be the older sister, lines and all. I want you to come to me for things and ask me questions. And when you think of your sister who lives with bipolar, the words that come to you are capable and strong. Full of life, lively. Rosy cheeked, bright eyed and bushy tailed.
Lately she has been calling me Lizzy. A name reserved for my family. It was proceeded by “Aunt” but as that has fallen away from her children she has picked it up. Conjunctions can come apart: two pieces of bread, perforated paper: sisters. And can be healthy. I carry the and, keeping her close out of love and friendship and trust. I’m not sure how she feels about conjunctions. I’ve only started asking her more questions such as: how are you feeling? Are you stressed? What can I help you with? How can I let you be you without the weight of me? And and & might do well with the distance, or but. But also joins but in opposition. But we are also unique. But connects a negative, it is used to indicate possibility or uncertainty. We are sisters but we are also friends, but our initials are far apart. But you are you and I am me. In this case but does not follow a negative.
She likes to remind me she is younger and that I have more lines. “We are only four years apart,” I tell her, “ You’re running out of fours.” I also like to remind her that by next year I will be far away and she will be responsible to answering our parent’s calls. She then mumbles a little too loud some words I won’t put in this blog.
