Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Mi Hermana


I went rummaging through my sisters old stuff at my mom’s house yesterday. Emily is having issues with mom these days so she asked me to grab a few things from her room while I was out there visiting.
There was a lot of Pokémon stuff. A Lot of Pokémon stuff. (Little known fact, spell check just corrected “Pokemon” by adding an accent mark to it). There were also a lot of pennies –for some reason Emily has always felt compelled to collect them. There were a lot of old calendars that had 1. Horses, 2. Tigers, 3. Green Day, and 4. Bunnies. There were lots of notebooks from high school that had my sister’s handwriting a.k.a. chicken scratch on them.
But in and among all the random things I normally associated with my sister were some surprising things I found that reminded her more of myself than anything. It was frightening. As the older sibling who was frequently haunted by my sister’s shadow following me around everywhere when I was younger, I instinctually feel compelled to differentiate her from myself. When you’re always being associated with your younger half you try to create, brand, and assert your individuality.
And yet here were things before my eyes proving our intrinsic similarities. For instance, I never told my sister I collected fortune cookie paper slips and put in them in a small box for safe keeping. Then I found hers. I also never told her that when working in a new art medium I am unfamiliar with I will often resort to drawing dragons because no one can really say you’re not painting them right since they technically don’t exist –which relieves the pressure of making every image right off the bat when you’re still getting familiar with the materials. Then I found her watercolor book.
I also never showed my sister some of my art drawing designs… and when my mom came across one of Em’s she actually asked if it was mine. Most of Emily’s toys were dinosaurs. I honestly don’t know if it was my interest in dinos that inspired her to like them or she developed that interest in them on her own. I stumbled across Emily’s mini marble collection… much like the one I use to have. Her photos of Ancient Egyptian relics –which I instantly snatched up and claimed for myself to go with my Egyptian pictures and memorabilia (she won’t notice they’re gone, I promise).
Then when it came to the “valuables”, I found that although Emily had a lot of jewelry, there were only a few she had actually worn and the rest was mostly placed out of sight or lost in random drawers of crap. I kept good track of my jewelry, but I honestly never really cared to wear any of it much and it never really had any sentimental value to me –at least not in general.
The random drawers of real sentimental things that seem like useless toys but are more highly valued than that was a familiar sight to my eyes (I have at least 3 drawers at my apartment right now for them –kind of like mini toy boxes). Old photos strewn about –and she kept all of her birthday cards in a special place like I do.
It was so weird to see how similar she used to be with me in ways I never noticed before. My sister is a Pisces (same as me) turned Cancer. I always like to assume she has always been a Cancer and her inner Pisces flew out the window at a young age –making her consistently different from me from the start. Now I see how matched we were when we were young and how we slowly deviated in our life paths.
What I see from my past are painful life lessons that allowed me to grow and push forward. Each “curse” revealing itself to be a hidden blessing. My sister has yet to learn this. Her eyes are still blind to how perfectly her path has unfolded before her. How all her younger struggles have shaped who she is now. I wish she would grow from her past instead of letting it stifle her future.
The fact is we both were given two vary distinct internal struggles: for me Social Anxiety Disorder, for her Attention Deficit Disorder. I went undiagnosed until I was 22. She was diagnosed when she was 7 and put on a medication called Aderol. The Aderol did several things: 1. Limited her growth and development. She grew an inch in one month when she went off the medication. She is often mistaken for someone in their teens even though she is in her 20s. She also didn’t get her period until she was 15 and it has always been irregular.
2. Increased her pulse rate. The Aderol worked by speeding up her heart beats –which were already going fast. This tired her heart and made it wear itself out so it would “calm” allowing her pulse to return to normal and her thoughts to go back to being focused. Without the Aderol she would not have been able to focus in school.
3. Affected her mental health. Aderol was like a depressant to her. Teens are already depressed as is –giving a teen a depressant is never a good idea. She contemplated suicidal frequently and had to talk herself out of going through with it over and over and over…
Aderol became a necessary evil to get Emily through school. My mom was not aware of the full extent of the “side effects” the Aderol was creating. She just thought she was treating a disorder the way the doctor told her to. Emily and mom have gotten into numerous disputes over the decision to make Emily take Aderol. Personally I blame the doctor and pharmaceutical company for not better informing both of them of the potential side effects.
Emily struggles with her ADD now as many people do. Soda and caffeine tend to help her calm down and focus her mind. But she still struggles staying focused and alert sometimes.
Meanwhile I have found reasons to be grateful for my disorder. Although it hinder my social ability and ruined a lot of great opportunities I may have had in high school and college, I am ultimately thankful I was blessed with this disorder. It sheltered me in a lot of ways until I was old enough to come into my own. It made me really see people and really LISTEN –which is the foundation to wisdom. It helped me find myself by looking internally rather than making the mistake of looking externally like most people do in relationships and things they lose themselves to.
Without my disorder I wouldn’t have gone to Toastmasters and met all the great people I am now friends with and pushed to take on more leadership roles. I would have been “normal” -not striving to improve as a person. Always trying to find new ways to grow.
And I think Emily’s disorder has brought her some blessings as well. It may have stunted her growth, but by doing so it also “evened out” her proportions. She is more “fit” than I am and seems to be a lot less “gawkward” and tall than me. Her issues with mental focus have also steered her more towards the Cancer-side of life. She seeks relationships and romance more than spirituality or business. She has set herself in position to cultivate instinctual leadership abilities. She has been pushed in the direction of mental reflection and finding ways to “calm” herself –which is what water signs in general need but especially Cancer.
Her life has shifted in ways that suite her –who she is and what she wants in life. She just needs to see it in herself.

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