Emotional, emotional, emotional. That pretty much sums up the summer following her passing. After dropping an online class, changing my concentration and deciding on a different field of practice I was just ready for the school year to be over. How I achieved decent marks at the end of that semester is beyond me.
I originally planned to keep my internship and job over the summer, but couldn’t hack it. And though my reasons for resigning were valid, I still felt like a failure. It’s so hard fighting your (emotional/spiritual) self. No, I didn’t have a “melt-down” at work. I just got...stuck. My grief was distracting me from everything else. I figured I could no longer let my colleagues witness the inner and outer turmoil. Space. Privacy. Quiet. I needed to just be for a bit.
No job, no school. So, I partied and slept. I also: made commitments; changed plans; did everything; did nothing. But, I mainly partied and slept. Anything to keep me from remembering my greatest pain: my sister is gone.
If she’s gone, who am I? This would dominate my thoughts. My identity was changing. At least, that’s how I felt then. Almost all I know is how to be a sister -- her sister. Something that had been true all my life was no longer. So maybe I was also...gone.
“If you have a sister and she dies, do you stop saying you have one? Or are you always a sister, even when the other half of the equation is gone?”
-Jodi Picoult, “My Sister’s Keeper”
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