Leighatard (Get it? She hates that.)

There was a howling, an anguished unearthly wailing, coming from across the hall that sent me scurrying toward her door. The closet was slightly ajar, leaving strips of light across the otherwise darkened room. I absentmindedly patted the head of the worried dog as I made my way to the bed. She was curled in a tight ball around her pillow, her thin back shaking with the effort to control the shrieks that escaped between clenched teeth.

I sat on the edge of the bed and smoothed the hair back from her face. “What’s wrong, honey...what’s going on?”

“I...can’t...c-c-c-can’t do it!” Her wailing got louder and she writhed in place as if in physical pain.

After a few minutes of petting and coaxing, I managed to figure out the source of the problem – that damn boy. Their relationship had been rocky for several months and he’d broken up with her a week before this meltdown. She seemed fine for awhile; she even turned him down when he came crawling back a day later. He wasn’t what she needed in her life, she said, his path was filled with trouble. And I wholeheartedly agreed.

As I watched my little sister’s heart break over a two year relationship I thanked God, or whoever was listening, that no man had ever broken me down that way. Not that I would even let them, I silently added. I held her, rocked her, told her everything was going to be ok, and finally left her when she was quiet and calm.

She had a few more episodes just like that over the following weeks. I became less patient, less kind, and more irritated with each one. During the last, I informed her that if she woke me with that noise again, I would punch her in the ovaries. I have a startlingly low threshold for handing out sympathy, though I often demand plenty of it from others.

We are polar opposites, my sister and I. Dark versus fair, common sense versus book smarts, earnest versus lackadaisical, right versus wrong,(though the lines on that last one are blurring more as she gets older) fire versus ice – she’s blazing a path, and I’m perpetually frozen.

I admit, she’s everything I wanted to be in high school – pretty, popular, thin, captain of the cheerleading squad (though that was a brief wish, and only in the darkest of hours), driven. She’s never once let me forget, be it intentional or not, that I was then, and am now, everything she aspires not to be. First – a nerdy, unpopular kid that started smoking and drinking to be cool. Now - a single parent, living at home, with no degree.

On my worst days I am bitter for all the opportunity she has laid out in front of her, all the positive attention she receives from our family, and all the scars I bear that she doesn’t. But on my good days, which I’m glad to say are more frequent, I’m proud of her, encouraging of her success, and thankful she wasn’t raised by the same parents. Besides, what aspiring writer isn’t tortured by their own bad choices, the choices of others, or in my case – both? My parents made this prolific bed, but I turned down the covers, fluffed the pillows, and crawled right in. (That smells like a book dedication...)

I also admit she’s everything I despise, and have always attempted to set myself apart from. Shallow, emotional, too accommodating...perfect. As much as I wanted what she had, I didn’t. I suppose the truth of the matter is that we both think we’re better than the other. I make fun of her reading; she makes fun of my clothes. I make fun of her enormous nostrils; she makes fun of my frizzy hair. I make fun of her spelling ability; she makes fun of my blogging.

She was a quiet, sensitive child and against all odds, a daddy’s girl. Why he decided to handle her with kid gloves, I’ll never really know. My mother had the same sensitive personality and he treated her terribly. Whatever the reason, she was spoiled and petted and nurtured into the smart, entitled young woman she is today.

I love my sister, but sometimes I feel as if we’re next door neighbors – waving to each other across the fence and wondering if one or the other is responsible for our missing Sunday papers, never exchanging more than is absolutely necessary. We’re only seven years apart, but sometimes it feels like a lifetime. Our relationship has improved in some ways, gotten worse in others. I keep waiting for that day when we’re old enough to be best friends – I want it (when I’m not imagining punching her), but I don’t think she does. Maybe it’s just her age, maybe one day she’ll want it too.

Each milestone she reaches is a bit of a shock for me, though that may be because they all started happening at once. The first time she got in trouble at school, had sex, did something incredibly stupid and dangerous and laughed about it, got drunk, had her heart broken, applied to colleges – all of that and more crammed into less than two years time. And I think I’ve struggled with it more than she has, more than our own mother.

She just turned 18 last week and she graduates in less than a year. I wonder if, when she leaves, I’ll be the one curled up in the bed wailing with a broken heart. I wonder if I’ll regret not walking across that hall to comfort her more often – for letting bitterness and jealousy shape a large portion of our relationship.

I wonder if she’ll call me – just to talk. Or if she’ll be like me at that age – walking out the door and never looking back until it was absolutely necessary. What bothers me and makes me happy all at once, is that I know, for her, it’ll likely never be necessary.

Suddenly I’m the sensitive one.

Seven things I like - Part two

2. Possessive meditation

Shopping is a pastime a lot of people enjoy – whether it’s for the rush of spending, for comfort, or maybe for acceptance...for wanting to be a part of life as our society suggests they should.

I don’t necessarily like shopping. In fact, sometimes I loathe it. I take little joy in spending my car insurance payment on a dress I’ll wear only once, and seeing a display of new merchandise in a store doesn’t give me any thrills. I rarely buy into consumer claptrap or watch commercials and think “I want that, I need that, I must have that”. I hate driving for miles to find a parking space just because I needed to pop in for a small necessity and everyone on the planet decided to participate in a little retail therapy.

But I like owning things. I like the possession aspect of consumerism – holding my, often reluctantly, purchased item in my hands and reveling in its unfamiliar freshness. And you may be thinking, “Everyone likes owning things, silly!” But I often think, maybe a bit psychotically, “This is mine. It only belongs to me.”

There’s obsessiveness in the way I own things. Only certain things, actually. Things I think most people wouldn’t choose to be obsessive about – not cars, jewelry, or anything expensive at all.

As a preteen it was photos and the like. - I took pictures and had them developed several times a week. Pictures of inane things like a stuffed animal I’d gotten for my birthday or our cat shoved in a doll stroller, over and over again. Cloth covered albums with their shiny plastic sleeves and caption cards and cardboard photo boxes with neat labels. Wooden frames, metal frames, magnetic frames, and flimsy foam frames. And always more pictures.

As a teenager it was writing supplies. - Soft bound journals full of empty white pages and a bright ribbon bookmark. Colorful post it notes and boxes full of intricate stationary. Spiral notebooks, college lined paper, unsharpened pencils, and thick pink erasers. Crisp packets of crayons, markers, and pens...with a special box to hold them all.

As an adult it’s expanded a bit – makeup, books, shoes...as well as the aforementioned items. Nothing terribly important, obviously, yet each and every time I acquire one of those things, I have a ritual. It hasn’t changed since I was a kid.

I smooth out the covers on my bed and I set the items down neatly, lining them up just so and then arranging myself in a cross legged position with my back against the headboard. Then I look at them. I smooth my hands over them, pick them up and feel the weight of them, turn them over and over. I smell them, and I...enjoy them, without technically doing anything. Sometimes it takes awhile. Eventually I put them away or use them, but never without having done the ritual first.

I like to think of it as possessive meditation.

I’m completely aware of why I do this. Or rather, I have a theory that I’m relatively sure is correct.

Ever since I was little my father delighted in telling me that I owned nothing, not even my underwear. “But I bought that with my own money”, I’d say. Or, “It was a present from so-in-so.”

“It doesn’t matter”, he’d reply, “you live in my house and everything in it belongs to me!”

That might sound like an oddly mild statement to some, but my father was not a mild mannered man. He always felt the need to punctuate these declarations with convincing, less than pleasant actions, and with little to no provocation.

I didn’t truly understand until I was older, until I learned to understand my father. It wasn’t about the things; it was about power.

My little ritual started, I believe, as a form of rebellion and became a necessary means of establishing my own brand of control. “This is mine. It belongs only to me.” I was convincing myself, telling myself not to succumb to his hype like my mother had. He owned everything about her and I not only despised that, I feared it. Taking control of certain objects, even if only with childish ritualistic actions and fervent thoughts, kept me from losing my mind.

Now it’s no longer necessary, though I continue to do it out of habit and strangely, enjoyment. I’m strong enough and old enough to rebuff anyone that would attempt to control me, including my father. In fact, I delight in telling him, loudly, just how much I possess that he doesn’t. And he hates it. He hates hearing the conviction in my voice and seeing it on my face. He hates the loss of control.

Sometimes I imagine him sitting crossed legged on a bed with all his belongings scattered around him. I walk over and with one sweep of my arm, send it all tumbling into a huge trash bin. Then I turn and walk away. Leaving him with nothing.