I think the thing that I feel the most guilty for is my family. I know that I am not the cause for my illness, but it’s all the tears, family meeting and hushed conversations I have overheard that makes me so mournful. I am mourning what my family could have been. Had I not become so sick, had I hid it better or not made it so obvious would we have been better people? To this day won’t my sister speak of my illness, she will shut down every joke, remark or acknowledgement that I am not what I should be. I wish I could apologize to her for making her the glass child, but I don’t think I will ever get that many words in to a sentence before she stops me. It was her forming years and they were shadowed by my hospital visits, scars and days laying on the couch crying my heart out.
I resented her for a lot of years because she was the golden child, she didn’t do everything perfectly, but my parents liked her better. But I know now that she too hurt in ways I will never understand. She hurt herself, and I am not sure if it was because I did so or because she needed her own outlet, but as she has told me many times: you are their favorite. Which I find hard to see, but then I got their attention whenever I cut myself or we had to drive to a new therapist appointment.