I’m with Crazy: A Love Story (Ep8) National Sibling Day & Crazy

You know, all those greeting card company commercials that celebrate siblings and family or the magazine articles, you know the question, “When was the last time you told your brothers or sisters you loved them?” The media and marketing all remind me on this National Siblings Day that it’s my excuse to give them all a call, write them a letter, some way somehow to reconnect, tell them I love them and yet I don’t. I’ve said it before. Life isn’t a 30 second Norman Rockwell freeze frame. It isn’t what I see on Facebook, those constant happy families with brothers and sisters posing for selfies. Sibling rivalry isn’t some family dynamic norm to laugh at and to leave unchecked, and sometimes there really may be too much baggage to unpack and put away. My relationship with my own siblings isn’t what the world tells me it should be. It isn’t what I would like it to be.

 

Subscribe on iTunes Listen on Soundcloud

Transcript:

Hi, and welcome to Madness To Magic, and my podcast, I’m with Crazy: A Love Story. I’m your host, Paolina Milana, author of “The S Word”.

This show is for those of us who find ourselves surrounded by madness and wanting to find the magic within. We’re going to come together here as caregivers to those who have been diagnosed with a mental illness. Maybe it’s someone in the family we’ve been born into. Maybe it’s someone we love. Maybe it’s someone we work with. Maybe, even, it’s ourselves. Whether we’ve been thrust into this caregiver role or taken it on by choice, this podcast is where we’re going to share our stories and learn to realize the magic in all the madness we may have been experiencing. I promise you, it can be done. So let’s get to it.

Welcome back, everybody. Here we are meeting again. Thank you for showing up and today actually happens to be National Sibling’s Day. If you didn’t know that today was Sibling’s Day, I’m sure you’re not alone or maybe you are. There seems to be a national something day for every day and I don’t know about you, but I sure can’t keep up. There’s also a chance you may be listening to this and not even have a brother or a sister. In which case, why would you know that it’s Siblings Day? Or maybe that the very fact you don’t have a sibling is why this day is on your radar. Who knows? So many questions.

My husband calls me the interrogator, so trust me, I could ask without end. But for this chat today, I’m taking it pretty personal because if, like me, you did know that today is the day we’re supposed to be honoring our brothers and our sisters and you do have siblings, then I hope that unlike me, you’re actually doing what this holiday suggests. Hopefully you’re picking up the phone to shoot the breeze with your brother or you’re grabbing a latte with your sister and you’re swapping stories about work or the kids or about the times you remember most, the times when you yourselves were kids.

I have some great memories with my siblings when we were all younger. Everything from my brother teaching me how to steal Matchbox cars, to my older sister twirling and dancing with her umbrella in the rain while she was singing, Singing in the Rain, to my younger sister standing behind the line of depression era statues, the ones in Washington D.C., and posing there asking me to take her picture. I also have some not so great memories of when we were younger. My brother and I getting caught and getting in trouble for stealing those Matchbox cars, my older sister tripping and slipping and falling down while singing in the rain, and my youngest sister, well, pretty much living her life waiting in lines for handouts and existing in some pretty depressive conditions, especially after getting so sick with her mental illness.

That’s what I’m sure it’s like for anyone with siblings, right? Or in any relationship, parents, spouses, children, friends, even work colleagues. There’s the ups and downs. Right? Although, friends and work colleagues, they’re different because they’re really not tied to you. Right? For life. Parents are, children are. Although, for both of those, there’s an assumption that they will stick around. Right? Good, bad or ugly, but that’s not really true with siblings, which is why today for me is a very odd day. There were times growing up where looking back I can’t imagine getting through a lot of what we went through without having a sibling by my side. At the same time, there were times growing up when I wished I didn’t have siblings at all. For those of you who have brothers and sisters, maybe you can relate. For those of you who are solo, you may be wondering how that can possibly be.

Since, I don’t know, maybe you’re feeling like you’ve missed out. You got cheated out of having that lifelong playmate and confidant you’ve always wished for but never got. Just because you have biological siblings, it doesn’t mean you have what a sibling in the best of cases is supposed to be. So for me, the definition of a sibling is really a partner in crime, someone who’s there when the going gets tough, someone who’s lived through what you have, and comes with a sort of shorthand, right? A sibling is supposed to be the kind of family member who rolls their eyes when someone else in the family does whatever stupid thing they do. Those are the definitions of siblings that I have always thought of, always wanted. I have a favorite movie that’s called Home for the Holidays. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it.

It’s just one of those movies where people come home for the holidays when they’re adults, right? They’ve been living their own lives. Robert Downey Jr. is in it. There’s also a… Oh gosh. Her name is escaping me right now, but Holly Hunter. That’s it. Holly Hunter is in it and Anne Bancroft plays the mom, but anyway, they come home for Thanksgiving and there’s three of them, I believe. Three siblings. The boy, Robert Downey Jr., Holly Hunter, and then another sister who is very particular. She’s got her two perfect kids, et cetera. And Holly Hunter has just been fired from her job, and Robert Downey Jr is kind of a closet homosexual, but he married someone and I don’t think it starts out with the family knowing. Anyway, there’s just a lot of stuff kind of going on. And then there’s an aunt who’s a little bit off her rocker, so to speak.

And the parents are, I don’t know, just kind of almost a comical stereotypical parents, Anne Bancroft and her husband, but anyway, throughout the movie they kind of resurrect old wounds and they just kind of speak to how there are siblings who kind of really get along, they really click and then there’s maybe the outsider. And, they also kind of just come to the conclusion that maybe siblings aren’t always going to like one another, aren’t always going to choose one another and maybe the best thing is to separate.

So anyway, that movie always kind of stuck with me and honestly it stuck with me. It has stuck with me even more so because I find myself kind of in a similar situation. Right? So what I was kind of expressing before about what a sibling means to me, that is what it was a long time ago. Right? We were kind of all as much as we maybe fought, just like any siblings, we were all kind of together. We all kind of banded kind of jointly when we were having family parties, whatever it was. But, that kind of goes away and I’m sure it goes away for a lot of people in great part because you grow up and you go and you live your own lives, you move away.

So it’s really comes down to my expectations of really what siblings should be. It no longer holds true as much as I believe that they should. So yeah, I look at my husband and he has three sisters and a brother. They’re all very different and they don’t live near one another. They have their own families, their own lives. Whenever I see my guy with his siblings, they all may not hold the same beliefs or agree on everything, but they still kind of get together. They actually play board games. They share meals. On the few times I’ve heard them speak to one another on the phone or texting each other, they always seem to close the conversation with an I love you.

On my side of the family, that’s not so much the case. At first part, my youngest sister is no longer living and while my brother and I have said I love you to one another, it’s not on those phone calls or the texts, the comical texts that we send back and forth. Maybe it’s during in-person visits after not seeing one another for a while, but that’s about it. My older sister, she’s the one who’s married. She has two daughters, two girls of our own. She can’t seem to chat one on one with me without either of our voices escalating and at least one of us dishing out, I don’t know, unhealthy doses of blame and hurt and whatnot. And now we just don’t talk at all. And yes, for those of you wondering, “Well why don’t you reach out?” I have and I don’t anymore. It’s gone unanswered.

It’s funny because I’ve heard her tell her own children, “You know, you two you’re sisters. You only have each other so you better find a way to get along.” And they do, but her rule clearly doesn’t apply to us. The truth of it is I do miss her. Now when it comes to my brother, text is the primary method of connecting with him, and while it’s not often or not as often as I’d like, it’s not the same either. It’s not like it used to be between us, but then nothing ever is. Right? We grew up with me thinking my brother could do no wrong and him always making me laugh. We had each others’ backs and so that, to some extent, has stayed the course, but it just used to be easier. Way, way easier. And it used to be so free. That’s what I remember whenever I take out old photographs and take a look at whatever we were going through. So I have to say I miss him, too.

And then as I said, my baby sister, she passed away. And I can’t believe, wow, that it’s been five years already. And as you may know, her life was a struggle since birth. She was hospitalized with pneumonia at the age of two, learning disabled, bullied all throughout school, diagnosed a paranoid schizophrenic at the age of 24, committed to a psych ward more times than I care to count, and ultimately she just became kind of catatonic doped up on drugs, a resident at an assisted living facility. She was only 46 when she died alone in her room. And if I’m honest, toward the end, I dreaded when that phone would ring and I’d see it was her calling. A lot of times I’d just ignore the calls to avoid talking with her, and yet today I think, “Wow, what I wouldn’t give to see her name once again pop up on my caller ID.”

You know, all those greeting card company commercials that celebrate siblings and family or the magazine articles, you know the question, “When was the last time you told your brothers or sisters you loved them?” The media and marketing all remind me on this National Siblings Day that it’s my excuse to give them all a call, write them a letter, some way somehow to reconnect, tell them I love them and yet I don’t. I’ve said it before. Life isn’t a 30 second Norman Rockwell freeze frame. It isn’t what I see on Facebook, those constant happy families with brothers and sisters posing for selfies. Sibling rivalry isn’t some family dynamic norm to laugh at and to leave unchecked, and sometimes there really may be too much baggage to unpack and put away. My relationship with my own siblings isn’t what the world tells me it should be. It isn’t what I would like it to be.

Expectations, mine just aren’t met and I have to be okay with that. I also don’t think I’m alone. I would imagine this holds true for a lot of people out there. I guess at the end of the day, what I miss most is I miss me. I miss the sister I was maybe meant to be because that sister would pick up the phone, she’d dial my siblings’ phone numbers. That sister would swallow her pride again and say something, anything to start the conversation, even if it’s the hundredth time doing it and going unanswered. Maybe that sister would realize the profound regret she feels that already having lost one sibling with no chance of saying and doing all the things that should have been said and done before it was too late with her. That sister would do whatever she could to make sure she doesn’t lose the siblings she still has and would realize that she’s the only child if she chooses to be.

Anyway, I do hope for all of you on this National Siblings Day that you do what’s right for you, whether that’s contacting your brothers and sisters and letting them know that you love them or letting them know that you’re struggling with whatever, with them, with your own situation. Reach out or don’t. It’s okay to have siblings and not have siblings. Have a good one and I hope you come back for more.

Thanks so much for listening to Madness to Magic and my podcast, I’m with Crazy: A Love Story. I believe we’re all here for a purpose, and I know that this is part of mine. Please share this with anyone you think might benefit or might even have a story of their own to share. You also can visit me at madnesstomagic.com or check out more of my stories, including info on my book, The S Word, at paolinamilanawrites.com. I hope to hear from you and to join forces with what I consider a unique caregiver tribe, as we all learned to embrace all of ourselves, to have compassion for others, and to come into our full power by the grace that is both madness and magic. Until we meet again, I’ll leave you with one of my favorite mantras, be bold and mighty forces shall come to your aid. Thank you.