rachelleneveu | (no subject)

Dear Tessa,

You’re the only baby sister I’m ever going to have, and I love you more than you will probably ever realize. Unfortunately, the fact that I love you doesn’t necessarily mean that I have to like you.

Most of the time, I think that you’re loud and rude and absolutely obnoxious, with no idea of how to act around people and barely any social skills to speak of. And on top of that, I think that you need to seriously have your head examined more than I probably do. How people put up with you on a regular basis is more of a mystery to me than the writing on the Dead Sea scrolls. When you go out in public, do you always act like someone who was raised by wild badgers? Do you think that’s part of your “charm”?

Because let me be the first to tell you: acting like Khloe Kardashian’s long-lost third cousin isn’t all that attractive.

You’re catty and mean, and you have terrible taste in music and a freakishly tiny left hand, but Goddamn, little girl, I wish that we were closer. I love Harper dearly, and yeah, most of the time she feels more like family than you do, but you are my sister. You and I have suffered through Mom and Aunt V fighting like cats and dogs whenever Dad left the room, Grandma making us those crazy jumpers and planning our weddings while we were in elementary school, and swim lessons and losing Grandpa and every science experiment our father has tried to pass off as dinner. You remember when we could look in our backyard and see nothing but trees.

And honestly? I want to like you. I want to be able to take you places, introduce you to people, and not have to constantly tell Harper “No, you can’t stab her in the eye just yet.” I want to actually talk to you and carry on conversations, have inside jokes and trust each other enough that you can call me whenever you’re feeling down. I want you to sit at my desk and ask me what I’m writing about.

But while you might be the more traditionally “pretty one” in our carnival-freak family, I’m afraid to pull away your perfectly lovely mask and find nothing but a scaly lizard monster underneath. You’ve done that to me before – you denied even knowing me for years when asked about our relationship, you knew exactly how to voice your opinions on the legitimacy of my entire existence so that it would leave me broken up for days – and I’m afraid that even if we did get to that level of “sisterhood” or “companionship” or whatever the fuck else you want to call it, all the ugly you’ve got hiding in your soul will come pouring out tenfold, like blood from some Civil War wound that I, as an inexperienced young nurse on the battlefront, can’t fix for you in time. We both know where to cut, where to hurt, and if something goes wrong I’m afraid it might be too late to make everything all right again.

Hell…this is turning out to be quite a different letter from when I started it, isn’t it? I didn’t mean to go down this path; I should have taken those breadcrumbs when Hansel and Gretel offered, I should have held onto the hand of that Tom Gordon-loving girl in the Red Sox cap. But who knows? Maybe we can one day manage to get close enough to something that vaguely resembles normalcy. Maybe this deviation from the well-tread path will lead us to a new understanding of each other. Maybe by Hanukkah we’ll have worked things out enough that we can leave the country together and not cause an international incident. Who knows what the future might bring?

If we’re lucky, I’ll see you on the plane to Tel Aviv.

Love,

PS:

I will seriously fight you for the window seat, darling. Sisters or not, I will totally cut you with the business end of a plastic spoon if you try to take it.

Again, with love,