If I got visibly upset about anything, I was immediately scolded and told not to be dramatic or exhausting. At the time, I foolishly thought that was just what having a highly emotional sibling was like. It took me years of therapy and distance to realize my mother had meticulously trained both of us into those specific roles.
Chloe learned early on that her pain made people gather around her, offering endless comfort and concessions. I learned that my pain was a nuisance, something I should swallow and deal with quietly in the dark so I didn't inconvenience anyone else. That psychological conditioning probably perfectly explains why I stayed in my first marriage to Greg much longer than I ever should have.
I had Leo when I was 24, young enough that I still felt like I was playing dress up and pretending to be an adult half the time. Greg, my then husband, worked full-time in corporate logistics. I had stopped working my entry-level marketing job after Leo was born because the crushing cost of infant child care in our area would have eaten almost 80% of my take-home pay. Plus, I was bone tired in that specific hollowed-out new mother way where you literally stop remembering what day of the week it is or the last time you washed your hair.
I loved Leo so fiercely, it actually scared me. But I was deeply lonely, perpetually exhausted, and financially dependent in a way I hadn't ever anticipated. Around the time Leo turned 1, Greg started staying late at work more often.
He became weirdly aggressively protective of his cell phone, taking it into the bathroom with him and sleeping with it under his pillow. He also became suspiciously nicer to me, but in this distant, hollow, guilty way, which sounds ridiculous to complain about until you've actually lived it. He'd randomly bring home my favorite expensive almond croissants from a bakery across town, hand them to me with a tight smile, and then barely speak a single word to me through the entirety of dinner.
One rainy Tuesday night, Leo had finally gone to sleep after three agonizing hours of teething-induced fussing. Greg was down the hall taking a shower. His phone was sitting face up on the living room couch right next to my leg. I wasn't snooping.
I feel the intense need to state that clearly because later on everybody in my family acted like I had illegally wiretapped his devices and conducted a malicious criminal investigation. I was just sitting there staring blankly at the wall when the screen suddenly lit up with a banner message preview. I glanced down and saw my sister's name, Chloe. The message read, "I hate waiting for you to decide when we're telling her." I stared at that glowing rectangle for so long that the screen eventually timed out and went dark.
There are moments in life where your physical body figures out a devastating truth seconds before your conscious brain can process it. My face instantly burned hot. My stomach dropped through the floorboards. I could hear the shower water running down the hall.
And I remember thinking very stupidly and numbly that I should carefully slide the phone back exactly a quarter inch to the left, exactly where it had been, so he wouldn't know I'd accidentally seen anything. Then the phone buzzed again. The screen lit up. Another message from Chloe.
"You said after the baby things would be different. You promised." That was the exact moment I picked up the device, swiped it open, I knew his passcode. It was our anniversary, ironically enough, and opened the text thread. There were months of messages.