Misunderstood

I remember the day my sister was born, I was 9 years old. I had been asleep and woken up to be told by my grandparents that i had a baby sister, was it a boy? no, a girl I had to ask again and again to make sure, I was in disbelief. As time went on I enjoyed taking care of her, changing her nappies and bathing her. I saw her little chubby legs take their first steps, my kid arms open wide incase she fell. Mum was a sole parent so I things got harder for her. We moved in with one of her old ‘friends’ Tony who lived on a farm with chickens and horses and a kidney shaped pool. I became popular at school because of this, I felt like I was privileged and I got new clothes, mostly procured by his thieving friends. 

But that was then the anxiety started, I didn’t know it at the time but I was being neglected, I remember going to the sick bay at school feeling really awful but not knowing why, and no one came to get me. My sister would wake up and cry in the room next to me every night waking me up and I said shut up once, and mum said “You shut-up”. Mums car backed out the drive way, she said she was going on for only a few hours, I was left with my baby sister. I burned myself with hot water and I called my dad who told me to run it under cold water for awhile. It got dark, I was scared and must’ve eventually fallen asleep. I can’t remember what happened but I think mum went out to drink and be with friends. 

I felt overwhelmed and not sure what to do, what if my sister woke up? Where were the adults? It was starting to get dark in this huge house, Tony wasn’t there. 

These experiences spurred an anxiety in me which spanned decades. I couldn’t stay the night at any school friends houses without having a panic attack. I even struggled staying at my Fathers house. 

After I saw my mum scream and abuse Tony as he walked down the hallway to his room mumbling, ‘mad woman’, I thought i should join in and say mean things to him. This was not the right thing to do as he was a kind man who only helped us out. We moved house again not long after that, closer to my school.

Then we moved again to a new suburb so I could start high school. I really liked my set of popular friends in the other area and hated moving so much, I had already been to five primary schools in entirely different areas by the time. 

The next move was to a house that another well off friend had purchased in an area my mum had grown up in, we did settle there for a bit longer, so my sister was able to stay in the same primary school. I started high school and was once again the new girl, I began to disassociate, and didn’t think there was much point in making new friends because we would probably move again. 

In the new house my lemon coloured walls were bare, awaiting the next move. My mum just put her energy into my sister, I was left alone for weekends if she decided to go see a boyfriend. By this time I had severe separation anxiety and panic attacks, even if I went to my fathers for a weekend I remember having panic attacks in bed and thinking my mother was going to die and abandon me. 

I remember walking home from high school, which passed my sisters primary school which mum picked her up daily around the same time, they never waited for me. 

Mum used to antagonise me and allow my little sister to join in. Once even my sister only about 6 or 7 even said ‘Stop being mean to Jo’. But I think she felt it was easier to stay on mum’s side because she made sure she was the only one my sister depended on, my sister didn’t have a connection with her father or any of his family, and mums parents and siblings where scattered in different countries. 

My father tried to sought help for me, breathing exercises for the hyperventilation, and some therapy. I remember mum being really annoyed she had to drop me off at the therapists and telling me to get out of the car in a really mean way. 

Mum introduced me to modelling work at age 14, I started to get work and school suffered and she then seemed to get jealous of me. When my first modelling cheque came in, she gained access to the money and went out and bought things I didn’t want, like a giant teddy bear. 

Around fifteen I started smoking pot, wagging school and drinking until I blacked out, to cope with my intense emotions. I spent more time away from the house at boyfriends or friends house down the road. My friends mother was nurturing and kind to me.

When I was eighteen I moved out to a drug dealer boyfriends house, because I hated living with my mother, I needed to separate from her, the person I loved and hated at the same time. I was and still am a sensitive person and she never showed me much understanding, her idea of bonding with me was backstabbing my father, his wife and other people, it created a toxic, vapid way to engage in a relationship with her, I had to get away from her and her mean-spirited behaviour.

She never apologised to explained anything to me in an emotional way so I could make sense of what was happening. Even back to when I was three and she took me away from my father and the house he built for all of us, I remember she moved us into a caravan on the same property so I could see the house and my bedroom out the window and being so confused as to why we couldn’t go back into the house, I was crying and I remember the light of the full moon was blinding, flooding into the caravan.  

I guess I never forgave her and for many years we didn’t speak much, because every time I would ask for support she would disappoint me. She just didn’t have the capacity, She didn’t understand me. Her and my sister are closer and I still feel that they have a toxic kind of back stabbing relationship. It feels like it's them against me sometimes.

I am one year abstinent alcohol in two weeks. A huge feat for me. And I live in a different country from them.

The contact with my sister is based on very vast and few messages on Facebook of “small chat”. My mother has gotten better with age, but our contact is also quite surface level. I haven’t ‘cut her out’ so to speak but there’s an unsaid hurt that remains, and that I have never voiced due to fear of being misunderstood or ganged up on.