Another
death, another abandonment. Maybe having her sister around had kept Lena rooted
for life. Now she was drifting, making even more bad choices and not bothering
to rectify them. She was living with the consequences of her bad actions.
What was the use? Every
attempt she made at change backfired sooner or later. If making an effort
brought her no results, took her inevitably back from where she was trying to
emerge, why then should she have to suffer through the false sense of hope and empowerment
that the transitory period brought?
Lena was damaged. She
was falling apart. There was no healing even in her pain. At each tragic
junction of her life, she found herself standing outside Chloe’s door.
Shattered, ruined, troubled or looking for solace, Chloe was her answer. Chloe
always knew what to do. Even as a child, Lena always felt protected, not so
much because of her parents or her other siblings, but because of her sister
who was ever ready to bail her out of trouble. It felt weird not having her
around. It was disconcerting because even with their differences, Chloe was the
only one who sought after her. For most of her life, she felt that suffocating
hold that belonging to a family of successful people brought. She resented it
even—and for all her rebelliousness, her reveling in her ordinariness and her
troubles with the law, being with Chloe meant breathing in a space that was not
tinctured with judgement, disapproval or even expectation.
Which is why being a
disappointment was easy. At least to the rest of the world. But Chloe
represented something more to Lena. She was her lodestar, the constant, the
only person who held on to her simply because she was family. Being the cause
for Chloe’s troubles always hurt but who else would take her in, feed her, pay
off her bills and then some more, who else would let her sleep in their lap and
run their fingers in her hair and tell her that she was loved, she was
precious, she was wanted? Older siblings were meant to be a role model, but it
was Chloe who took on that role—of being older than her years and more of a
role model.
As far as she could
remember, her sister was the reason she even made an attempt to get her life in
some kind of order. She was the only person Lena could claim to have loved
honestly, the only person she never wanted to let go. There were so many people
who claimed to love her, understand her but they all easily gave up on her. Not
that Lena made it easy for them to trust her. She tried their patience and she
tried them some more. And the ones who somehow made it through her troubles
with her, she walked out on them. It was an old tale. Acceptance begets love,
love begets expectation, expectation begets disappointment, disappointment
begets hate.
But not Chloe; she knew
what Lena was trying to do and somehow went through it all. And now there was
no Chloe and she was to blame. The family was right—there was no sense in
pitying her. Lena certainly did not pity herself. Her sister died trying to
sort out her mess and how did she repay that unquestioning love? So souped up
was she in the deadly cocktail of drugs, drinks and pills that she did not even
make it for the funeral. Chloe would have forgiven her, would have welcomed her
but she wasn’t here now, was she? There was no reason to even try.
Now as she stood at
the tombstone that marked where her guardian angel slept, she didn’t even have
tears to give to someone who gave her her all.
