Another death

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.