She loves me.  I know she does, just, from afar. There is rarely tenderness between us. There used to be – I have photos to prove it.  Tender moments when she is smiling at me, cooing to me, kissing me, loving me. I don’t know where that tenderness went. But it disappeared somewhere around the time my brother was born.  It’s like I turned five, and a giant screw was placed between us, one that would continue to push against us both until we could barely see each other – as if an entire ocean separated us.

I still hear her voice in my head, “stupid girl.  silly girl.”  How many times didn’t my gifted-and-talented ass hear her call me stupid.  My straight A’s defying her curses.  My Ivy League education forcing her to see how intelligent I really am.  And yet, and yet….She never graduated from high school, but lived a rich and abundant life, if for no other reason than to spit in destiny’s eye.  “I make my own fucking destiny.”  That is her life’s motto.  I don’t have a motto.  I wander aimlessly through life looking for happiness in dark corners, wondering why the light never touches me.

I suppose I could talk to her about this, ask her why she loved me differently. But I already know. I have given birth to myself. I named her for my mother. She is me. I loved her tenderly once, but when her brother was born, my tenderness for her evaporated. I love her from afar. I marvel at her. She is stunning and so different from me. I don’t understand her. She frustrates me, infuriates me, and yet – I love her still. One day when she is grown, she’ll think the same of me –  that i love him more than her, that no matter how good she is, it isn’t enough. And she’ll be wrong. The issue was never her being enough – the issue was, she was always too much. How could I possibly hug the sun? Its light would only burn me.  And I hear my mother’s voice one more time in my head, “Stupid girl, the light didn’t touch you because you were the light, casting dark shadows.  You are the fucking sun.”