Fire and Ice

Fire and Ice

I know I can come across to other people as callous and unfeeling on occasion. I can be cold as ice--frostily, perfectly polite. I don't do it intentionally to hurt anyone.  It seems to be an automatic reaction to when I've been hurt or upset to reduce myself to manners, becoming completely devoid of warmth and sincerity, but most of all feelings.

Some people, when angry or betrayed, transform to heat,  full of fiery outbursts.  They let all sorts of things fly about, calling up a storm of words to express how they feel.  They become the moment themselves, losing rationality, burning everything with emotion.  I am the opposite.  Instead of expanding, I contract to the smallest, remotest point possible.  I retreat into myself and become logical and rational.  I use civility like a knife, cutting with precision strokes.  It is a cold passion, but just as destructive as the heated kind.

I think it is funny that my sister and I have such disparate fighting styles.  Raised in the same household with the same parents and enjoying seemingly the same childhoods, we could not be more different when it comes to engaging in or sustaining an argument.  I know it makes her crazy when I withdraw and refuse to become emotional. She interprets that as being completely uncaring about the situation. And in all honesty, I can understand how she might interpret it that way.  Rather than succumb to the feelings I have, I shut them down, put them in a drawer to deal with them later privately. I have never liked being "messy" in front of other people, including family, and being emotional is "messy."  It is uncontrolled, it is untamed and I don't like it one bit.

 She makes me nuts when I cannot get past her posturing and bombast.  She is all feeling and no logic and completely "messy." She feels so much that she refuses to listen.  I think her ears must be too full of fire to hear anything anyone says.  I hear everything, I just don't react to it. It is equally as destructive of a fighting technique or defense mechanism as not listening. When we fight, we embody the saying "oil and water."  We do not mix at all, bouncing off each other the entire argument. Dancing around each other and not resolving anything until she cools down and I warm up. It is fortunate that we do not fight much because we do not do it well.

My sister is all I have left from my original, very close-knit nuclear unit. For my entire life, she and I behaved as an inseparable unit.  We were best friends, confidantes, and each other's cheerleaders. As ugly as our fights could become, our love and friendship remained just as strong.  Things lately, however, have been incredibly strained between us.  Living in each other's back pockets had to come to an end sometime and I actually could sense a change in both of us over the past few years, where I became more of my own person.  As I've matured, I've become more opinionated and less willing to subsume the things I want to do in favor of someone else's desires.  She has changed a variety of ways as well. We think differently, we behave differently, and we are both our own women with our own ideas and beliefs.

I never thought, in a million years though, that the changes we've both undergone would lead to an estrangement between us.  For the past several months, our relationship has been strained by external factors, other people, our own reactions to situations, and differences in how we think about what constitutes good and bad decisions.  I think the differences in our outlooks were always present, but current situations have exacerbated them, brought them into the forefront and highlighted them.  It has become less easy to brush them under the rug and move on as if they did not exist.  It has become harder to accept those things about each other that make us so different and therefore, we've quit spending time together.  

I don't know when this estrangement will end.  Unfortunately,the one thing we do have in common is a stubborn nature.  She thinks she is right and I think I am right and neither of us has gotten to a point where we are willing to give up enough of our points to make it comfortable between us.  All I do know is that I miss her.  I miss her so much.  I lost a lot last year with all of the changes that happened in my extended family, with the death of my father, with just....everything. I never expected to lose her too.  

The past several months have been incredibly difficult in regard to my relationship with my sister.  I think about it all the time.  How we went from being so close to so very far away from one another. In all honesty, I don't think it will ever be the same again. She and I are not the same people we used to be.  I just want it to get to a point where we can be good friends, without any fire or ice, without too  much much messiness or precision.  I want a calm, peaceful, easy and enjoyable friendship with her and I am really going to work on trying to achieve that.  I hope she works at it too.  Life is too short not to have your family share it with you.