This post is sure to cause some familial discord but damn it I need to get it all out.

Something happened last night. I reposted the most ridiculous article that popped up in my Facebook feed. The article was about a “medical” study that showed older sisters are bigger and more prone to weight gain than their younger sisters. I posted it and tagged my older sister as a joke because seriously, to me it seems like junk science with way too many variables and the article itself was laughable.

If you look at my sister and I you’d see she’s bigger than me…SHE’S MORE THAN HALF A FOOT TALLER!!!!

Well, apparently my sister didn’t see it as a joke and shot back on the defensive calling me out on the weight I’ve gained. Once it became clear that she saw it as a put down and not the joke I had intended, I felt bad, really bad.

But should I?

My entire life I’ve looked up to my sister. When I was a kid I wanted nothing more than to be her. She was so beautiful and cool, why wouldn’t I want to be like her?

Despite my silently worshiping her we were never really very close. Why would we be, there are ten years between us? There were a few years where we were pretty close but I’d never say we were BFF.

Time and life happened and we grew apart once again. Over the last few years we’ve probably gotten further apart than ever.

Over the past few years I’ve been made to feel like the white trash little sister on more than one occasion by comments my sister has made in passing. Two things my hero sister has said to me have stuck with me and still hurt me every time I think about them.

My sister once poked fun at the little family on the window of my truck saying, “When Bill divorces you it’ll be his truck so he should be first.” When I heard those words my blood ran cold but I stuffed it down and never put another sticker family on one of my cars. My parents were sitting right there and no one stepped up to say she was wrong.

More recently my sister and her family were moving back to the area and I was REALLY excited to maybe be close with her once again. I suggested she look at some beautiful houses in a neighborhood right behind my house. Hell, maybe we could go running together. Or shopping. Or out to lunch. Or just hang at each other’s houses. The prospect of her being literally right around the corner had me excited.

Her response was in regard to the school district that neighborhood is in, the school district I’ve been proudly sending my children to. “Well, that school district is good enough for your kids but it’s not good enough for mine.”

This comment was made at my Dad’s birthday dinner in front of the entire family but again, no one stepped up to say anything to her. I was crushed. Not only had she put me down but she put my husband and kids down as well. This is the kind of comment I’m talking about when I say she makes me feel like the white trash little sister. I chalked it up to the snobby area she’d been living in and the Moscato. Did she really mean to hurt me as much as she did?

These two encounters have stuck with me from the moment she said those words. The sister I looked up to, the sister I wanted to be made me feel like a piece of shit. Did she even give her words a second thought?

No one once told her she should apologize for the hurt she caused.

So I come back to my little Facebook exchange. I post something in jest and get jumped on and accused of needing validation. I wish I had had the balls to call her out on the shitty things she’s said to me (in all seriousness) the way she called me out on a joke. The kicker of it all, my mother told me to send her an email and apologize.

Yes I hurt her feelings and I sorry for that but I was just trying to be playful with something that was clearly ridiculous. My feelings have been hurt time and time again by hurtful words that were not just a misunderstood joke and I’ve never been apologized to.

I love my sister, I really truly do but whenever I’m around her I feel like she resents me for something. The only reason I can come up with is she resents me for something I have no control over, being born. I wish to God that we were closer. I’m envious of my friends whose sisters are their best friends, I have always wanted that.

Something tells me I’ll have to look elsewhere for my best friend.

Do you have any less than ideal family dynamics going on in your family?

This past weekend I had the opportunity to spend some one on one time with my oldest nephew. I wasn’t really sure what to expect since I haven’t been alone with my nephew since he was a baby, but my sister needed help and hey, that’s what family is for.

I’m not going to lie, in his younger years he was a bit of a pain in the ass, but what kid isn’t really? I never expected my Saturday evening with him to go quite how it did. My nephew is a really cool kid. He’s turning into a lovely young man and it caught me a little off guard. In my experience with kids his age at work they are generally surly and lack anything that resembles manners.

I had to pick him up at home and take him to his hockey game. The entire ride to the rink he chatted about everything from school to friends, there was never a dull moment. He’s clearly an intelligent, well spoken, engaging teenager. I wasn’t sure such a creature existed. I honestly expected a mostly silent ride with one word answers to my questions.

Not only is he a nice kid to chat with the kid is some hell of a hockey player. It was a real treat to watch him play without the distraction of my own kids messing around in the stands. By the end of the third period he had scored two goals and had three assists, helping his team win by a pretty large margin. Looks like he’s not only a super star but a team player as well.

Something else happened that I wasn’t expecting, I felt a sense of pride watching him play that I’d only felt witnessing my own kid’s achievements. My heart nearly exploded with pride watching him so masterfully maneuver his way up and down the ice.

I’m glad I decided to help my sister out Saturday night despite the early morning I had Sunday. I enjoyed the quality time I had alone with my nephew and I’d enjoy it if we could do it again some time.

Note: I purposely left my nephew’s name out of this post. He’s still a teenager which makes him too cool for his aunt to blog about.