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The Stranger Who Hates Me

Monday, December 08, 2008

The Stranger Who Hates Me

Yeah, I get your point.

My house isn't really a big house, and people tend to bump into each other every once in a while along the corridor. It isn't a very wide corridor, and someone would need to sidestep the other for things to flow smoothly. This is what happens when my sister and I meet each other in the corridor these days - she avoids me. We haven't been speaking with each other for the longest time, though it's not like we talk much when we are at truce. We are at war here, though it is a war waged from her side of the field and not mine, since I'm the one doing all the diplomatic work here. She has been the one giving attitudes, showing her temperament, or just isolating herself completely in the bedroom. That has been the case for the past couple of weeks, and I almost missed the days when she lazed around the house all day and didn't have a job to go to. She just started work at a certain graphic designing firm in Singapore, and for that I have been very proud and supportive of her. I even encouraged her to stay on in the job despite the low pay, because the situation now does not exactly allow you to pick your jobs just because you can - you can't. I suppose all the time spent in front of her computer in isolation increased little of her social awareness and general knowledge.

I have been hoping for the job to humble her somehow, to make her treasure the family just a little bit more. I mean, any improvement would have been an improvement from none at all, since she seldom shows any appreciation for the members of the family. It is one thing that she washes the dishes and helps out in the kitchen every once in a while, but you are never going to find her being actively involved in family conversations. You know, just a jug of tea and the rest of the family sitting around the table to talk, type things? You are not going to see her, and she is also the kind of person to throw wet blankets in our faces during festive seasons. She throws temper on Chinese New Year, goes off into her room to eat on her own, and puts up a face whenever the whole family is out for dinner. "Whatever", or "Anything" are usually the answer when we are at a restaurant, and she is being asked what she'd like to eat. Then, of course, if you pick something off the menu she doesn't like, she throws a fuss and then sulks for the rest of the evening. This is my elder sister we are talking about, and she asked the family why her friends would assume that I am her elder brother instead. I suppose when it comes right down to it, she really got stuck somewhere between fourteen and fifteen years of age.

When her job started a couple of months ago, the house grew quieter in the days, and my mother has been forced to stay alone at home while I went off to school. For moments in the past few months, I do admit that I missed her oddities just a little bit. I mean, no matter how strange are her ways, they do inject some kind of life into the family one way or another. Her job requires long hours, with her going off to work at eight thirty in the morning and then coming home twelve hours later at nine at night, usually. It is a difficult work, but a work that I thought would train her to be more mature, more responsible, or at least help her grow up a little bit. My uncle, the one that I respect whole-heartedly, once said that my sister can never grow up to catch up with her physical age. In my head, I argued for her, thinking that it is because she never experienced anything that'd potentially alter her mentality on life in general. I had the national service to tweak my knobs, but nothing eventful has really happened to her to change any of her programming. Which is why, I felt, the job would really help her in, well, everything. In friendships, in dealing with unfair demands, in love and relationships, everything. Three months into the same job and she is already talking about quitting it and hating everybody in the office. So, we are back at square one.

I know how I felt like when I was in the army, family became the basis of everything to me. Every Friday's return home was seen as being the beacon of comfort, a motivation for me to get through any kind of shit they threw at me. I was not afraid of the shit hitting the fan, just as long as I get to go home at the end of the week to clean it all up. My family became even more important than before, whether or not it is the emotional or the spiritual comfort that they provide - they became the concrete and the steel of my life. However, I hardly see any of that in my sister three months into her job, somehow. She is not treating my father and I any differently, and by differently I mean she isn't treating us any nicer. It's just that the level of appreciation hasn't increased, whatsoever, and she still treats us as being insignificant. In the beginning, I would be asking her about her day at work, or just try to understand the troubles she is going through. But she never talks about things, at least never to me. She crashes through the front door and then locks herself in the bedroom before my mother makes dinner for her at nine. Then she'd remain there until the next morning, till she goes to work again. Little has changed in my sister, and let's just say that I am rather disappointed.

If nothing else, my sister has become even weirder than she was before. As a rule in my house, you don't talk to the sister - she talks to you. I have tried to talk to her in the past couple of days, but she has been treating me as an invisible figure around the house, for reasons unknown. I would be asking her questions about the most trivial of things, and she'd just keep silent and walk away. Cornering her isn't a solution anymore, because she'd just make funny noises and then scream for my mother. I went to the kitchen a few nights ago and saw her making Milo, and I was wondering if she was making hot or cold Milo because I'd like some if they were cold. She didn't reply me, and just kept stirring and stirring quietly on her own. So I reached over and tried to feel the side of the mug, to see if it was hot or cold by myself. At the sight of that, she pulled the mug away from me and groaned loudly, like a mad person trying to claim something for herself. It was a weird moment, as I stood before this caveman of a woman, making funny noises and suddenly losing the ability to communicate with me completely. That is just one case in the many cases recently. Yeah, I really think that she hates me.

It's not like we have been close ever since young, though that picture with her lying next to the baby version of myself in the photo album almost made me realize that she loves me - she doesn't, really. I was probably a novelty, and she'd slowly get to know how irritating I'd be over the years, and I am guilty as charged. In retrospect, I was a really annoying younger brother, but then that is the case for every younger brother out there, for the most part. Still, I grew out of it, and the family agrees. Like I mentioned, my sister got stuck somewhere, left her brain behind and it is still there in the past. We never actually lived together peacefully, and I suppose that was why she decided to move out from our room down the corridor in the past to have a room all to herself. She used to slip on top of me on the double-decker, and we were never really peaceful. We argued over toys, we argued over television. We argued over computer, and we argued over sitting arrangements at the dining table. She still hates that I give her the wooden chopsticks when we are preparing for meals because she prefers the metal ones, and she still hates that I fill her bowl with too much rice all the time. Little things like that, those are the things that annoys her about me right now.

Admittedly, I did do some nasty things to myself back then. I was the younger brother that took a chunk right out of her stomach in the past with my teeth, and she has the scar to show it too. I was also the younger brother who missed and kicked her in the face while she was playing Solitaire with herself. Still, those were in the past, and it just seems like she is still harping on grudges long dead in my books. Either that, or she is having a three month period that is causing her hormones to go haywire in her head. I am sick and tired of her treating me as if I am never there, truth to be told, and not for any particular reasons as well. I always believe that if I can deal with my sister, I can deal with any human being in this world - it still stands. I still think my sister is the hardest person to satisfy in this world, ever. She is the kind of person to complain that the television you are watching is too loud when she is sleeping on the couch in the living room. She is the kind of person to scream at you if you walk in on her while she is on the can despite the fact that she left the door wide open. There are times when I just don't understand what is going on in that head of hers, and when was the point in our shared history when she said "OK, I don't want to be a good sister anymore". A good sister, I suppose I'd never know how it feels like to own one of those.

I know of a few good sisters, or friends with good sisters or siblings out there in my social circle. All of us know how awesome Eugenie is as a sister to Felicia, and Jeremy and I can only stand in awe most of the time. Both of us grew up not knowing how it is like to be close to a sibling, to have somebody around your age to talk to back at home. Especially for me, all the way in Singapore and away from the relatives, I have even lesser options left. But my sister lives within her own secluded world, behind closed and locked doors and never ever talks about anything to anybody, not even my mother whom she is the closest to. To my sister's oddities, my mother usually asked me not to be bothered with her, because she agrees that she is the one with the strange antics most of the time. I look at people with the ideal kind of sister-sister or sister-brother relationship, and I start to wonder at times how it is like. I mean, they all have siblings whom they could go home to, to talk to, to laugh with, and I grew up not knowing any of those. Just a stranger in the house, drifting around under the same roof and pretending that I do not exist. Sometimes I start to wonder if it is worse to have a sister who treats you like a stranger, or to be the only child in the house. I wonder.

So yes, I think my sister hates me, and I dare say that if I were to approach her right now, she is not going to speak to me even if I stand right in front of her. She is going to say "Go away!", which is her standard way of saying "Excuse me" at home. Nobody ever has to "excuse her" at home, we simply "go away", there is a difference. I am not kidding here, she really asks us to "go away" when, let's say, we are face to face in the corridor or if I am in her way one way or another. She never apologizes, never says "thank you", never does anything to make me feel as if she cares, or bothers about any of us. She is cold, really cold, kind of like the weather outside my window right now. This December in Singapore is starting to look just the way it has been for the past couple of years, with the high winds and the cold rains. She's like a cold embrace, though I wouldn't complain about that at all. At least it'd be an embrace, at least my existence would be recognized. Just a thin piece of wall separating the both of us, and we have to live as if we hate each other. I suppose, she is always going to be the stranger at home who hates me, for reasons not known to me.

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