SIBBS Newsletter, Autumn 2020

SIBBS Newsletter, Autumn 2020 | www.tcf.org.uk 14 I was always afraid of being asked Do you have any siblings? My stomach sinks. Such a quotidian question to be asked, one of the chief precursors of meeting someone new. No, I felt, was categorically untrue, and my proclivity for honesty gave me a feeling of aching betrayal when I lied. My slim capacity to tell fibs from a young age was certainly due to the parental scrutiny I was under as the only child, and well as two parents whose belief in their daughter’s honesty created an unusually trustworthy teenager. I never developed the need to lie to my parents – at least, barely ever. If I did collude with my sister to lie to them I can’t remember, and I did not take any proficiency for dishonesty into later life. But answering no to do you have any siblings was a lie; even if my sister wasn’t here now it didn’t mean she had never existed, or that I wasn’t fundamentally a sibling. I had to grow up explaining to other children and adults why I wasn’t exactly an only child, which was often so awkward for a child-turning-adolescent that I found myself reverting to the single child identity – and loathing myself for it. I felt I was doing my sister a huge disservice: pretending she never existed just to preserve my own social interactions. Denial felt wrong. But answering yes also felt uncomfortable. What if people asked how old she was? What she was studying? What her plans were for the future? This grey area between being an only child and my other identity as a sibling lies dormant like a ghoul under my bed, in the room that used to be my sister’s. I have a lot of fear; fear to experience loss again. But the recently I heard someone close to me say: how can you fear something you know will happen? This stayed with me for the rest of that day and beyond. I wrote it down so that I would remember it. There is no need to feel fear. Life is full of loss, but it is also full of miraculous reward. We just equip ourselves with the mental strength to carry on. It is managing this fear that makes us so strong. The disconnect between being both an only child and a sibling is unique. You learn to grow up fast, how to support parents who are buckling and how to support yourself. But we are also disoriented in the world. We don’t have our guiding tether to trot us through life, or someone else to make the mistakes first. But we meander through, without the companion who should be on the ride with us, bumping into walls on the way. We eventually find human relationships that can almost fill the little part of the empty chamber of us that reverberates with the phrase: tu me manques. “ “ recently I heard someone close to me say: how can you fear something you know will happen?