now that i’ve moved out and i live on my own im filled with an immense amount of guilt over leaving my siblings. the parents that raised them are not the same parents who raised me….my siblings get freedom and they get compassion and they get a level of understanding that i never got. and when i lived in that house i locked myself away because it was all i could do to survive, but i think about my little sister and how she never really got to know her older sister, how i was there when i could be but when it got to be too much, i isolated and left her waiting for a sisterly bond that never came to complete fruition. how she’s growing up in a house with photos of a ghost on the wall. how she’s about to hit the hardest point in her life so far and i feel too much like a stranger to reach out to her and offer support. i was a third parent, but my entire personality was so closed off and bitter that none of them REALLY know me. my younger brother will have distant memories of a child who played with him and comforted him, but who built up a fortress that would seem unnecessary to another’s eye. my childhood was not abusive but it was turbulent, and my coping mechanisms have been repeatedly deemed excessive by all of them. and i wish i could have been a better sister