I Lied

I told her my frustration had nothing to do with her.

That was a lie.

It does.

I am frustrated—deeply—with her sister’s ongoing treatment of me. The silence that is still intentional and cruel. The complete absence of ordinary human acknowledgment. The way basic kindness is offered freely to strangers while I remain beneath it. That pain is sharper and more constant. All of that is her sister’s choice.

But I am also frustrated with her.

How can she choose to stay so close to someone she knows treats me this cruelly, while at the same time acting as if she wants to be in my life again? She actively participated in the distance too. She asked me to leave her alone for years until just weeks ago. Now there is limited contact, a careful tolerance, and the suggestion that something might be different. I’m grateful for that shift.

Yet nothing about her continued closeness to the person who maintains the cruelty has changed. The plans and trips still happen. The loyalty still holds. The shared story that once required my exclusion for years by them together still seems intact. I remain someone who makes her anxious if I try to build anything real, while the choices by her and her sister that kept me out for years do not make her anxious.

I want to believe the recent shift is real. I also cannot ignore how easily I became, and could be one again, “too much” when I was right next door, while distance with her sister has never been a problem, and she’s never been too much despite verifiably treating people awfully. That leaves a quiet, familiar ache: the sense that I am still not quite good enough for her either. For more than a decade I cannot name a single thing I could have done better as a brother, and they haven't either. But yet here we are.

I am more frustrated with the one who continues the silence. That is true—far more frustrated. But the lie I told that I'm not frustrated by the other was a way of protecting myself from saying the harder thing out loud and risking losing her again. But, if I lost her over that honesty, then what we were rebuilding was never real anyway.

Her choices matter. Her continued alliance matters. The part of me that still hopes for real reconciliation is the same part that feels the contradiction most sharply.

The frustration is not pure or simple. It is layered. It includes the ongoing rejection from one sister and the incomplete, conditional return of the other while fully accepting her sister just fine. Naming both does not make me smaller. Pretending only one exists does.

This is where I am. Not finished healing. Not finished feeling it. Just no longer willing to lie about the full shape of it. I have to figure out how to say it to her respectfully: I’m sorry I lied. This does frustrate me. I don’t know how I became so worthless to you.

That is my work for the rest of the day: figuring out how to apologize and tell her the truth as respectfully as I can.