She sent him a birthday gift and, given her recent behavior, he is considering cutting the ties as I once did. He wanted to know whether I thought he should keep the gift or send it back. I told him that it is really a very personal decision. It all depends upon how he feels and whether or not he thinks that maintaining a relationship with her into the future will be at all beneficial to him. I told him that for me, I couldn�t see that happening and knew that it was more harm than help to me to continue to be her daughter. I told him that if he felt the same way, and I know how hard that decision is, as I tried to make it several times before completing the act, he should keep the gift and not communicate with her further. If she wants him to have it, he should keep it, as the point is not to insult, just to maintain distance. Since taking my leave 5 years ago, I have never received a gift. She has tried to contact me 4 times, once through my high school, once directly, once through my dad, and once through email on my 21st birthday. I have never responded. I read the email she sent and left it in my inbox, a canker sore that refuses to heal, for weeks before applying the necessary salve and allowing the gnawing to stop.

The thing about severing such a relationship is that, even years later, it is agonizing. Simply talking about her yesterday left me having nightmares about her last night. I haven�t told Luke, as he has a hard time understanding. Yes, he isn�t fond of his father, and he has the occasional nightmare of his father hurting him, but they aren�t nearly so recurrent as mine. So long as I don�t have to think about her or talk about her in detail, I manage to keep the conscious feelings at bay, but no matter how hard I try, when she comes up in such relevance as yesterday, even though I felt little at the time, she sneaks into my sleep like some giant snarl-toothed demon wanting only to tear at me.

My brother seems to have matured so much. It makes me feel good that he isn�t falling into the island kid tradition of smoking pot and drinking all the time. In fact, he�s got a really even keel and a more than sufficiently intelligent head upon his shoulders. He knows what he wants and doesn�t compromise his dreams for anyone. His having relatively free rein over himself makes me all the prouder, as that�s where I ran into a wall. I could do what I wanted when I wanted and to get away from what was happening at home, I went out every now and then and got blitzed. My first sexual experience was under the influence of alcohol and I felt miserable the following day and for a week afterwards. All that time, though, I knew I was never going to be what our mother is. I knew I wouldn�t open bottle after bottle of wine, only to drive to the bar afterward, drink some more, and bring a strange man into my bed after last call nearly every night. I think it�s safe to say that I am proud of Milo and myself, as we�ve come through some of the roughest we could think of scarred but more than fully functional and strong. Really. Fucking. Strong.

I want to see my brother. Badly. I want to spend time with him, get to know him again. I want for him to know me and for us to be close. He knows he can always come to me for help and advice, but I want him to think of me as someone whom he trusts and values, not just as his sister, only tied by a mentally unstable x chromosome. We are different, but not so different as to forbid any kind of kinship. We spoke of our common interests and those that differ. He thinks I sound like Maggie Gyllenhaal, having just recently seen Secretary and he sounds almost exactly like his father, though that is more chilling to me than comforting. When I first answered the phone, I thought it was his father, but luckily he announced himself early and my pulse slowed.

He says he is planning on going to Mongolia next year, his current cultural obsession. I worry about him and tired to find out as much about this proposed trip as possible, but the details are too hazy to be sure of yet. I don�t want him to go alone and I don�t want him traveling to foreign countries. I want to protect him, just as I used to. I want to confront the threats, invisible or no, and I want to wrestle them to the ground, letting him walk safely. I don�t want to mute his experiences; I just want to shield him from the things that lurk, waiting to pounce on him. I know he is smart and extraordinarily capable, just as I was. I just want someone to watch over him because I never had that. I kept the reality hidden from those that would guide me, never wanting to hurt them by showing how I bled.

Each person I love a wound, needing to be bandaged and kept from infection.