Chapter 21 #3
Sierra continues. “You really think when I was six, I had any clue what it meant to be a doctor? No, all I knew was that you were a doctor, and I wanted to make you proud. And it worked. So here I am, in medical school, and I hate it. But perfect little Joey is four months into college and having her little freshman crisis, and you’re okay with it? Are you joking?”
“That isn’t fair, Sierra. Don’t take your frustrations out on Joey—she didn’t do anything to you,” my mom responds, to my surprise.
“She didn’t have to. You do it for her. You allow her to get away with everything—”
“Hey,” I cut in, but the moment she turns, her ire focused on me, I regret it.
“You are so selfish, and all they do is coddle you. If I’d pulled what you just pulled, they would have told me I was setting a bad example because anything I did, you would blindly copy.
So that’s all I ever was—the example. The test run.
The leader. It didn’t matter what I wanted, only that I set a good example for you.
Everything in your life has been easier because you had me there to do it first.”
I can acknowledge that the struggles my sister and I have endured have been different by the nature of our birth order. But for her to dismiss any pressure I experienced growing up is, quite frankly, bullshit.
I know how tonight looks through her eyes. I’m the bratty, insolent younger child, acting however I want because my parents went too easy on me.
She’ll never know that I did try to appease our parents.
That I did my damnedest to become good at litigation so that I could follow in my mother’s footsteps and make her proud.
And when that didn’t work, I went into a different area of law.
It felt like a decent compromise. I could be a lawyer without trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.
I could still make my mom proud.
Only I couldn’t. I wasn’t good enough. Not for my sister. Not for my mom.
At a dinner much like tonight’s, Sierra lost it on me, calling me selfish. Everyone thought so, she informed me, even if they didn’t say anything, but she would say it for them. She told me, in no uncertain terms, that my mom was disappointed in me.
My mom couldn’t quite deny it. “I didn’t say that,” she had hedged. “All I said was that I wished that you had gone into a different area of law, one that helps people, instead of—”
“Instead of lining your own pockets,” my sister had finished. As if her job didn’t line her pockets just fine. But she deserved it. She was saving lives, after all.
And now here I am, listening to my sister—the sister who has, for my entire life, sat on her high horse and gone on about how her career was the only worthwhile pursuit—whine about how she had never wanted to pursue that career in the first place.
I can’t help myself; I start laughing even though nothing is funny. Before I know it, my entire family is staring at me like I’m a loose cannon. Maybe I am.
By the time I’m done, my sister is silent, her tirade paused, if not over.
“Drop out,” I tell her.
“Excuse me?” Sierra says.
“Drop out of medical school if you’re so unhappy,” I say as evenly as I can manage.
“If you’re only there to please Mom and Dad, well, that’s just pathetic, isn’t it?
You think my life was easier because I had you as an example?
Everything in my life was harder because all you think about is yourself.
All you talk about is yourself. And all you care about is yourself.
And now you’re pissed because I have the audacity to take control of my own life? Get over yourself.”
Everyone is wide-eyed at my tirade. In the wake of it, I feel a little guilty.
I know it’s not actually pathetic to try to please your parents—I did it too, didn’t I?
—and then I feel more guilty because Sierra is so young.
I’m not ranting at my older sister, I realize; I’m ranting at a young woman a decade my junior.
But no amount of logic can erase the resentment I feel at being called selfish yet again.
Selfish if I don’t become a lawyer; selfish if I become the wrong type of lawyer.
I feel like I might burst from the emotions rushing through me, and I think of what Kimiko said about an older mind still being subject to the hormones and mood swings of a younger body.
Sierra storms out, and my mother follows.
With just the two of us left at the table, my father asks, “Was that necessary?”
I think about the years of silence. Of resentment.
Words left unspoken or words that, when finally spoken, were thrown like barbs.
And, sure, my rant was harsh, but there was truth in it—a truth I never dared to speak out loud until now, just like Sierra never spoke her truth the first time. Maybe that will make a difference.
I hope it will make a difference. I hope that, in being honest with each other, we might be able to find common ground. Straighten the bend before it becomes a break.
Or maybe it’s more akin to when doctors intentionally rebreak bones and realign them so they can properly heal.
I resolve to find a more mature way to talk with her, to try to make sure the distance that once existed between us doesn’t form again. Tomorrow.
“Yeah, Dad. I think it was.”