We are leaving at 4:30 am on Thursday morning to go to my birthmother's sentencing.
That's a 4 hr if-we're-lucky road trip, and under the circumstances, it probably won't be a road trip buzz either. No, it'll be a long, CBC-listening drive (and to make it clear, I hate listening to CBC this way. Why? Because my sister doesn't listen to it loud enough. It's bad enough that we always seem to be listening to re-hashed arguements or badly-chosen music programmes that early in the morning. It's worse when you can barely hear it, but hear enough of it to know that it's getting on your nerves.
I'd put forth the effort to make a mixed-tape or two, but I know that she'll only insist on hearing the weather reports.
Already, I can tell that it's a bad idea that we're going. Make that: I'm going. I want to be supportive and show that I care about her future, but I am also getting my hackles up. I'm tense and I feel a bitter taste in my mouth. I always feel this way when we visit her, even at the best of times.
I admire my sister in this instance. It's not like she really wanted to have anything to do with her in the first place. Admittedly, it was all my doing. But after I made my own decision about not wanting to see her anymore, my sister made it her own business to continue to show family support. I think that my sister feels guilty, that we walked back into our birthmother's life, and after I decided that she didn't meet my needs, that we were just as capable of walking back out.
Simplistic, and not really how it all went, of course. There's nothing more difficult for me to write about, than to write about her. It's the most hurtful relationship that I've ever been involved in, and continues to be this way, even today.
Balls. Sometimes I wish that I'd grow up enough to let none of this faze me. I wish I could be the caring one instead of feeling hard done by. But if I wrote down all my wishes and had them come true, we wouldn't be about to make this journey. Instead, we'd have a happy, healthy relationship with a woman who grew up after giving us away. But wishing leads nowhere.
Not in this case.