I am so done with my sister

When I published my book in 2012, my older sister unfriended me on Facebook and cut ties with me, which I knew would happen. I hadn’t heard from her until my 50th birthday in 2020 when I noticed she had messaged me on my old Facebook account. I missed her happy birthday in 2019, but saw the one in 2020. I don’t know what made her message me. I would message her from that for the holidays and her birthday and she wished me a happy birthday this year on my birthday.

Every time I talk with her on Facebook messenger, I try to build a bridge. I tell her I love her and our younger sister and that I’m sorry about how things happened and I’m sorry about my book etc. And every time, she lights a match to burn that bridge before I have a chance to build the frame.

My sister makes me think she is right about everything and I don’t have all the right details. She made me doubt myself and took away my confidence our whole lives. But this time she said something to me that is so unforgivable and also she has absolutely no idea what she’s talking about. She doesn’t know every detail about everything she wasn’t there to witness. And she told me I pulled things out of the air to write about in my book. This makes me wonder if she’s referring to things she doesn’t know about.

The unforgivable thing she told me was that my mom died because of me. My mom willed herself to die of a heart attack in her sleep because she didn’t want me to die from AIDS before she died because she didn’t want to bury her child. Here is what happened.

In 1991, I was diagnosed with HIV. I had asymptomatic HIV. For those who don’t know what that means, it means I had HIV, but no symptoms that would make me sick. I had no symptoms of AIDS. I made the mistake of telling my sister and I specifically told her “don’t tell mom”. Or anyone for that matter because that is something I need to tell people. It’s not for you to tell anyone. She didn’t waste any time telling our mother, and she told our mother I had AIDS.

My sister doesn’t know, and had absolutely no reason to know, but I talked to my mom every day before she died. She knew my HIV status, she knew everything that I knew because every time I went to the doctor, I told my mother what the doctor said about my health. My mom knew I didn’t have AIDS and she knew I would be healthy for a very long time. My sister didn’t know anything because I stopped trusting her when she told my mom something I asked her not to tell. I said that I didn’t actually have an AIDS diagnosis until a year after our mother died, and she said “that’s not how I remember it, but I won’t rehash that.” You won’t rehash what? Facts that you didn’t even know because you weren’t there?

My mother didn’t “will” herself to die at age 42. She died from a heart attack in her sleep. My mother was overweight like I am. I was diagnosed with sleep apnea at age 34 and they told me it’s genetic and that I could literally die from a heart attack in my sleep if I don’t have sleep therapy. So that tells me right there that my mother died from a heart attack in her sleep because she most likely had sleep apnea and didn’t know.

After this conversation with my sister, I can’t explain it, but I feel somewhat vindicated. My sister can pretend to know more than me, but I was there and she wasn’t. Things that happened to me happened TO ME and I remember them. She told me that I don’t remember things because I had seizures as a child. That doesn’t make me lose my memories lol.

Anyway, I downloaded all my messages from Facebook so I have a record of the things she has said to me, and I set that Facebook account for deletion. Deleting that old account where she messages me is a symbol of deleting her from my life effective immediately. I am so done with her. I feel free. I am free.

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Never be bullied into silence

Well I said that I was going to make this, and I finally finished. I really wish I could give the person who created the pattern some credit because they deserve it for the work. I honestly wasn’t even sure if I would have the patience for this, but I did and it was actually fun. Some parts on the top are stretched in certain spots, but that’s fine, I’ll stretch the rest out to even it out, or maybe it will even out on its own.

It took me a couple weeks to make this because I was sick when I started this project. It took me a couple days to make the red, then another couple days to make the orange and so on. The green, blue and purple one day each. Actually I did the purple and the words on the same day. The reason I say it took 2 days for the first few colors is because I could only work on it for so long before the pain in my back came to stop me. This pattern is so detailed and the thing that took the most time was every time the embroidery floss knotted up as I was pulling it, and it was always in the back, but I always managed to remove them so I could continue. I didn’t have to use more than 1 skein of each color. In fact, I used less than a full skein for each color.

So some people may wonder why I would want to create something with the words “Never be bullied into silence.” Well, you see it’s personal to me. When I was a child, my mother knew I was being abused by my step father, she just didn’t want to admit it to herself. My little sister had bruises that the pre-school teacher saw. She was taken to the hospital and my mother was accused of abusing her, which in all honesty was false accusations. My little sister was so hyper that one day when I was sitting with her while she was playing on the stairs, cement stairs mind you, I was literally watching the bruises form. My parent’s were never abusive to her, but they were to me. When the guy from child protective services came to the house, my mother took me aside and threatened me. She told me so help me god if you say one word to these people, you will have the beating of a lifetime you will never forget. She knew I wasn’t going to accuse them of abusing my sister, she knew I would accuse them of beating me. So I was bullied into silence by my mother.

Another reason I would want to create this is because my sister does not like that I wrote my book. Her “friend” wrote a horrible review of “my book” (but it wasn’t a review of my book, it was an attack on me as a person by someone I’ve never even met). He said in his “review” that I am fooling my readers into thinking my lies are true when they are in fact lies and that I need to change the genre of my book from autobiography to fiction because it is full of lies. My response is it is not full of lies. This is my truth based on my memories of what happened in my life. I am allowed to tell me life stories, and if someone doesn’t like that, they can… and this is the part where I have to edit myself lol.

I wrote my book Diary of a Gay Nerd based on my memories of what happened to me during my childhood, when I was homeless at 15 and 17, and then homeless/sleeping on couches and living in motels until I was 23. And then of course my 3 bad relationships and my final relationship with the person I have spent the last 22 years with. These are my truthful life stories that I wanted to tell.

So I will never be bullied into silence, and that’s why I made this.

I said in my previous post that I was going to make this into a pillow, but my partner has convinced me to frame it instead. Since he wants me to frame it, and I still want it as a pillow, I’ve decided to compromise with him by making a second one lol. It was kind of fun to make and I want to make another one.