and it just gets worse and weirder.

I talked to my sister today. by that I mean, I "had a discussion," wherein I told her what I felt and made a couple of requests. these were requests of the simplest kind: quit going through my stuff when I'm not home; stop taking things that are mine; don't go in my bedroom unless I'm there. it was like a remedial course in sibling relations: how to treat each other like real people and thereby avoid arguments & hideous emotional garbage. I said some other things too, like: it's hard for me to have you everywhere in my life. that's just... difficult for me. it's hard. (I made lots of repetitious noise like that: it's hard. it's difficult.) I said I felt my life encroached upon. I said that was hard. I said it made things worse when she rifled through boxes of my stuff and took what she wanted, or went into my bedroom to poke around and see what was there, because those things drove home in a nasty, concrete way all the intangible aspects of encroachment. but this was all I asked: stop going through and taking and using my stuff.

so then I go out for the evening with her and some friends to meet other friends who are at a bar in the city already. and my sister sits on her boyfriends lap and talks intensely and walks to the bathroom crying. then sits in a chair alone for an hour and writes in her journal. (Inote that this is a bar, where none of these things often happen.) and I find out thirdhand that she's told her boyfriend that I've told her that she can't talk to anyone there because it makes me angry and uncomfortable. I have, apparently, forbidden her from speaking. (note that these were not things that I said. nor were these things that I intimated.) when, toward the end of the evening, I approach her to say, "I think you misunderstood what I'd said today," which immediately makes her eyes shine with tears, and I say again, "those things you think weren't what I said. I didn't mean for you to think that." and again, "I really did not mean to imply those things you're saying that I told you." but what I'm saying she doesn't hear, and she just keeps on hearing that I've said I want her nowhere around, and she storms out the door to the slummy sidewalk to cry. and to be comforted by the boyfriend who believes in what she cries about.

and I am really reeling.

because this is the type of junk that should have happened ten years ago. fifteen, too. five even would be understandable. but not now; really, not now.

she is thirty years old next week. I am twenty-seven. people of our years ought not dabble in tantrums.

and I went home a little early and my boyfriend continued on. going to drink whiskey at our friend's house. this concerned me. something about him going out any further made me think only of doom. but maybe there was no doom and only irritation at knowing he'd come home late-late and tipsy, and I'd be long since sleeping, and I'd have wanted wake-time action and that would be out of the question at that point. which is the sort of thing to make me grumbled and annoyed. to make my dreams full of prickled irritation.

at some point not so long ago I feel like my life was smooth and somehow easier. I would like that feeling back again.