If I were to talk to people on the street and if the subject of family comes up (which it does considerably often), a natural question most people would ask is if I have any siblings. The answer to that is that yes, I do have one sibling - a little sister, four years younger than me.
The second part of that which I don't usually go around publicising unless there's an awkward question like "How old is she" or "Is she in university" is that my little sister, four years younger than me, died when she was 14. This year will be four years since she died of viral myocarditis on the 4th of July 2009.
In many ways, Grace's death is the single most important event of my life. And why shouldn't it be? I was 18 when it happened, in the midst of becoming a developed, full-fledged adult, but at the same time still impressionable enough that it became a profoundly important part of shaping my character as an adult.
When you see your sister dying so young - just old enough to have dreams and ambitions (she wanted to be a teacher) and just old enough to see the wonderful woman she would have developed into (she was great in tennis and a killer debater) - it's very different from seeing, let's say, a child die.
When children die, kids below the age of 10 for example, we feel sad because we think about all the things they could have been, all the things they could have wanted to be. We see in them hope, and potential, and we see this taken away from a child so young.
Seeing a 14-year-old die, on the other hand, is very different. You see a 14-year-old die, you know they have begun developing those dreams and they have started working toward fulfilling that potential. It's no longer "She could have been all these things" but "She will never be that one thing she wanted to be." It's that point when someone is close, so close, but not quite enough.
Grace's death was the single most important event in my life because it was The Event that made me realise how short life is. It's easy to say that life is short - but when you realise that a person who has been around for very nearly your entire life goes away, that's when it hits you.
You don't really have that much time here on Earth.
The crowd is up in arms by now. Your sister died and all you can think about is yourself? Shouldn't that make you want to make everything in the world a better place for everything that she could have experienced? On her behalf? No, it doesn't, and anyone who thinks that has read far too many Jodi Picoult and Nicholas Sparks novels.
I find it hard to connect with other people or to care too much about anyone or anything because I am intimately familiar with the fact that no one ever stays, and that people will always come and go, and if you try to become too attached to them you are setting yourself up for inevitable heartbreak when they leave. For this reason I never let myself become close to anyone.
I try to be friendly, of course. I meet new people and I'm nice to them, but I always make it a point never to expect too much in return.
I don't have close friends. I have friends I know well, I have friends who are great, I have friends I talk to more than others, I have friends I connect to on a better level than others. But I find it hard to talk at any great length to specific 'best' friends or close friends, because I talk to everyone equally about everything that I want to talk about, and what I don't want to talk about I don't say to anyone.
My safety mechanism is, quite simply, never becoming attached to any one particular person, because I hate the process of getting over that attachment when the time comes to go.
My experience with attachment is that they will always leave you.
And they always go, at some point, whether by choice or not - but the result is the same, that you will mourn people and life will momentarily seem to be suspended as you try to get over the pain of their leaving. And I know that I can't possibly be alone in being the only one who recognises this and who has had enough of all that and wants out.
A while ago, I wrote this article talking about how desperately I want to care about activism and causes and campaigns and ideas. This post talks about how desperately I also want to care about people and know more about them and how I want to become everyone's best friend, or to have a best friend at all.
But I can't do that, because every time I see a new person, all I can see in them is that we have this amount of time together, and how long it is until they will go away and disappear from my life. I can't befriend people in the same way because all I can think about is how long we have together before we aren't anymore.
And just like how desperately I want to learn to care again about causes and activism, I desperately want to learn how to care about people.
The things I care about are the things that don't leave - nature, music, the things that endure, the things that will always return, the things that seem to me to be true and real. Those are the only things that I feel I can have lasting relationships with, because those things are permanent and they can't, don't, won't ever abandon people even in our darkest hours.
I know music and nature have been there for me in my darkest hours.
But lately, I've been wondering if that really is my reason for being this way towards people or if it's simply an excuse for misanthropy. I would like very much to be the sort of person who can become everyone's best friend, who is able to develop a strong social support and network of people who I can rely on.
Put quite simply, I'd like to learn how to trust people again.
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