Everything is going to be all right is something that I’ve heard a lot throughout my life and to some extent the saying is true. What the saying is trying to portray to the audience is that not every mistake, misstep, or unplanned event is going to be the harbinger of the end of the world. However, as a child this statement always meant that something horrible had transpired, and that while our families life might not be ruined, it certainly would never be the same.

I remember when the trouble all started. Ophelia was maybe 9 or 10 years old, which would've made me around 6 or 7. Genevieve and Rowen worked during the hot Arizona summer days, so we were to be sent to the YMCA camp when they were at work. I remember hating going to this camp because Ophelia and I just didn’t seem to fit in with the rest of these kids. It seemed like we just weren't the same kind of people, you know?

It’s weird how you pick up on the slightest things as a kid. Their moms were always wearing pantsuits and dropping them off in brand new cars. Their moms wore sunglasses, had long hair that was always perfectly straight, manicured fingernails, had a car phone, or a cell phone, and always stared down their noses at Ophelia and I. These moms always seemed calm, cool, collected, and certainly not like they were headed to work. Our mom on the other hand always seemed to be in a constant state of rushing. She would kiss us goodbye, tell us to have a good day, throw us our happy meals, and toss us out of the car in a hurry, so she wouldn’t be late for work. Genevieve also had short hair, rarely wore make-up, her fingernails were not manicured nor were they ever painted, no sunglasses, no car phone, or cell phone, and did not look down her nose at the other children at the YMCA camp. Most of all many of the other children’s parents didn’t work overtime and many of their mothers were stay at home parents. So, why were they dropping them off for the day? Where were they going that was so important? The answer my dear audience is that they probably wanted to be alone. Maybe they weren’t cut out for motherhood or maybe they just had a certain standard of living. Who knows? Clearly they were too glamorous to watch after their own children.

However, Ophelia and I were good at adapting so we learned to get along or at least get by at YMCA camp by keeping mostly to ourselves. My favorite days were the days when we went to the pool. I wasn’t very good at swimming but I enjoyed the experience of going to the community pool with Ophelia. I don’t know that Ophelia cared for going to the pool though. I didn’t realize it then but our family was pretty conservative in terms of how we dressed. We didn’t have cute little bikinis like all of the other girls at YMCA, instead we wore solid colored or printed one pieces to the swimming pool. All the other kids carried their swimming supplies in cute plastic, woven mesh neon colored beach bags, and we carried our clothing, swimsuit, towels and sunscreen in plastic bags that would later fit into our stylish regular school backpacks. We were essentially targets for everyone to hate us since we didn’t have this or that object or item. It didn't really bother me, but it's clear now that society was already working it's magic on us at a young age.

I also remember that poor Ophelia was a little tubby, but who isn’t tubby at that age? Honestly, I'm tubby now. But it's no wonder she hated going to the swimming pool. She also had horrible vision and had to take her glasses off before making her way to the pool. From her perspective this would be another great reason to hate this place, not only does she get made fun of, feel fat and less than her peers, but on top of that everything is incredibly fuzzy and difficult to see. The pool was probably the worst obstacle course that life could've presented her with at the time.

So, here we are at the community pool. It's 100+ degrees out and the big thing to do when we were that age was to jump off the high dive. I was terribly afraid of heights so I never made it to anything higher than the low dive, which as you know is only 1 to 2 feet above the water level of the pool. Everyone from camp had latched onto the idea of Ophelia jumping off the high dive and I helped egg her on. I watched her ascend the stairs to the diving board, which is 9 to 10 feet in the air, but it looked like 33 feet from where I was wading. She slowly approached the edge of the board, hopped twice, and dove headlong into the water. I can’t imagine what we all looked like to her from that far away. Maybe we were all just tiny dots from up there. I didn't think about that though, I was jus so proud of her for doing something I never thought I could. Obviously, that's not true because I've definitely jumped off a high dive by now.

That moment of pride was interrupted when I waited for her to surface. It took what felt like minutes but was likely only 30 seconds. The lifeguard on duty wasn't doing his or her job effectively because not five seconds later as Ophelia was smoothing her hair back off of her face and about to swim out of the diving range, I heard it... “CANNON BALL!!!” A boy weighing close to 120+ pounds had just hopped off the high dive without checking below to make sure the way was clear. The boy came falling through the air and in seconds he landed directly on top of Ophelias’ neck plummeting the both of them almost all the way to the bottom of the pool. We were all in complete shock as Ophelia was clearly injured. Lucky for her this accident occurred in a swimming pool, if it had occurred on land the weight of the child alone and the force of his body crashing to the ground most likely would've severed her spinal cord or left her as a paraplegic.

Ophelia was in intense pain, and I remember the lifeguard now terribly aware of their own liability began ushering Ophelia out of the pool. The boy didn’t even apologize, instead he was irritated that she'd lingered so long under the diving board. The boy wasn’t hurt, but the field trip to the community swimming pool was officially over. I can still hear all the adults clambering around her saying, “You’re going to be okay. Everything is going to be all right.” Even when Genevieve and Rowen arrived later that day this phrase was all that anyone could muster.

Needless to say, everything was not all right and Ophelias back would never be the same again. Ophelia had been severely injured. The by had caused 2 of her spinal discs to slip, or separate from where they should've been. The human spinal column is made up of vertebrae and spinal discs. The spinal discs are there to cushion your vertebrae and are therefore spaced in between each of your 26 vertebrae. The dics essentially act as the shock absorbers for your body while you perform daily activities. These daily activities include walking, twisting or using torsion to stretch, jogging, and lifting things. As you can imagine, two of these discs having slipped had caused Ophelia great discomfort and limited her ability to perform regular every day functions. This unfortunately meant several months of physical therapy where we would take Ophelia each week.

When Ophelia first started going to physical therapy we would sit in the waiting room for the whole hour that it took her to perform general everyday tasks. I remember thinking that it looked like easy things including: crunches, stretches, walking, and that anyone could clearly do these things. However, we eventually stopped waiting in the waiting room because she would usually wind up in tears by the time her sessions were over. I didn't understand why she was so frustrated because after going to these appointments for months on end and hearing all about my poor sister, I had started to get slightly jealous. She was getting what she wanted as usual, everyone’s attention.

I clearly had no concept of what she must've been feeling. The thought that maybe she wouldn't be able to run, swim or be in karate again hadn't even crossed my mind. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I realized the type of pain and frustration Ophelia was suffering from at such a young age. A few summers ago, I went bike riding with Ophelia to get some exercise and I was hoping to bond with her a little bit. We were stopping every few feet to go geocaching, which is something Ophelia loves to do. I was trying to participate since no one else seems to be interested in joining her in this adult version of scavenger hunting. It's a lot of fun, I think it's just a matter of the type of adventure you're looking for.

Ophelia and I had just found a rather clever cash on the Foothills trail in the Orting Valley when we got back on our bikes to ride across a crosswalk. Which is illegal by the way and probably for the reason that follows. This was no ordinary crosswalk since it had an incredibly steep grade. The bike I was riding was slightly too big for me and I attempted to mount it a few times before I lost my balance and came down hard, turning my right foot completely sideways while the rest of my leg stayed stiff and straight. I heard the sound of my ligaments and tendons pop before the pain reached my brain. I went tumbling to the ground almost rolling into traffic. I lay there for a minute and just screamed “FUCK!!!!” at the top of my lungs.

In that moment, when I began screaming and the tears instantly came cascading down my face involuntarily, I knew that I had sincerely fucked up. Ophelia practically threw herself off her own bike and down to the ground. I lay there in the middle of the street secretly hopping one of the cars that were passing us at 50 miles an hour might hit me and put me out of my misery, but alas no such luck. Ophelia pulled me up and helped me hobble to the grassy area by the crosswalk, but I couldn’t stop crying. While Ophelia grabs both of our bikes and pulls them to safety, I pull up my pant leg up only to reveal that my right ankle has swollen to the size of a grapefruit and has already begun to bruise.

A woman who saw the whole thing on her own bike proceeds to tell me that she'lll race home and get her pickup truck to take me to my car or the hospital, whichever comes first. I keep telling them that it’s fine “Everything’s going to be all right”, I say because I simply want people to stop making a fuss about me. After a good 10 to 15 minute crying jag I make up my mind that we need to make it back to the car, which is honestly not that far away in retrospect. I'm going to have to hop the whole way back to the car. I stand myself up and Ophelia tries to take my bike from me. The hair-brained ideas begin.

“I know what we can do.” she says inspired. “You can get on your bike and I’ll get on mine. I’ll hold onto your bike while I pedal and steer for both of us.”

“Ophelia, that is a horrible idea! I’ll probably fall off and injure my other ankle.” I say in frustration despite the fact that I appreciate her concern.

She begins again with another idea,

“What if…” she trails off “No, that’s not going to work either…”

Finally she comes close to striking oil.

“I’ll take both of the bikes and then I’ll come back and get you and we’ll hobble to the car.” she says providing the most logical answer last.

“I really don’t want to be left alone.” I state blankly, which is true. I’m injured and am now the prime target for rapists, murders, and kidnappers alike. “Don’t worry. I’ll just use the bike as a crutch. It isn’t that far and we can get back to the car.” I say with determination.

So that's what we did. I probably did much more harm than good by hobbling my way back to the car, but I was embarrassed and disappointed that I couldn’t even ride a bike anymore. Isn’t that a saying, “It’s like riding a bike”, because no one ever really forgets how to ride a bike, right? I was so mad at myself for being a clumsy waste of space that I was ready to be done with our adventure for the day.

As we made our way back to the car that sweet lady that offered to get her truck really did pull through. She pulled her truck off to the other side of the road in a hurry, as if she were Helen Hunt in Twister, she was clearly looking at the biggest and most devastating tornado of the century. She flings the door of her truck wide open and starts sprinting across the road to us, now I'm even more embarrassed than I had been.

“I came as fast I could! I brought my truck!” she screamed at full volume. Judging by her volume the tornado was clearly close by.

I think that Ophelia realized how wounded my pride was and since we were right by where I'd parked the car she took over.

“Oh no, bless your heart. Thank you so much for heading back to check on us. She’s fine really. She’s sprained her ankle a million times before and we're parked literally right here. We appreciate everything though, thank you so much for your concern.”

The woman was hesitant to walk away, but Ophelia’s speach did the trick, we were saved from a terribly uncomfortable interaction. I could go home, tell Genevieve who would revel in the fact that she was right again, admit defeat, and begin the healing process.

As Ophelia stated to the woman who attempted to help us so generously, I've sprained my right ankle about 4 or 5 times now, so I wasn’t expecting much to come of it other than icing, elevating, rest, and some crutches for a while. I was sorely mistaken when the next day I couldn’t stand on the damn thing without tears leaking out of the corners of my eyes. I headed over to our parents house because Rowen had a walking boot and maybe I could borrow that just to keep from missing work. At the time, I was a mobile phlebotomist, which means the largest part of my job was loading and unloading all of our equipment to a site. I couldn't be unable to walk! How do you draw blood from someone when you have to use crutches to stand? You don’t! I was a hot mess. My husband hadn't had a job since December of last year and it was now July. If I lost my job over some stupid bike riding accident, I was going to spontaneously combust from all the stress in my life!

Much to my dismay, my foot was so swollen it wouldn't fit in the boot. When I forced it and tried to stan, I crumbled like a Jenga set. So Genevieve drove me to the hospital where they seemed fairly unconcerned. They took x-rays and said there weren’t any fractures or breaks that they could see, but that the swelling might be interfering with the image. They handed me an air cast to keep my ankle from moving too much, which I'd never received before, and they told me to keep it compressed. The doctor also gave me a note to miss work for 3 days so I could keep my leg elevated and iced in an attempt to reduce the swelling with advice to see my primary care physician in 3 days if it hadn’t healed.

Unfortunately, for me after 3 days my leg had obviously not healed. In fact my toes, ankle, and up into my calf were now a multicolored bruise. My leg looked like the aurora borealis, a mixture of blacks, blues, purples, and greens. Worst of all I still couldn’t stand on it and when my physician saw it he was livid that the emergency room doctors didn't prescribe me anything to reduce the swelling and didn't recommend any physical therapy.

Up until now I hadn’t thought that my injury was that serious just pretty gnarly looking.

“Physical therapy?” I asked. “You don’t think it’s that serious do you?”

“Well your foot looks like it should be attached to a zombie instead of a living, breathing human being. You damaged it pretty badly. How many times have you sprained this ankle?”

How did he know that I'd sprained my ankle before just by looking at it? I mean I knew that it looked slightly swollen and oversized normally but was it that obvious?

“I think this is the 6th time…” I said sheepishly.

“Wow! Always by riding a bike?” he asked with sheer amazement.

“No. I’ve sprained it dancing 1 time, running 3 times, 1 time at work, and then this time.” I replied.

“Well, I think it’s safe to say that maybe sports aren’t really your thing.”

At this point I was starting to get really concerned that the damage I'd done would last all summer long. Frankly, this wasn’t an option, I'd just bought a season pass to Mount Rainier and I had all sorts of hiking trails I wanted to explore. So I asked the doctor tentatively,

“Well summer is getting close to being over and I have a lot of hiking trails I planned on getting to this year… When will I be able to go hiking again?”

“Unfortunatey, you won’t be hiking again. Not this year anyways.”

He stated this as though it were an obvious fact. I was crushed and I headed into physical therapy wary of what was to come. I thought that it would super easy the way that Ophelia’s therapy had seemed but this was a foolish notion. It was devastating trying to reteach my ankle how to balance, it was tiring, and incredibly painful most of the time. I wound up leaving every session feeling less and less like myself.

My least favorite exercise was and still is the strengthening band. The simplest movements became the hardest part of my daily rituals. The idea behind the resistance band was that you hold it and pull forward, backward, left or right, mimicking the range of motion that you should normally have. Instead what would happen is that I would do 2 or 3 in one direction and then my whole foot would start to shake uncontrollably from the strain. You may not have gathered this from my writing just yet, but I'm a very headstrong person. Generally, I'm of the frame of mind that I can control everything in my body because it is my body. For one of the first times in my life I was no longer in control of my body. My muscles, tendons, and ligaments were no longer my own because they wouldn't function the way I needed, wanted, or directed them to. I caught a glimpse of just how crushing a phsyical injury can be.

To add to my frustration I was getting fatter every day because I just sat at home and felt bad for myself since I couldn’t do any real form of exercise. The worst part about it was that I wanted to keep pushing myself to be 100 percent better.

One day when I was feeling pretty confident, I asked my physical therapist what she thought.

“So, do you think I’m going to make it? I feel like I’ll be 100 percent soon”, I said with optimism.

“Roslyn, with injuries like yours the muscles, ligaments, and tendons have stretched much farther than they ever should”, she continued with hesitation constantly looking for my reaction. “The truth is that those types of tissues never snap back to where they are supposed to be. I think that you'll be lucky if you can gain 80 percent of your function back and that’s an optimistic outlook.”

For one of the first times in my life I was faced with the understanding that I was not invincible. This wasn't something I could just get through. The gears in my head started turning, and more questions started to come up for me.

“Well, I’ve injured it multiple times before… So, how does that factor into your estimate?” I asked doing the arithmetic myself.

“That's why I said that 80 percent was an overly optimistic outlook.", she mumbled.

I got quiet for a minute and then I asked the question we were all really wondering.

“So, what does that mean for the things I love to do? What about running? What about hiking?” At this point, I'm pleading with her, almost bargaining, that these activities are still going to be in my future.

“I go on 20 mile a day hikes! I love hiking! What am I supposed to do?” The tears were starting to well in the corners of my eyes.

“Well, you won’t likely be doing long 20 mile hikes anymore… and if you truly want to partake in those activities you'll always need to wear a brace. It's okay though, everything is going to be alright."

Is it, I thought to myself... My memories coming rushing back to me in a jumble and I understand this is what Ophelia struggled with at the age of 11. She was being told that she wouldn’t be able to recover fully enough to even find out what types of sports she liked. Ophelia was amazing though and she defied the odds. She was in karate and became a black belt. She ran cross-country, participated in track and soccer in junior high and high school because she was just as stubborn and pig-headed as I am. I thought about Ophelias’ struggle and my struggle. How unfortunate it is to feel like you are not in control of your own fate. How unfortunate that she never talked about it with anyone.

Then I stopped feeling sorry for Ophelia and myself, and I thought of my grandfathers’ struggle after his stroke left the speech centers of his brain severely damaged. This enigmatic Italian man who loved to talk was left unable to speak to the people that he loved for 10+ years of his life. I have no doubts that he thought it was some cruel joke or punishment that he would struggle so hard through speech therapy only to realize that no amount of practice would fix what had been damaged by only a short time period without oxygen to a small part of his brain. Everything is going to be all right is something that I'm sure he also heard time and time again. Maybe it was even something he told himself to make the days more bearable.

We're all pretty aware of the reasons that Opheila was bullied. She wore a lot of pink Disney outfits, had coke bottle glasses, was a tiny bit tubby, kind of a teachers pet, smarter than most kids, and a goody two shoes with a severe case of acne. Looking back at our childhoods, I think we can all say that kids are pretty vicious. Where they learn to be so cold-hearted I’m not quite sure, but they're exceptional at making you feel like you're less than human from elementary school on. I remember that when the bullying got really bad about her weight kids in the 2nd grade were asking me why Ophelia was so fat and I was so skinny. It isn’t as if those two things were mutually exclusive. We were two separate people with different appetites, metabolisms, and we participated in differing levels of exercise.

The change in Ophelia wasn't overnight but it was noticeable. Ophelia’s clothes began to fit better and her face instead of being chubby, like the bust of a cherub, became more drawn and lean like all of her favorite actresses. Unfortunately, we come from a long line of eating disorders as Genevieve who was also overweight in high school and college chose bulimia. At first it started with taking caffeine pills to sweat out all her extra water weight, which must have done significant damage to her kidneys and liver. When that stopped working, Genevive found herself losing consciousness frequently and the doctors and her family intervened. Then she moved to good old-fashioned laxatives and evened the score with her food on a regular basis. Genevieve's sister was also bulimic but in the traditional fashion. We'd heard tell of the unfortunate side effects of bullying, but we'd never seen them in real life.

Ophelia was tricky about her disease, which manifested into eating less but still eating. Our family denied the problem until Ophelia was eating barely anything at all and looked more like a prisoner than Ophelia. One thing is for sure though the kids at school didn’t make fun of her for her weight anymore.

Instead the questions had turned towards concern and even my friends asked me about it, “Your sister looks really sick. Does she have a disease or something?” It took the school mentioning something for my family to intervene and I’m not sure why. Anyone could see her collarbones and cheekbones jutting out from underneath her paper-thin skin. Maybe it was that we didn’t want to ruin all of the hard work that she'd done to get off the weight. Or maybe it was that no one really knew how to address the issue? By this time I’m sure that Ophelia no longer had a period and just wasn’t willing to talk to anyone about the scary changes now occurring with her body.

If you haven't guessed, my family isn’t big on talking about our problems. We're all really good at hiding our feelings and thoughts from everyone though. Up until this year, I've had troubles with crying. I just I hate it. Somewhere along the way, I decided that crying was a terrible sign of weakness and it was a private matter to be done alone. I would rather cry in the shower or alone in my room than be consoled because that is how I learned to cope with things. Alone. There was no cheesy crying and being held by your parents or sister while you sobbed in our family, and I believed for a long time that it molded me into the strong and independent person I am today. I explained it to my husband once and he didn't appreciate the attitude one bit.

“How can you trust anyone then? How can you be vulnerable with anyone?” he implored in a tone of sheer irritation.

“I don’t trust anyone and it’s better that way. If you don’t trust people you’ll never have to let them in. They’ll never get to know who you really are. They’ll never be able to know or exploit your weaknesses.” I half-stated half-screamed it back.

How could he not understand? I thought that we were kindred spirits. I thought that we dealt with things in a similar way, and it's why we got along so well. Here is this person that I thought I shared these things in common with and he's judging me for keeping a barrier between humankind and myself. I was so blind that would be a problem. What he was really saying is, "How can I even be sure I know you?" without stating it aloud.

“God, how lonely it must be. What a lonely way to live life.” he said with pity in his voice.

He was right, I didn't really want or need his pity. Up until this year, I had spent my life truly alone. Surrounded by people but never truly connected to anyone by design. I thought this made me better and stronger than the people around me. I'd crafted a wall of safety around myself, and it allowed me to push through whatever life could throw my way. I'm more than sure that this is how my whole family has felt their entire lives. Alone.

I thought we were a dying breed of people that marched steadily on despite the constant barrage of our feelings, thoughts and nagging inner turmoil. But the truth is that most people have built up their own walls to survive, it's just that no one talks about it. We use levity to make it seem more normal, it's a common thread these days, we wouldn't want to "catch feelings". We wear our isolation like a badge of honor, when in reality it's what keeps us unhappy.

Anyways, this is how I know that my parents didn't discuss that Ophelia would be receiving treatment for her anorexia with her. We're just not a communicative bunch, well about the things that matter. Instead, one day they trucked us all out to the middle of nowhere and we sat in on one of her therapy sessions. They were literally teaching Ophelia and kids like her to eat again. There were a lot of little girls in this class, no boys, all suffering from the same delusion that they were simply not good enough, pretty enough, smart enough, strong enough or thin enough. The worst exercise was where they sat these girls in front of a mirror and asked them what they saw. Every girl there only saw a fat hideous monster staring back at her and they would break down crying every time.

The truly sad part though is that every girl I know or have ever met does this on regular basis. I used to do it too, so often that it got to the point a few years ago where I would just avoid my own reflection all together. We stand in front of the mirror and nitpick at the things we hate about themselves. I can hear my own thoughts now. "I hate that weird mole on my right cheek. Ugh! My teeth are never white enough. I hate the color of my eyes. I wish I had a prettier shaped face." This is a ritual that most women go through at least once a day and it's usually because someone somewhere pointed out our flaws to us. This is such a common thing that there is a scene in the movie Mean Girls about it where one girl thinks her pores are too big and the other hates her nail beds! Women are great at figuring out their own flaws and fantastic at manifesting weird psychoses’ about them, but what we're really trying to undo is all the hurtful things that people have said to us about these so-called flaws.

When I was in college I took a required course on Physical Geology and I learned that the beautiful colors that we admire stones for are actually impurities in the rocks. That bright emerald green and sapphire color that we choose to love is really just a mineral that got stuck there and it's the only thing left to shine through. Sometimes what we see as our flaws are the things that make us unique. I really do hate that mole on my right cheek and I’ve never told my husband about it, but one day when we were laying in bed out of his mouth came,

“I’ve always loved this little mark on your right cheek.” He smiled then rolled over and turned out the light. It hadn't dawned on him that he'd lit up my entire world for that second.

This abomination on my right cheek was something that my husband had grown to love. The thought never occurred to me that someone might like something about me that I loathed with every fiber of my being. These two experiences have taught me that looks can be deceiving. While Ophelia was seeing a fat monster in the mirror at therapy we were seeing an emaciated, sad, and lonely little girl. While I saw my mole as a disgusting and putrid mark that I’d like to have burned off my face, my husband saw it as a unique characteristic. Everything in life is based on the perspective you're seeing it from.

Anyways back to the conversation at hand, as a result of visiting therapy for Ophelia’s eating disorder, which had to be scheduled late in the evening, we began an unhealthy obsession with eating out. There was a Marie Calendar’s down the street from Ophelias’ therapy office and I think my parents assumed that she would have to eat if we were eating out in public. Especially because at this point her condition had deteriorated so severely that she maybe ate half of a Costco sized banana nut muffin in a day. To this day my mother has engrained in herself that the best way to fix a problem is by going out to eat and I'm sure that this is a remnant of this time period. She held onto the only thing she felt she could do, feed us. We would eat out and the phrase would come up in conversation, "Everything's going to be alirght, just eat your dinner."

This strange eating obsession my family had developed became a solution of my own. My mother and father were stressed to the max, and the less Ophelia ate, the more our parents would fight. Yet the more I ate, the happier our parents would be. It was like Ophelia and I had traded places. The more that she stopped eating the more I had to eat to keep our family from tearing each other apart, and believe me the fatter I got. By the time I was in the 6th grade I was rotund and depressed about it. Ophelia was now mostly finished with her battle with anorexia while mine was simply about to begin, which is a story I’ll leave for another time.

The very last time I ever heard the phrase “Everything is going to be all right” I was maybe 10 or 11 years old and in the middle of the 5th grade. Ophelia was 13 or 14 years old and in the 8th grade of junior high school. Our relationship had all but deteriorated when the summer before she rather abruptly kicked me out of her circle of friends.

Ophelia had never really had play dates or friends that she actively hung out with until she entered junior high. As a little sister, I had a bad habit of following her around and trying to do what she was doing. Up until Ophelia severed this tie, I truly thought I wanted to be just like her in every way because I looked up to her. I admired that she was interested in books, writing her own prose and poetry, didn’t need boys to be following her around, she didn’t cuss, smoke, drink or do drugs, she still loved and respected our parents, and she certainly didn’t need other peoples approval. Little did I know that I was wrong about many of the items on that checklist of Ophelias’ character traits. I had built her up to be perfect, which was an unnatainable standard.

I remember the day that Ophelia said the most hurtful words she has ever uttered to me, “Jesus! Go get your own friends and your own life! Can’t you see that I have MY own friends and MY own life to be worried about! You can’t be following me around all the time! Just leave me alone!!!!” She said this to me after she'd met and started hanging out with two older girls that were undoubtedly apartment complex people.

Now I don't want to stereotype people that grow up in apartment complexes, but I unfortunately have to because we were not your average family that lived in an apartment complex. Most people that live in an apartment complex their whole lives bounce from complex to complex because they can’t afford to live there anymore or they're constantly getting evicted. We on the other hand, weren't this type of people. We lived in the apartment through our childhood because our dad is the pickiest man that ever lived. Rowen wouldn’t buy a house just because the stove wasn’t included, or there was a chip in the hallway, or he didn’t like the mural in the living room, slash [insert excuse here]. In fact, so much of my life was spent wanting to live in a house that maybe I’ll include a chapter on it at some point. The point is that our parents could've afforded to leave but they were so indecisive that we chose to stay where we were.

To paint you a better picture of these girls, they were 16 years old making them about 3 years Ophelias senior. They cussed like sailors, their hair was always put up like they were too lazy to do anything with it, their makeup was intense both in color and amount, and they always wore cheap perfume that smelled sickly sweet - generally a true mark of trouble. They got Ophelia to say her first curse word and smoke her first cigarette. I remember them explaining to Ophelia how to look “prettier” as they called it, which meant hiding Ophelias beautiful face behind a smattering of caked on foundation, eyeliner, eye shadow, and mascara.

The worst part was that they kept explaining sexual acts to Ophelia like she was even old enough to a) have sex, b) be interested in sexual activity, and c) be mature enough to deal with the consequences of the weird emotions and hormonal changes that come with being involved with another person sexually. She was 13 years old for Christ sakes and these girls were explaining how to give blow jobs to men, because these girls were the classy kind that dated men in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. I remember the conversation vividly, “Giving a blow job is an art form. You really have to play with a man you know. It’s like eating a Popsicle but you don’t bite down instead you move your tongue around and suck on it.” One of them said, and then proceeded to unpause Mulan. Yeah, let that image sink in. Blowjob advice at the age of 16 while watching Mulan, just for funsies.

Keep in mind that I was pretty young, so I wasn’t exactly sure what they were talking about but I had a fairly good idea. I remember thinking ewww how selfless and debasing could one person be? What was in it for me to put my mouth on someone else’s junk? Clearly my thoughts adjusted accordingly based off of my age and maturity level. However, one thing was clear to me, Ophelia and I were not like these girls and that was a good thing. On the way home from this particular excursion and discussion I questioned Ophelia,

“Why do you even like these girls?”, I sighed.

“They're nice and they seem interested in teaching me things.”, she replied naively.

Yeah, I thought sarcastically, it’s really some valuable information they're bestowing upon you.

“Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why they would want to hang out with you?”, I implored. Realizing that the question didn't quite come out the way I'd hoped it would.

We stopped walking for a second and paused underneath a large tree with dark, waxy leaves, and yellow flowers that stood next to the front office, gym, and swimming pool. The flowers were falling all around us as they felt the heat of summer waning into the chill of fall.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” she screamed at me.

“Well you are 13 and they are like 16 so what is in it for them? All I am saying is that you are way younger than they are, don’t they have any other friends?”

Ophelia just huffed at me, “Ugh!” and started to walk faster and farther away from me.

I had clearly put my foot in my mouth and was attempting to fix it, but I'm not very good at readjusting my meaning so instead it just came out like this…

“I just think that you're changing your personality to fit theirs. You wear all this makeup now, you cuss, you’ve smoked, you aren’t even yourself anymore!” I cried out, desperately trying to both fix the situation and get my point across in a less abrasive manner.

How could she not see that she wasn’t Ophelia anymore? She was some weird clone of these trailer trash girls that were clearly on their way to getting knocked up and repeating their own sad life story of having apartment complex children who would fulfill their inevitable role in our society of living off welfare for the rest of their lives! She was livid with me now and that’s when she said the meanest thing she had ever said to me. I’ll repeat it once again, so it can marinate for you the way it did for me on that day, underneath the falling flowers of a misplaced tree.

“Jesus! Go get your own friends and your own life! Can’t you see that I have MY own friends and MY own life to be worried about! You can’t be following me around all of the time! Just leave me alone!!!!”

That was a defining moment in my life. As she stormed off and left me to walk home by myslef, I screamed back at her in my head, "Fine then! I DON'T NEED YOU!" As strange as it may sound, this is something I say to myself in my head whenever anything gets real rough. "Fine then, I don't need this job, don't need this friend, don't need this, don't need you." It's helped me justify why I alienate myself, and how I've cut people out of my life like they're a cancer. I made it my first line of defense at the young age of 9.

Needless to say, she got what I wanted. I did leave her alone from that day forward because I didn't need her. Our relationship became non-existent despite the fact that we still shared a room together. She wanted to be left alone to make her own mistakes and become this shell of a human being, so I would let her. I knew she'd be sorry because I was going to make her sorry she'd ever told me to leave her alone. I felt so betrayed. How could she be so blind? So obtuse to the world around her? These people weren't her friends, they just wanted to pull her down and make her as miserable as they were.

My how misery does love company and Ophelia had discovered it. After these two girls had moved away she had become a budding socialite. Ophelia had suitors lined up to date her and essentially was on her way to becoming queen B of her group of friends in junior high. I remember all of her friends vividly but they're distinctly unimportant as they all fed off each other’s inappropriate and outlandish behavior. All of her friends were creative, pretty, talented, flawed, promiscous, and desperate for attention, whether it was good or bad didn’t much matter.

In the weeks leading up to the events that forever change our families dynamic, Ophelia seemed no different than usual to me but to be fair I wasn't around much anymore. She was always distant, cold, self-interested, and reading some book or collection of poetry by Sylvia Plath. For those of you who don't know of Sylvia Plath, I’ll give you a brief synopsis of her life. Brilliant writer marries man, has babies, is miserable, and suffocates herself using a gas-powered oven resulting in asphyxiation while her babies sit crying upstairs. What a role model, right? Don't get me wrong I feel for Sylvia Plath who married fellow poet Ted Hughes and killed herself as a result of his infidelities. The poor woman suffered from depression and had tried to kill herself multiple times before. I'm sure that what she felt in those days prior to her death was very real to her. However, I'm not the type of person to give up so easily and therefore it is hard for me to see the world through Sylvia’s eyes.

Ophelia had become obsessed with Sylvia Plath and descended into her own deep and maddening darkness. She wouldn’t talk to me about it because she'd successfully alienated msyelf and our parents. Ophelia had become unruly and uncontrollable in months prior. She'd stay out late; bring a change of revealing clothes that she stole from the mall with her to change into. Oh that’s right, let us not forget the multiple places she'd gotten caught stealing from at this age. She was a force to be reckoned with. There were no open lines of communication left for her to explore because she had severed those ties herself. At this point, my family could no longer have a conversation without one party raising their voice and the other responding in kind because they felt threatened or undermined. Life was a constant struggle for power where Ophelia thought she deserved it and my parents fought to show her that she was still just a child. My parents couldn’t trust her and I had lost a lot of respect for her. The only people she had left were her friends and the current trend was cutting.

I remember the day with perfect clarity, my best friend Anastasia and I were called into the office during the last hour of our day at school. We sat there for a while talking amongst each other until the last bell rang for us to head to the busses.

I told the lady at the front desk that I needed to catch my bus and she responded choking back a sob, “You won’t be taking the bus home today.”

I thought it was a little strange, I mean get it together lady. And because I despise crying I hesitantly walked back to where Anastasia was still sitting. I became quieter and began to observe the adults around us. All of them were either full blown sobbing, halfway in tears, or whispering and looking our direction as if no one knew what to say.

All of sudden the phone behind the front desk rings and the lady calls me over. She can’t seem to hold back the tears any longer, “It’s your mother.”, she whimpered gently handing me the receiver.

“Hey, mom… Why are you calling me at school? What’s going on?”, I ask starting to realize that whatever everyone is so upset about is directly related to my family and myself.

“Nothing is wrong. I need you to go over to Anastasia’s after school today, can you do that for me?” She isn’t really asking me, she's telling me but she wants to make it seem like it’s my choice, like I'm being a good little helper.

“Well, her parents aren’t going to be home. I want to come home. What’s going on?”, I say in a hushed voice as I've now taken the receiver with me to the ground. Thank god the cord stretched that far! If it had a longer cord I’m sure that I would have sunken into the floor itself.

“I’ve already talked to them and you can’t go home. I need you to go to Anastasia’s house, okay.” she states more firmly, making it clear now that this is not a discussion.

“Okay… When will you be back? When can I come home?”, I ask as quietly as I can be.

“I don’t know. I’ll let you know once we know. Everything is going to be all right?”, she said it almost as if it were a question.

There’s silence on my end of the line, so she repeats it to me in the form of a question this time.

“Roslyn, you believe me, that everything is going to be all right, don’t you?”

“Sure.” I say.

“I have to go now. You and Anastastia be good for me, okay.” she says choking back tears.

“Okay.”, I say and then the line goes dead.

I stayed on the floor for a minute because something in my heart tells me that this is related to Ophelia and that everything isn't all right.

The rest of the day my stomach was in knots. I'm worried and beyond frustrated. How could they not tell me if something was wrong? If Ophelia was hurt I wanted to be there for her. I wanted to help her and most of all I wanted to keep her safe forever. She was my responsibility, how could I have been so reckless and horrible by cutting her out of my life? I know she said that’s what she wanted, but I knew that as she said it the words weren’t true. I just thought that I would let her have a taste of her own medicine by giving her exactly what she thought she wanted. It was hard to focus on playing, eating, or much of anything else but Anastasia and I found time to do our homework and keep busy.

The hours came and went. My parents didn’t come to get me until 8 or 9pm that night, which was beyond unusual. Didn’t they know Ophelia and I had school the next day? Rowen and Anastasia's father had a long discussion at the front door, which I didn’t catch all of because they'd stepped outside. I was straining to hear what they were talking about but they kept everything very hushed and under wraps. Eventually they were done having their grown up conversation and Rowen's booming voice filled their living room.

“Come on, Roslyn. It's time to leave.”

I said my hurried good-byes to Anastasia and I promised I’d tell her what this was all about tomorrow, which I never did. I just didn't want anyone else to know about it.

I stepped into Genevive's van to find my mother crying in the front passenger seat and Ophelia sitting with her head leaned up against the back windo window staring and intent on keeping the silence. Rowen got in the car looking at the road with a mixture of stern consternation and disappointment. I knew that now was not the time to speak an utterance of any “hello’s” or “how was everyone’s day” because clearly the day had not gone according to plan. I stared at the road ahead, at our mother’s face. Genevieve was just staring out the passenger side window letting her tears fall silently, no sniffing, just silence. I looked at Rowen also eager to keep the silence, and at Ophelia whose wrists were both bandaged in thick white gauze.

I felt the rage boil up inside me, because even at the tender age of 10 I knew what this meant. No one had to say anything to me for me to know what Ophelia had done. What the hell was so wrong with her perfect little life? She got the lion’s share of everything, including our parent’s love and attention? Throughout the course of the last few years everything was about her. How could she be so selfish and do this to our parents? What was their crime? Caring that you were too involved with boys or that your friends were a bad influence? What was so awful about us that she just couldn’t stand to live anymore? I truly saw this as I saw all things Ophelia did, a ploy for attention. I hated her for changing our family dynamic for years because we weren't ever really a family after the first time she tried to kill herself. From there on out we were just people that lived in the same house.

No one in my family ever told me what happened to Ophelia that day. We've never discussed it as a group, instead we put Ophelia through psychological therapy and we pretended that she was the only part of the problem. When in reality the problem was in the equation in which we all played a role.

I actually learned about what happened on that fateful day that changed our lives when I stumbled upon a notebook of stories and ruminations that she wrote about. I know I shouldn't have read it, but it was the closest thing I'd feel to a connection with her for the next 20 years. Ophelia has always been one of the most talented writers I know. She painted an elegant picture of the plan she'd crafted. She'd waited until Genevieve had gone to work and I had left for the school bus. Rowen was asleep in the next room over so she had to be silent as she slowly slid the safety razors out of her drawer and tossed them into her baby blue Jansport backpack. She crept into the kitchen and stuffed a whole bottle of Costco sized sleeping pills and aspirin into her bag.

Later, after lunch and before her next class, she slipped into the bathroom and chugged the bottle of sleeping pills. She'd already taken multiple aspirins that day but threw in a couple more for good measure and began to slit her wrists with a straight razor. At some point she lost consciousness as the aspirin had made her blood thin and the sleeping pills had begun to take over. She couldn’t recall who found her in the bathroom, but I can only imagine the shock on the poor girls face. I'm sure that she turned the corner only to find a fellow classmate slumped over on the floor underneath the hairdryer, the floor bright red with this stranger’s blood. I have no doubts that she began to scream and that called in a group of passersby, of which only one of them had the cool head to run to the office nearby and alert them to the situation. I have no doubts that word spread to her teachers and her favorite teacher likely held her and tried to stop the bleeding and quell the growing crowd as the ambulance rushed to take her to the emergency room. She's lucky to have not been conscious because there is no more surreal a feeling in the world than hearing an ambulance and realizing that they're coming for you.

Once the paramedics arrived, the technicians probably began the chatter of asking a million questions. However, the scene must look pretty clear with the Costco sized bottles of sleeping pills and aspirin lying on the floor next to her while her left hand still clutched a bloody safety razor. Ophelia’s body had likely tried to rid itself of the pills toxicity by causing her to regurgitate onto herself. They likely wrapped her wrists tightly in gauze to stop the bleeding with little care to clean her up despite the fact that she had lain in a pool of her own blood for several minutes. Her jeans were likely a purplish color, heavy with the weight of a mixture of red blood cells, platelets and plasma. This much I know because she wasn't wearing the same clothes in the van that day, they were a biohazard now. Her face must have been a ghostly pale, almost grey color, as her blood pressure was virtually non-existent. From a medical standpoint Ophelia was beginning to circle the drain and would quickly reach a point of no return, so they began to pump her stomach of its contents in the ambulance. I have no doubts that after regurgitating much of the partially dissolved pills she'd swallowed Ophelia likely came to and thought to herself, as I would have,

“God dammit! I can’t even kill myself correctly.”

At this point the weight of what happened would've hit her. She wouldn’t be the girl that everyone remembered for killing herself in the junior high school bathroom. She wouldn't be someone that everyone pitied, instead she'd be the person that everyone loathed. She'd be the crazy girl whose aborted suicide made people uncomfortable. The girl who found her and many others would likely spend the rest of their academic career at this school avoiding that particular bathroom all together. I know I did when I attended that high school, and people even asked me about it. "You're the one with the crazy sister that slit her wrists in the bathroom, aren't you?", they'd say. I never responded, I'd just push past them and head to class.

I've often imagined the poor janitor that had to mop up the large pool of Ophelias’ blood. The average human body contains 5.5 liters of blood; however, the heavier you are the more blood your body producess. While 5.5 liters of blood might not seem like a lot, I'd like you to picture it in gallons. The average person has 1 pint of blood per every 10 to 15 pounds of body weight they have. Let us say that Ophelia weighed 120 pounds that means that at the most she had around 12 pints of blood in her body. There are eight pints to a gallon and that means that Ophelia had likely lost close to a gallon of blood on the floor of this bathroom. I want you to imagine you have a gallon of milk and you pour it directly onto the ground. Milk and blood are both fluids, so they spread out and take up as much space as they're allowed. That's how I imagine this day went.

But let us not forget the smell of the blood that this janitor had to mop up. Blood has a distinct smell because iron oxidizes rather quickly in our blood. This is a good thing because we rely on the iron in our red blood cells to quickly bind with the oxygen atoms from our lungs and to be carried through our circulatory system throughout our bodies to all of our organs and tissues. The smell that iron has is almost like the smell of rotting fish and I want you to imagine this smell intensified by a gallon of pooling and quickly coagulating blood on the floor of the junior high's once pristine tiled bathroom floor.

It's hard to imagine what this poor janitor may have felt towards Ophelia in that moment. I believe that he or she probably pitied the poor soul that had lost this much blood to some extent. However, I also imagine that he or she had to wear gloves, protective equipment, throw away the mop they used, and spent hours attempting to clean up the mess Ophelia had left them. All I know is that I feel bad for anyone that was exposed to so much violence and sadness in one day.

This day was the last time that I have ever heard the phrase “Everything is going to be all right.” Our mother was wrong, everything wasn't going to be all right. I didn’t believe her when she told me over the phone. And I didn’t believe her as she mumbled it to herself in the car on the way home as I stared at Ophelias bandaged wrists. I knew that our lives would never be the same.

Ophelia would attempt to commit suicide many more times and sometimes I would find the evidence balled up in a trashcan in the form of bloody paper towels. She would continue the behavior of cutting well until I was over 25 years old, and while I understand that she needs that behavior to feel safe. It's never lessed the hurt that behavior spreads. Ophelia attempted suicide so many times that I eventually became numb to the concept all together. As terrible as it may sound after enough times of sitting in the hospital waiting for her to get stitches or staples, there were many times that I almost wished she'd succeeded. The pain and the frustration that I felt as a survivor of a loved one’s multiple suicide attempts had made me calloused to her personal pains and inner struggles. I was a stone statue in the garden of her misery, simply silent and observing her anguish with disdain.

Genevive and Rowen’s relationship never really recovered either, and my relationship with them was forever changed because I looked at them with disgust. How could they just sit by and watch this happen? I know now that there wasn’t much they could've done to help Ophelia because she was fighting her own battle, but to a child it seemed like they should be in charge of fixing the situation. Consequently, I chose to distance myself from my family entirely. From that moment on I became an adult trapped inside of a child's body. I didn’t want, need, or take anyone’s help for a very long time. My whole view of a family had become skewed into a group of people who lived under the same roof but functioned separately. These experiences also affected how I dealt with any emotions (e.g. pain, frustration, anger, and love). Since I never really had the opportunity to talk about my feelings, I chose to just avoid them all together. I chose to bottle them all away and keep them o myself because I didn’t want to have to rely on anyone. Look at what relying on people had gotten Ophelia.

Up until my early 20s, I simply viewed Ophelia as a selfish bitch. She had no idea what the consequences of her actions would bring because the thought had never occurred to her. I never truly forgave her until very recently when I realized that harboring all of that pain, had me me into someone I couldn't be anymore. These events affected our relationship as sisters up until very recently because she would often use these experiences in an attempt to manipulate me into doing things for her. It's something I know she isn't proud of, and that she didn't even realize she'd been doing until she went to therapy in her 30s.

One of the most liberating feelings was the moment I spilled it all out. I wrote Ophelia a letter and I told her the truth. I told her that I hated her for 20 years. i hated that no one ever asked me if I was okay. i hated that I was afraid to commit to having children because I didn't want them to kill themselves. But most of all I hated that I had spent my life trying to be the good child to make up for what I felt she had lacked growing up. I pushed myself into studying science because I had to be smarter, better, brighter, more important, because I never felt that I was any of those things growing up. Those things weren't true, but they were the reality in which I lived. I lived my life as if what happened in my past would follow me forward into the future, and that just wasn't true. No one knows what the future holds.

I was so angry at our parents too. For 20 years I held in all of that anger, sadness and disappointment. One day I called our mom up and told her that I was sorry. I'd pushed her away and I really didn't let her be my mom. I went out of my way to be independent and avoid her because I didn't want to deal with any of my feelings. I wanted to punish my parents for something they'd already been punishing themselves for since the first time it happened. I didn't want to have to feel the pain, I wanted to be alone. I let her know that she was a great mom, and that I knew that I'd be a great mom because of how strong she is as a person. For our dad, I let him know that he was my version of a real life Superman. I gave him the most trouble because I held him to the highest of standards. He had to be pefect, and the moment I realized he was simply human I attacked any flaw I could find. We didn't have a conversation where one of us wasn't yelling since that fateful day two decades prior.

The crazy part is that each of them knew all of those thigns without me having to say them out loud. Each of them told me they knew I was isolating myself and they didn't know how to help, so they just let it run it's course. They both thanked me and told me they were glad I was back. It was one of the most surreal experiences of my life to fully let go of all the things I'd held onto for so long. You see, I held onto all of those feelings and experiences. I clung to them because I thought they made me who I was. I had overcome them to be who I was, but in reality, I'd never dealt with them. Those things weren't in my past, they were stored in the trauma center of my brain. I was repeating the past for 20 years because I couldn't let it go.

It's ironic to me that I was holding onto these things as if they were protecting me from the dangers of the future, when in fact they'd be running my life. Everything I did was to evade and escape these experiences, but they kept following me because I kept lugging them around like baggage everywhere I went. If you're holding onto baggage that heavy you'll never get anywhere. I highly encourage you to get it out, take responsibility for the way you chose to deal with the pain in your life. It doesn't make you wrong for dealing with it because there is no morality there to contend with. You did what you did to survive, but more often than not you probably hurt some of the people you love most along the way. Give them the gift of knowing it wasn't all on them. They'll thank you for it someday.

We all know that Ophelia can never make up for how her state of constant crisis affected our family, or for how our family chose to fall apart and not deal with the problems we should've faced as a team. That said, what is done is done and all we can do is remember it as a tumultuous time that we're all glad to have survived. To this day, I have trouble believing it when people tell me that everything is going to be all right. But the truth is that maybe it's okay that everything isn’t going to be all right, because the struggle is what gives our lives perspective.