She was always the softest one.
The one I protected. The one I poured into. The one I felt safest with. We shared late-night stories, quiet griefs, whispered rage. I was her maid of honour. Her shoulder when things with her husband got rough. Her keeper when she needed a safe place to land.
I thought she would be mine, too.
But what I’ve come to realise is: silence doesn’t always mean safety.
When everything fell apart—when our mother packed up and left our father in the middle of his travels, when it was decided without much discussion that my house would be the one to take him in—she didn’t speak up. Not to our mother. Not to our older sister. Not in the moment when it mattered most.
She told me what was coming. She told me, “This will open up old wounds. You’ll recoil into your helpless child self.”And she was right.
But she still let it happen.
When I cried to her on the phone, she listened. When I vented, she agreed. When I said I couldn’t do it, she said, “You can just say no.” But she didn’t help me say no. She didn’t say it with me.
That’s what silence does. It nods while watching you burn.
She was out of work at the time. So was her husband. I never expected her to help financially. But help doesn’t always mean money.
Sometimes it means parenting the father who didn’t show up to your wedding.
Sometimes it means coming over for an hour to help him clean or talk or breathe.
Sometimes it means saying to the family, “This is too much for her.”
But she didn’t do any of that. She kept her role as the good daughter, the peacemaker, the neutral voice. She polished her responses so cleanly, there was nothing to argue with—and nothing to hold onto.
She’s always been the one person I confide in. These days, even my mother tells her everything. She listens. She repeats what was said. But she doesn’t challenge, she doesn’t confront. She just lets the drama play out like a storm she can’t control. And when it passes, she returns to the calm.
But some of us are still soaked.
When I said I blamed our older sister for deciding it had to be me who housed our father, she responded, “But he used to beat her.” As if one truth cancels the other. As if my pain has to sit down to let someone else’s take the seat.
That’s how it often feels with her: like my feelings are valid but not actionable. Heard but not held.
I blocked her too.
Not because I stopped loving her. But because I didn’t feel loved back in the way I needed. I needed a partner in grief. A co-signer in outrage. I needed the sister who once sat beside me in childhood, not just the woman who knows how to disappear without leaving the room.
She’s working again now. I see her filling the gap I left behind. Taking the parents out to dinner. Stepping into the quiet space where my boundaries now live. I wonder if she thinks this is love. I wonder if she’s already tired.
I wonder if she remembers what I looked like when I started burning out.
Because I think she might be wearing it now.
But she’ll never say it. She never does.
And maybe that’s the heartbreak of this instalment: I still don’t know where she ends and her silence begins.
And I’m too tired to ask.
So I’ll write it here instead.