I didn’t know Margaret had a best friend.

I’d known for a while that big events pull people out of crevices. I found myself worried about people showing up who hadn’t known her, not really, reaching out to leach off of the pain. There’s something about hubbub that functions like fire, that turns people into moths. Engages can ignite the flame. Weddings. Pregnancy announcements. Showers. Births. Funerals.

And I found myself in this position of feeling like I had to comfort others for their pain and grief while not able to truly confront my own.

While my heart was bleeding, I would say that I was fine, and then comfort them, not knowing for a while that accepting comfort myself made me uncomfortable. I didn’t want to be touched. I didn’t want anyone to see my tears. I couldn’t be vulnerable.

Then I found myself suspicious of everyone who did show up, especially those who were open in their grief. Margaret’s best friend came over, and I found myself whispering to Rachel if she really was Margaret’s best friend. She was.

It reminded me how little I knew of Margaret after the past few years. I’d known she’d broken up with the guy who she’d met at boot camp. They’d had this wild, deep connection that had its troubles, but she was building something with him, working towards that family she’d always wanted. She’d told me she’d done things, too, that she wasn’t perfect, either. She’d found someone else, moved in with him a few months before she died. She was trying again, looking to build a life and a family.

She didn’t say much when we did have time together, like when she came to give me a ride for Thanksgiving when my car was having trouble or when I took her out to hibachi for her birthday, the last birthday she had before she died. I’d pull things out, slowly, carefully. When she and my mother flew out to Colorado to help me in the aftermath of leaving my ex-husband, we would drive to the gym or the store, and, when I was patient, she’d share something. Something small here, like about the chocolate-covered cherries she’d worked so hard to save up money for. That had been given as a gift to a parent. That had been spit out.  Something small there, like she really loved baking, like really loved it, but then she’d gotten sick and lost some weight because she couldn’t eat, and people she loved started commenting on how good she looked and how thin she looked, and how she shouldn’t be eating anything that she baked, and then she lost her passion for baking and couldn’t do it anymore.

Those little, heavy moments gutted me, and I appreciated that she shared, but there was always a feeling that she didn’t quite trust me. Other siblings, I’ve found, feel the same way about me, still. And perhaps it’s because I’m one of the older ones, and having five to ten years older on most of them means that I acted and behaved more like a parent than a sibling. But it was also the trauma we all went through. I couldn’t enjoy having siblings, much like my mother couldn’t enjoy having children, not in the structure of oppressive religion or when controlled by abusive authority figures. I’d left home when I was 18, heading as far away as I could, and whenever I visited, I’d find myself impatient, reverting to the old me I didn’t like. I’d leave feeling guilty. I wasn’t good enough, patient enough. I’d ruined yet another visit.

I didn’t know how to change those habits, except try my best when I did have a moment. My default instinct was to tease, to push away, to try to get in that zinger before someone jabbed at me. I didn’t know how to be vulnerable before the pain of grief, and certainly not after. I couldn’t be soft.

That night, with Margaret’s best friend, as we talked and shared memories, she started to crumble in her grief and pain.

It started with how perfect Margaret had been, how funny she was, how nice she’d been, how unfair it was that she’d been taken away, how dangerous her boyfriend had been, the things he did to her, like smashing her cell phone so she couldn’t contact anyone. How he carried guns around openly.

Her emotions escalated quickly, in a way I didn’t understand or know how to process, and I quietly left the room.

I needed to sleep, I told myself. I was tired.

And I was. I was so tired. But also, I couldn’t process it. This was a level I could not handle, couldn’t even express myself, much less support as she started to feel the pain of it all.

When my mother went into a cleaning frenzy, because relatives she hadn’t talked to in years were coming to visit, I disappeared then too, getting flashbacks to years past. I needed a nap.

Alcohol helped me relax, at least before the hangover. Marijuana helped me sleep.

It still took a few weeks for me to understand that there was no escaping the fatigue. No substances could ease any of it. Naps didn’t energize me.

There was no way out but through.

Emblem of Our House is an on-going series about the death of my sister Margaret in 2018, published every Monday here and on Instagram @EmblemofOurHouse.