Dear Marie,
On September 19th, 2002, I couldn’t believe that my world was about to change. My emotions went from happy to nervous in a matter of seconds. I was a big sister, and I was about to take on a new role and responsibilities that scared me a lot.
“What if I'm not perfect?”
“What if I fail you?”
Holding you as a newborn I never second guessed myself about the protection I was going to have for you. I made a promise that whether right or wrong I was going to stand by your side.
We grew up in a small town on the outskirts of New Orleans, called Edgard. We were raised to be well mannered children. In a way it’s like our parents wanted to form us to be the perfect kids. Good grades, involved in all the community activities, non-problematic, and well spoken. We appreciate some of the traits, but as we’ve gotten older our parents seem to think we can’t face our own problems.
We’ve always been close. From the time I knew I was becoming a big sister, I wanted to protect you from anything and anyone. We’re a few years apart, but we act so close in age. You’re literally the exact opposite of me. You hold a lot of your emotions in and stay in your own world unless you’re being provoked.
On that one chilly Sunday night, January 20th, 2024, I received that phone call of you crying. I knew something major happened.
I was speechless, because I never saw this side of you before. After I got you to calm down, you told me what happened. You and mom got into an argument. She was angry because she felt you were being lazy and not trying to apply yourself to filling out scholarships or getting a job. She was even teasing you about not being able to drive.
I realize that you are a senior in high school and you’ve gotten to the point where you’re scared of your next journey – college.
Our mother expects you to do this all on her own, like I did, but you don’t quite have the confidence to take those first steps by yourself sometimes. I feel my mom thinks she should because I was working at sixteen and doing a lot before my senior year.
But I didn’t learn that from my parents, it was some of my teachers, boyfriends, friends and other family members who taught me. Plus, I was a lot more driven and eager to get ahead in life at a younger age.
When Marie told me about the argument, I knew this was where I had to draw the line. I went to make a Facebook post.
“Tough love is played out. Mental health is serious, and I feel parents don’t take that seriously enough when it comes to their children! Learn how to actually listen and stop talking down on them before it is too late.”
That post created a storm, and I didn’t care how big it was. I was going to protect my sister from being verbally abused by any means. Whether that meant I had to drive down the long, dark roads of I-49 highway for four straight hours, I was willing to do it. It took my sister some time to build into the young lady she is now, but she is trying to learn and do things on her own. The only problem is she can’t learn by herself and whenever we ask our parents for help, they get so mad with us and say, “You should know how to do this already.”
My mom saw the post and called me to confront me about it. Our conversation got extremely heated to the point that I said some language I wasn’t supposed to say towards her, and that didn’t sit well with her because that’s not how we were raised. We were raised to never disrespect our parents, but at that point I didn’t care. The conversation ended with her wishing me well in school.
I knew the consequences that were about to come and in the blink of an eye, after four years of being in college and relying on my mom for support, she finally did it. She cut me off. Financially and emotionally. I had no one to turn to. It's the last semester of my senior year, and I was alone. I was all by myself having to figure out how I was going to maintain my life moving forward for my sister and I. Before I could even catch my breath from that conversation my dad called to
make sure I wasn’t leaving Natchitoches and made it clear to me if I did, I wouldn’t have a way back to Natchitoches.
I love my parents, but this was a turning point. This is where I had to make a change. I was okay with dealing with the trauma of my parents shutting me down, calling me names, not considering my feelings, and making me struggle to figure things out on my own, but I wasn’t trying to let my sister go down the same path as me. I developed so much depression, low self-esteem, and anxiety. I still have difficulty in making healthy relationships because I start to push people away. My self-consciousness tells me nobody is really going to be there for me. That night my sister called; it was like I had a flashback. It’s like I saw the younger me all over again, and I wanted to reassure my sister that as long as I’m here I will always be by her side.
Dear Marie,
It’s now April 2024. You’re about to graduate high school, and I’m about to graduate college. You have been the reason I push myself to keep going. You make me want to better myself in every way possible, and I just want to continue to be a positive role model for you so you can stay on the right path mentally and physically. I will always reassure you that you’re doing a great job because our parents only praise us when we make them proud. But I will always love you and will do my best to let you know that during the good or bad times that I see you. I know you. If I could do it, so can you!
