Imagine the worst thing that can happen to you...

...and it does. I dreamed of my sister's death one early morning. I woke up and immediately realized that for the first time in my life, I knew what a cold sweat was.

I had to call her that instant. To hear her voice and know she was all right. So I did. And she knew from my voice that things were not all right and I knew that she wasn't all right either. Perhaps that was the day she had first contemplated suicide. I don't know. I hope not. If that were true, then all of us who loved her were guilty of not understanding the depths of her despair.

We both loved Murakami's books. And P.G. Wodehouse. It was rare that we didn't share a common love for a book. But with about everything else, it was not easy to find any common ground as adults.

Looking back, I can understand her love for the familiar things of our childhood and her longing for those days. To me, the happy days of childhood were over more or less when my grandparents died. I think that our home became a house after that. As Murakami says, "Civilization is Communication". I think we stopped communicating at a deep level after my grandparents died. I don't think my parents communicated to each other. Issues were never discussed, but left to simmer. My mother says that my sister was the sensitive one and took on the burden of her sorrow. Maybe so. But I don't think any of us were happy. Hearing my sister wishing she could go back to our childhood days, I stated my definite preference for the present - as bad as it was at that point for me. She said she was happier in our childhood and I believed her. But was she? Or was her present just a whole lot worse?

Now I find myself yearning for reminders of our childhood together. As the lyrics of one of her favourite songs that roughly translates to "without you, there is no spring for me". That seems to sum it up for me right now. I am not unhappy all the time. I am definitely not deeply depressed like she was. I think I have M. and my two cats to thank for that. Call it transference to the cats, but getting the two of them has helped me cope with the vacuum in my life left by my sister. But then again, I am rarely happy. I can be distracted for some time. I can lose myself for a few hours dancing, getting high, getting drunk, smoking, driving, listening to music. But after all that is done, I still feel the emptiness that echoes within me.

I wonder if having a daughter would help. Transference again? Yeah. Looks like that is the best I can hope for now. I hadn't cried in months, but a song from our childhood kept coming up like a stuck tune in my head for the past few weeks. Finally heard it today on youtube and I couldn't stop the tears from flowing. I had almost been able to convince myself that things were normal. Maybe they never will be and I just have to accept that. It is a wound that refuses to heal. But a wound that is almost loving in its familiarity. I had never thought life would be difficult. To me everything had come almost too easily until things changed. Then everything was doubly difficult. Life is fucked up.