“Our siblings. They resemble us just enough to make all their differences confusing, and no matter what we choose to make of this, we are cast in relation to them our whole lives long.” – Susan Scarf Merrell, Author
I think I need to start this off by saying this is not an easy article, but it is regarding a subject that I think about on a daily basis. We all know that families aren’t perfect yet we love them anyway. Sometimes the imperfections or challenges we face within our family are so great that we, still knowing we love our family, make it harder to maintain a bond. That is exactly what this post is about. It is about a struggle between my beliefs and my love for my sister.
Jenna, born deaf a year and a half after me, was the only sibling I really grew up with. I have another sister, 12 years younger than me, a little brother who hasn’t even reached the double digits, and two other half brothers that I didn’t even know existed until last year (still very much younger than I am). Sadly, because of the age differences between myself and my younger siblings, I never got the opportunity to develop a great sibling bond with them. Jenna was the only one I could ride bikes with, tell secrets to, and lock inside a cubby in the entertainment center (yep, with a combination lock…. which she only knew the combination to… did I mention she is deaf so she couldn’t tell me what the combination was after I locked her in?). I had neighborhood friends but she was still the person I spent the most of my time with, in the pool, picking weeds (yep, cruel dad made us do chores back then), and playing pretend. She usually wanted to ride her bike and play sports, though. Jenna was always the ultimate tom-boy. She liked her hair short and her clothes loose and comfortable. We fought like all sisters and sometimes it got bad. But there was never a time when I would let a single other person put her down or make her feel bad (that was MY job, dang it!). When I was eleven or twelve (putting Jenna’s age at about nine or ten), we lived on base in Panama City, Florida. There was a scuzzy, snotty, bratty little blister that lived down the street. I was friends with her sister but this girl, Holly, was something else. Like normal kids do, we occasionally got into fights with other neighborhood kids. On this particular day, though, things got ugly. Holly went too far with what she thought would be an insult, “At least my sister isn’t deaf!” I threw down my bike faster than I knew was possible and within a second I was a foot away from the little petulant snot, I clenched my fist, cocked back my right arm and swung it as hard as I possibly could, clocking her right in her left eye. It was the one and only time I had ever punched a person and at that moment it felt amazing. Unfortunately, things aren’t so amazing when you live on base and base officers come to your door later. But I had done what was right. I believed that then and I believe it now.
Naturally, through the years Jenna and I drifted apart as teenagers and fought non-stop. I believe this was due to simply being part of different cultures. We grew up in the same house but Jenna went to a school for the deaf. The culture in the deaf community is very different from the hearing culture, in many ways. After I moved out and started having kids, we saw each other here and there but never spent days together. She always wanted to help me, though. She always wanted to support the things I wanted to do and the choices I made, no matter how stupid they were (I love my kids, but having four so close in age was just stupid, I’m sorry). There was a time when she would come watch all four kids so I could work some Saturdays. She was always overwhelmed and I knew that’s not what she wanted to be doing with her Saturdays but she did it anyway because we were sisters and that’s what sisters do. When family needs something, you always jump in. Jenna never really seemed to need much, though. My mom would always tease that Jenna was like a cat…. when she wanted attention, she’d come around and demand that she get it right now. But when she didn’t want the attention, you wouldn’t see her for quite some time.
I haven’t read any studies, but from what I have observed, it seems like a big part of the deaf community is the large percentage of same-sex relationships. Jenna saw a couple of guys here and there, nothing serious and nothing that ever lasted very long at all. In her later teenage years she accepted that she just wanted to date females. I can’t speak for the rest of my family… but I reacted with no reaction. I simply didn’t care. I’ve always held the opinion that a person should love who they love, no matter what. I’m not a religious person by any means (please don’t interpret that as me being an atheist, because I’m not that, either), so I didn’t have any belief that it was a sin or that she was a bad person because of it. Love doesn’t hurt anyone. Hell, if it wasn’t for the sex, I might have considered it, myself at times! She went back and forth between appearing pretty butch to looking like a model at times.
No matter what she did or who she was, I just accepted her because she’s my sister, because she’s my family, because I love her. Earlier this year that acceptance of Jenna really was challenged. To be quite honest, it is still very much a challenge. She decided earlier this year that she didn’t want to be a female any longer. She said that she’s always felt like she was put in the wrong body and uncomfortable in her own skin. She went through months of counseling and then began taking testosterone injections.
There’s no other way to say it other than to simply say that I flipped out. I couldn’t handle the thought of my beautiful, loving, amazing sister, becoming a man…. becoming a stranger. For a short while we didn’t speak. I couldn’t accept the fact that she would actually go through with this. She did go through with it and continues to receive injections on a regular basis. She decided against an operation but was going to take the hormones and live her life, otherwise, as a male. She has assumed the name Jay and literally lives as a man.
I kept asking myself why?? Why would a person do this? I didn’t understand. Why fall into the falsities of gender that society places upon us? Why play into a gender role? Why change who you are? Why can’t a person, be a female yet act as what society deems appropriate for a male? Why does a female HAVE to be feminine? There are no rules. Neither are there rules that a man must be masculine. I don’t believe that society should dictate how you should act based upon your genetic makeup. By doing this, society has encouraged individuals to seek gender transformation to feel like they fit it somewhere…. anywhere. These thoughts lead me to thinking that people who seek out gender transformations have deeper, psychological issues that they need help with. Then I started getting worried that she was making a huge mistake. Just a few months before all of this she was actually going through in vitro fertilization to have a baby with her partner, the most feminine experience a woman could ever have. Naturally, I thought she was just confused and jumping from one major life change to another, trying to fill some void… but surely this could not be the answer. This could not be what will ultimately make her happy. Afterall, doesn’t happiness only come from within?
We slowly began speaking again and I saw her a couple of times. The last time I saw her I saw the effects of the testosterone already. Her…. essence was just…. different. She wasn’t Jenna, anymore. That’s when I realized that my sister had died. Not in a literal sense of the word. But all that made her was just… gone, it seemed. I began grieving as if an actual death had occurred and I still feel the grief to this day. She was gone. I felt like part of my childhood was ripped away from me. If I didn’t have a sister now… how could I have had a sister then? I felt like something took over her body and destroyed all I knew of her.
I told her I couldn’t have her around my kids when more significant changes occurred and that I was uneasy around her. I told her everything I have written here, that I felt like she had died, that I hated it, that she had some issues she needed to resolve… I unleashed out of desperation to bring my sister back. She simply stated that she needed to do this for her, not for anyone else. She also told me that she understood how I feel and that it was okay. Of course she did…. that’s Jenna… supportive always of how I feel.
Last week a dear friend of mine lost her sister suddenly. I was talking to her, trying to comfort her in some way, when she said “It’s good to talk to someone who has a sister and knows what that bond is like.”
My heart sank. She didn’t know what was going on with Jenna because I hadn’t mentioned it to too many people.
That was the exact moment that changed everything. I wouldn’t say there was any epiphany that made everything okay, that made me feel better, or made me feel differently about the subject as a whole. But what it did do was made me realize that if I lost my sister, in the physical sense, I would never be able to live with myself. I would never forget how I made her feel badly about a decision that was so important to her. I would never forget how I abandoned her when everyone else was, too. I would never forget how, after all the years that she supported my stupid decisions, I couldn’t support the biggest one she’ll ever make.
It was at that moment that I knew I needed to make things right. Even though I don’t like what she is doing, even though I am not at a point where I can refer to her as a “he”, and even though this is one of the most difficult things I have gone through, it doesn’t mean that I can’t still love her, stand by her, and support her. I realized that even though the sister that I grew up with is gone… maybe, just maybe there is hope that I can somehow find it in me to try to make a bond with what I have now.
I don’t have all of the answers and everything is not all “okay” suddenly. But there is a willingness to try, now. There is a willingness to go past my comfort zone and still love regardless of the situation. It will be a long time before it seems natural. It will be a long time before I can say brother… or he… or Jay. I can’t even guarantee that I will ever get to that point. But I can guarantee that I will love no matter what. That I will not turn my back, no matter what. And that I will stand beside my sibling, no matter what and with all my might try to do the honorable thing.
…. heck, maybe now she’ll be better at socking people in the eye. At least there’s that.
I love you, J.