Barely any movement and my eyes are shooting open. My body already halfway out of the chair, I’ve turned into my makeshift bed for the night. She’s just shifting in her sleep, just like she was the last three times, and I let out a breath, leaning back. I click the home button on my phone: 2:15 a.m. The light from the hallway is creeping into the room, the squeaking of nurses’ departmentally approved sneakers against the linoleum floors making me cringe in my seat.
It’s night three for me. Five for her.
Things aren’t looking up.
But she’s hanging in there because she’s the strongest person I know. For many of us, it’s always one of the strongest people we know.
We have a lot of faith in my family. A lot.
Many families do.
For me, though, my faith couldn’t quite get through my anger. I remember being so mad. All the time, at everyone. None of it was making sense to me and nothing was working and at 19 years old I felt like a petulant child who was stomping her foot with tears in eyes because it just wasn’t fair.
Sometimes, I still get mad about it. Sometimes, I still think that it wasn’t fair.
But I think a big part of dealing with the situation is understanding that it doesn’t have to be fair. You don’t get to decide when good or bad things happen to you, they just do. You can vent all you want. You can yell and scream and bawl your eyes out, but your situation isn’t going to change. You’re still going to be scared, you’re still going to be angry.
But why them? Why now? Why not me?
I would have given anything to be the one going through it instead of her. I’m sure we all felt that way at one point or another. But then the person that you care about would be in your shoes thinking the same exact thing and it would be a vicious cycle, because, surprise, they care about you, too.
I love you is a fairly easy thing to say. It’s a fairly easy thing to show if you try.
But nothing prepared me for how much love I had for her, right then. She’s weak and scared and she’s smiling through it all. She’s making me sing Like A Prayer as we walk the hallways, and the nurses are smiling at us because we look stupid: she’s in her hospital gown and I’m in sweatpants and it’s the middle of the night and we’re sneaking peeks at her heart monitor and we’re just singing. She’s getting mad at Mom, every day, for ordering her 2% milk instead of whole, and she’s as demanding as ever, “Water now. Put my shoes by my feet. Open my blinds.”
Seeing someone you care about in the hospital, as odd as it may sound, makes your chest feel like it could burst with the sheer magnitude of how much you love them.
Whatever you believe in, whomever you believe in, you start to beg. I have never prayed as much I did those few days.
Even now, I would rather not know what it feels like. I would rather not be able to tell you. This was a problem that other people dealt with, not me.
I like to think that I’m a supportive person. That I’m kind. That my words and advice are helpful to those I care about who are going through hard times. But this time, I was the one receiving the “I’m here if you need me” texts. I was the one who was being offered the love and support, I was the one being talked down.
And I was mad about it.
Because try as they might, no one got it.
I felt completely isolated in my emotions, because in my mind, no one understood what I was going through.
The most helpful thing I got was something akin to this:
“Ellaina, I wish there was something I could say to help you, but we both know that there’s not.”
And it almost sounds harsh, but he was right. There was not a damn thing in the entire world that anyone could say to me to make me feel better. The fact that he knew that, made me feel just a tiny bit better.
My sister was in the hospital. It sucked.
I felt guilty when I had fun without her. I didn’t want to have fun without her.
I was so bitter.
And I was stubborn in my anger, in my fear, in my bitterness.
I was selfish in the sense that I had to feel those things. They were my feelings and I was keeping them, regardless of how many “I understand what you’re going through”’s I got.
No matter how many people that are there for you, sometimes you just can’t get past it. Or you just won’t. No matter how grateful you are for their love and their support and their kindness, and there was a lot of it, the emotions that you’re feeling are your own and you have to process them as such.
But it’s important that you remember: those people who are there for you, are there for you. They’re not just saying it. They’ll listen to you be mad and stubborn and stupid, even. Some may give advice, some may just listen, but it helps. Every little bit helps. Because this isn’t something new. This is something that all kinds of people have encountered. It’s incredibly lonely in it’s duration, but it doesn’t have to be. You have to be willing to let them in. You have to stop being stubborn for five seconds and realize that your stress and your pain and your hurt isn’t helping the one person that you’re stressing over, that you’re hurting for. They understand, of course, but they’re scared out of their minds, and you’ve got to be there for them.
You’ve got to know the lyrics to Like A Prayer and be ready to sing in front of patients, doctors, and nurses. You’ve got to make them laugh and tease them just the same and show them that you love them. That’s what’s important.
And yeah, you can be mad while you do it. You can still be hurting. Those feelings are still valid. But they’re not the only feelings that are. You can still be happy. You are allowed to laugh at a joke or have fun or go to the beach because that’s what they’d want for you.
Because they love you just as much as you love them, and even if things don’t go as planned, if things change, or take a turn for the worst, that love won’t leave. They will always want the best for you.
I call my sister Peaches, and I love her a whole lot. She is one of the strongest people I know. Just the other day I got a video of her walking around on the beach, and I cried. Actual tears, because there she was: out and about, with my dad making corny jokes at her and she’s laughing because he’s a complete idiot and 500 miles away, in North Carolina, I’m crying. She’s going to be just fine.
It’s all going to be just fine.