Loss of a partner in crime

I knew it was going to hurt but I didn’t know it was going to hurt this much. There is no one on earth who knows who you are like a sibling. No one else understands the forces and the secrets that made you, you or they, them.

Mom always divided us up by our talents but we all had the same ones, just expressed them differently. She would say I was the visual and verbal and Cam was the musical one and Alison was the athlete.

And to some extent that was true, yes, I was a good writer and artist but I still got in All State honor choir and I was a gymnast and dancer. But Cam was a good photographer and an excellent writer and took up dancing after years of making fun of me for teaching folkdance and backpacking. He used to say we were his 2 jock sisters.

He turned me into a warrior because he was so small and Dad wanted to beat the crap out of someone, I always made sure it was me and not him. That he was safe under a table or out of the way. Because if Dad hit me he would go in his room and leave us alone. So I got in the habit of being fierce and confrontational, not always the best strategy but it worked at home.

Outside the house it was Cam that was friendly and made friends easily. Cam could sparkle. I was too touched by darkness to sparkle like Cam. His sense of humour was very different from the rest of ours and he got frustrated sometimes and of course it was thing Ali and I could get him on.

No one else on the planet could get my goat like Cam, to make me go from 0-60 in fury like him. all he had to do was say “I know something you don’t know” and smirk and I was ready to flatten him. Didn’t matter whether he knew anything or not. And yet we loved each other and could stand united against our parents. When we came out to each other it was just one more thing to bind us. When my friends were all becoming lesbian separatists there was no way I was, I had a gay little brother.

There is such a hole in my heart I can hardly think about it and I think there will be for the rest of my life because Bugro Nelson is gone now and he’ll never punch me again for calling him that, the big booger.