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Let me tell you about my sister. While Slash and I have always been "buddies," Tina was the odd man out. Emotional, melodramatic, bossy, self-consumed... I could never do anything right, unless I was doing it exactly to her specifications. I was continually labeled a "brat" for not accepting my role as indentured servant, and any form of torture Ty passed to her was immediately handed down to me. Actually, from both of them. Bastards.

But my sister is crippled. While Slash took Dad's abuse head-on and became stronger, if not more cynical from it, Tina just became more and more broken. She couldn't handle not being able to win the approval she so desperately sought from my father, and I honestly wonder if she was even born with the emotional tools most people develop to be able to handle stress. As she grew older, lacking imagination she turned rebellious, and added to her burdens an entire list of emotional and physical scars from her lifestyle. She was left with little to no self-esteem, and the immature attitudes that often accompany abuse, both from outside influence and self-imposed.

When Tina turned 18, she developed extremely severe epilepsy. I was called at school to be informed that my sister was in the hospital, and she had had some kind of seizure. It ended up being a Grand Mal, and the beginning of what would be a daily series of them until they could find medication that worked for her.

This was tragic, but most especially for one major reason: Tina had begun asserting her independence. She had her license. She had a job. She was planning on moving out. She had friends she was moving in with. She was becoming an adult.

And with one condition that came out of freaking nowhere, it was all taken away. She couldn't drive, because what if she had a seizure in the car. She couldn't work, because they had to call the ambulance every other day and it was an embarrassment. She couldn't move out, because now she had no money and no car. She was stuck. She was a little kid again. She was embarrassed.

The first time I saw my sister have a seizure, I cried like a little sissy-bitch. We were home alone in the very beginning days, and she just started shaking violently. I held her as best I could, and she threw up on both of us. She urinated. It lasted for, maybe, ninety seconds. I held her as she slowly "woke up," dazed and unable to talk. She didn't know where she was. She knew who I was. She didn't know what had happened. I told her she had vomited and urinated, so I was going to change her clothes. She nodded slightly.

And I cried while I changed her clothes.

It wasn't fair. It wasn't bloody fair. I was the youngest, I was smart, I was loved. I had every advantage Tina hadn't had. And here it was SHE that had developed epilepsy. Her, when it would have been so much more fair for me to have. She couldn't take it. She could barely handle soap operas, how was she going to handle something like this?

In those moments, I hated myself. I hated my advantages and everything that had ever been give to me. I hated that I wasn't Tina, and if I could have shoved a butcher knife into my gut to prevent her from having another seizure, I would have.

But she dealt with it. She made it through. Marriage, a child. Friends. She carved a life for herself, and she's as happy as she can be. She works hard and she's motivated. She's compassionate.

Between the two of us, as we grew up, things got better as they often do. Sometimes we go shopping and talk on the phone. She gave birth to my gorgeous nephew D'mitri, who is the love of my life, and for that I will be eternally grateful. She's also turned out somewhat cool, in her way, and she takes care of her immature husband and her kid. While I don't seek out her company, I respect her. And that's a whole heckuva lot more than I used to say.

She makes me feel like a coward. From her I take away both superiority and extreme inferiority. Her marks are on both sides of the pendulum.

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