psychosis 101

I don't have a lot of memory from my pre-sibling days. In fact the earliest memory I can conjure up is that of my parents asking my input on a name for my soon to arrive first sibling. I was 4.

I gave them the most wonderful name my 4 year old brain could imagine. The name of my imaginary friend. My friend was named after someone that I was slightly enamoured with. The organist at our church. She was young, attractive and played that big giant thing on the stage. Cool. Of course my 4 year old version of her name was slightly altered as I could not pronounce her actual name (which was Charlotte, by the way. That's a lot of consonants for a kid) My parents liked the alternative pronunciation and thus, my imaginary friend soon came to life, so to speak. Lots of people have tried to psycho-analyze this, as I am sure you are doing now. Its fun to speculate but trust me, it won't help.

Now, lets be clear on this, my parents thought it was cute. And sure, it made for a sweet story. But we need to understand the idea of the imaginary friend. One, they are imaginary. Two, you can make them go away when you are tired of playing with them. Three, they pretty much let you call the shots. Are you starting to see the problem here??

There are nice pictures of my sister and I in matching outfits with me reading her a story. The truth of it is, I don't remember any of that. What I remember is having my own room and all the attention and not being able to make her go away when I was done playing with her. Let's not forget I had a corner on the kid market for nearly 5 years before she showed up. Then to add insult to injury, I got a brother right after I turned 7. My then two year old sister moved into my room. And, one more jab here, we had to share a bed. Who does this??? After a year or so, we moved and got a bigger house and we were able to get our own beds (thank GOD!)
but I believe the damage was done.

There is a line in a favorite movie of mine that says there should be 5 years between exceptional siblings. Its a lie. My brother is mostly normal, of course he has that whole "baby of the family" thing going. My sister and I, on the other hand, are mostly screwed up. Again, not my parents fault. We have good parents. Its the birth order thing. We are so far apart that I have the "only child" and "oldest child" traits. Not a bad combination but it can create issues. She, however, has "oldest" and "middle". I believe this is what has led her to be a sometimes neurotic Type A that has near nervous/emotional break downs.
If you were to ask her, she would blame some of her problems on me. Like the time she fell out of the closet and probably suffered some kind of brain damage. (I say fell out, she says dragged out/sat upon/head bounced off the floor... toe-may-toe, toe-mah-toe) Or the fact that I constantly terrorized her.

Remember when I said that I didn't remember a lot of those fluffy moments created for the camera? Its true. Scaring the pee out of her is one of the things that I remember most about our relationship. Actually drawing a line down the middle of the room. Holding a pillow over her face while she slept until she finally stopped making that awful noise (some people call it breathing). Shaking my head at how ridiculous and un-cool she was one night when she went hysterical because she realized that if anyone ever broke into our house in the middle of the night to kill us, she would die first because her bed was the first one in the room. (I can't slight her too much on this one as I have these occasional ridiculous, paranoid things going on too. At least I am smart enough to keep them to myself) The list goes on. For most of my adolescence the mere fact that she existed was enough to make me crazy. Not because I didn't love her or care about her but we were very different. She was emotional and a little on the spazzy side. Me, not so much. It drove me nuts that she was like that. I wanted her to be more like me. She was probably better off.

I can say that now that we are mostly grown up, we get a long ok. Of course we are not sharing a bed, a room or even a zip code. She still bugs me sometimes and I'm sure its mutual.

So parents, whats in a name? What is the best spacing for siblings? Sometimes we have no control over either of these facts. But if you do, think long and hard about both. Someone will have to live with whatever choices you make.