Eclectic Shit & Other Fuckery

A tribute to my sisters. I’m proud of us 🖤

We were born into a mentally, emotionally, and religiously abusive family to a narcissist father and a mother who couldn’t cope and took out her frustrations and own lifetime of abuse on her children.

Five of us. Way too many – ask any one and she’ll agree.

We each have our own stories. No two are the same. Similar, perhaps, yet vastly different. We jest in all seriousness how each of us had a completely different set of parents despite being full siblings growing up in a single household. That may sound normal to a degree but for us it’s magnified.

I was the scapegoat. Number two was put on a pedestal as the golden child. Number three was his favorite, the trophy. Number four, mom’s favorite and the “spoiled” one. Number five the abandoned child.

Five kids, five different stacks of trauma – sometimes overlapping and intertwining but always in line with our roles.

Whether intentionally or by nature of the cult and family dynamic we were raised in, we were pitted against each other constantly. It’s honestly shocking we get along as well as we do, which… isn’t always that great. Some of us aren’t talking while some of us live together; some of us have shunned each other and some of us haven’t – sometimes with good reasons and other times not so much.

We fight, we argue, we laugh, we bitch, we party, we travel, we pair off to hide in the bathroom trauma-dumping when we should be socializing with guests. We have good times, great times, and we have really fucking bad ones.

Thing is, when serious crisis hits? And, oh, we’ve had some doozies. When those crises hit, we’re the first ones there for each other. Not always all of us, sometimes some of us are even the perpetrators. But someone is there for the one who needs it – no exceptions, no questions asked, hours-long distances be damned.

I feel we’re lucky that way. Somehow, someway – perhaps out of pure spite – we’ve managed to more or less stick together without the dollhouse mentality we were forced to uphold in our younger years. I think that’s something not a lot of families have.

Maybe it’s because of the hypocritical façade that was imposed on us that we tend not to have one with each other and the world. Especially when it comes to one another, we’re loud and blunt and often unapologetic. Some have said we’re too much, annoying, rude, we should learn to just be normal. But we’re not normal, we’re us; we’re pieces of ourselves and each other and the shit we’ve been through and the ways each of us choose to move past it. The way we talk with or at or about each other is how we bond and fight and deal with the shit that’s between us, the way we hang out is fun to us, the way we communicate (or don’t) with each other is what works for us; that’s just the way we are and that’s okay. No one else has to like it.

Despite all odds, we’ve managed to take the dumploads of shit we were handed and turn it into something, sometimes even something beautiful. Deep talks on the phone, lazy walks along the ocean, short trips together full of history and perspective and photoshoots. Thrift store runs where one second we’re arguing and the next hyping someone up to get that entire outfit that brings out her eyes. Vacations planned around learning more about our world and its past and the people who live here. Long drives around town screaming lyrics at the top of our lungs while someone’s hanging out the window, melancholy walks down the old railroad track in the town we all remember, visits from hours away just because someone bitched about being neglected for too long.

An older girl once told me – something like a decade and a half ago – that someday I’d be glad I had siblings. I didn’t believe her but never forgot what she’d said, holding onto her words as my mantra, a tiny thread of hope I’ve never let go of for the five of us. In some ways, I was right. But in some ways so was she.

Our parents may have failed us, nearly destroyed us. But we’re adults now and we’re all still standing.

Are we perfect? Far from it. Are we dysfunctional as fuck? Absolutely. But at the end of the day – we’re all doing our best with what we were given, we all care about each other despite the flaws and mistakes and walls and fights and pain, we’re all growing even if it’s sometimes apart, we’re all better than we were yesterday. And that’s what counts.

– written 23 Feb 2023

#5’s profile photo taken by Amos Stoltzfus Photos || all other photos taken by me, my sisters,
or a friend / family member || faces blurred for privacy reasons only