I met my sister for the first time
This weekend I said goodbye to an alternative version of me. Me, but as a familiar stranger. Separated by over 8000 kilometers, my sister and I have known of each other's existences for a decade. Only a few days ago did we finally reunite.
We met in an unfamiliar country that I never expected to host our reunion. Kazakhstan is similar enough to Russia though and is cool in its own way, of course.
It was actually less emotional than expected. I thought at least one of us would cry when we first met, but not a single tear was shed. The first moments of meeting were awkward. Again, no tears, but all I could do in the moment was ask how she is doing even though I already knew the answer to that question. She asked for permission to hug me. Why didn't I think of doing that in the first place?
Despite our similarities, I immediately thought we looked more different than photos made us out to be. We have the same eye color, but her eyes are rounder than mine just like her face. We've made quite different choices with our lips and eyebrows. She's skinny, almost frail, perhaps due to coping with work- and marriage-related stressors that made her cut her time with me short from about a week to merely 2.5 days.
Whenever I ask her, she thinks she looks like neither our mother nor our father. More like her maternal grandmother. I think she doesn't want to admit the truth: that she looks very much like our father who, to put it lightly, treated our mother like shit, got into alcohol, wanted nothing to do with my sister and saw her all of two times, and threatened to leave her mother if she kept me. Our mother chose neither of us, raising my sister alone briefly before finding a new partner and having a son with him. I look more like our mother. Interesting that we look like the respective parent who abandoned us.
Though of course, I cannot lie: among other similarities, it was comforting to see someone with the same eye color as me even though she said mine are grayer than hers. In terms of appearance, there are probably just as many commonalities as there are differences. As she is less than 11 months older than me, I wondered if people looked at us and thought we're fraternal twins.
At the same time, I couldn't help but feel like I was getting a taste of my own medicine. Our temperaments are too similar. I could only shake my head when she repeatedly refused to let me cover the full price of less than $4 for a taxi ride that both of us needed to take. Yet for some reason she insisted on paying for my ride on the metro. So, I guess the money thing worked only one way.
I rolled my eyes almost out of their sockets when I received text messages from her prefaced with the phrase "if we see each other tomorrow . . ." as if I weren't the one to initiate our reunion in the first place, fly to the other side of the world, learn my birth language so I can competently communicate with her in person, and gift a photo album with dozens of photos documenting my life for her and her family. Why wouldn't we see each other as long as we are both in the same city? My friends say it's like fighting tooth and nail to get me to accept even the smallest amount of help, but I like to think I'm not as stubborn as my sister.
Then she asked if she's supposed to return the photo album to me after I specified initially that it's for her.
But maybe it was something to do with me. Was I being cold? Something is wrong with me, perhaps, having been rejected from my birth family and birth country and denigrated by my adoptive family for my whole adolescence. All that can't be a coincidence.
As I detailed earlier, I don't know how to be a sister. Maybe I don't even know how to be a human being. After all, human beings are fundamentally connected to other human beings. I, however. am untethered, and it's easy for me to stay that way as I can break ties with another person like ripping off a bandaid.
Every day I had to fight the compulsion to shy away and give both of us space as she inched so close to me to look down at the map I used to navigate ourselves around Almaty that I felt her hair brush against my forehead. I don't even really come that close to my best friends after years of contact. Maybe unfamiliar blood relatives are granted special permissions from the git-go and no one told me.
Later, a small pack of stray dogs came howling and barreling down the top of a quiet street we were exploring. We both immediately froze. Until my sister grabbed my hand for dear life, insisting she doesn't fear dogs but still demanding me to be quiet and pulling me along with her. I'll admit they intimidated me a little, too. I didn't grab her hand back though. Instead I let my hand, the size of a nine-year-old's, hang limp in my sister's grasp. For some reason her hands are normally sized.
For the first 1.5 days I felt bad that I didn't feel as much as I was "supposed to," an amount that is surely unquantifiable but something that my brain still wants to be tangible. Things were going well, and it was no surprise that they were given our similar personalities and interests. We walked more than planned, but she didn't complain much. I walk fast according to her. We talked when we both wanted to talk, and we naturally fell silent as we coincidentally started feeling bad or tired at the same time. We were in sync.
Nevertheless, it was awkward, and this person -- my blood relative, the first one I ever met, and the only one born from the same mother and father as me -- who voluntarily flew to see me felt like a distant friend from elementary school. Attached at the hip all day until we retreated to our separate accommodations, where we could recount our impressions to the members of our polar opposite worlds.
I felt there was some sort of power dynamic, even though she may not have, or, if so, in the opposite direction. For me, it was not just because she is older and more experienced in some ways, already with a soon-to-be ex-husband and the owner of two small businesses. Rather it was more about me, the rejected sibling, here to hang out with the one who was kept. And I was the one to request this. As much as she emphasized how lost she feels in her life as a result of the situation, maybe I'm the needier one.
Plus, I had to cope with all this in my third language. It wasn't hard necessarily because I am still learning Russian. But every moment of success after expressing a complex thought and realizing that I was speaking more or less at ease with my sister -- something unimaginable five years ago as I stumbled through Duolingo -- was accompanied by perpetual unworthiness that comes with trying to prove yourself in the language of the country that as a whole rejected you. Before the trip, she bought a course in English so that we could speak in my language, too. We ended up speaking Russian only. I expected that though.
Thankfully, things improved. Eventually she opened up and shared some of the things that were previously left to my imagination via text, instead promised to be explained in person. Just as I felt my brain on the verge of imploding after speaking in Russian for a number of hours that would surely exhaust me even in my native language, some sort of bond started to form. Maybe it was the pressure of our meeting approaching a close that was able to bring out the topics that brought us to Kazakhstan in the first place; otherwise, I think our mutual tendencies for avoidance would have continued to sweep them under the rug in favor of small talk.
I found myself often feeling bad for her, though it's clear that she has a strong psyche and there is no way I can really help her anyway. I pitied her so easily, and it was unsettling in a way that made me genuinely wonder if I am too hard on my own self.
On Friday we went to the airport very late at night for her flight at 4:30 AM. I stayed with her until nearly 2 AM until my accommodation for my remaining days in Almaty summoned me for sleep. While saying goodbye, she admitted the time was too short. She hopes we see each other in another country again someday. I have this same desire. Still, I wasn't sure if she was saying that to be nice (an American thing, but who knows) and maybe she didn't like me as much as expected. Or at all. This time, I initiated the hug. And that was all. Goodbye until whenever.
I don't know what to make of it. It went well, but I don't believe it actually happened. More emotions will almost certainly surface after I exit vacation mode. I'm torn: On the one hand, perhaps I am actually much stronger and was even overprepared for our reunion. Or maybe I am so weak that I didn't open up enough out of fear.
In any case, I think we walked away with a better understanding of ourselves and each other. I can only hope that the experience alleviated at least a morsel of the shame my sister feels surrounding her family for a "choice" only her mother could make that in reality was more of an obligation thanks to what unraveled from the breakup of the Soviet Union and a shitty relationship. I don't blame her, but my sister does. And herself.
I'm walking around Almaty feeling lighter than before, likely thanks to seeing myself in someone else for the first time. A privilege that most take for granted. I feel a little less like an alien, for whatever that's worth. And while I doubt I will ever fully recover from my adoption, I made a big step in a matter of days that even quality therapy, though helpful, could not touch for years.
For better or for worse, it feels like a new beginning rather than a resolution to many years of disillusionment, shame, and longing. Not necessarily just with my birth family, though I am nervous to see what will become of our contact. I wonder what she's told her mom, stepfather, and brother about me. Did I meet expectations? Fall short?
Naturally, the next step, which I always thought was the first, is to return to Russia. It still seems disappointingly unrealistic anytime in the near future. But given this priceless experience as well as being perceived (unsurprisingly) as a Russian in another post-Soviet (icky, I know) country, my American and Russian selves — at odds with each other and neither feeling quite right — feel slightly less distinct from each other. Maybe even 10% in harmony. For now.