My Sister Melanie

There is a lot more to be said about my parents, like the fact that my mom had been in a relationship before she met my dad that resulted in a child, but I'll fill you in more on that as we go along.  One side note that probably needs to be shared so you understand the slant of my writing about my family is this: A therapist I met with a few years ago when I was really struggling with my marriage and my self-confidence, and my life in general tried to blame my short-comings on my parents.  I about came unglued.  My parents did everything they could to take good care of me as a child.  I loved my childhood!  And apart from the oil and water relationship my parents had, I always knew I was loved and cared for, period.  Sound defensive enough?  Well I am.

Anyway, on to my sister Melanie.  As a result of the afore-mentioned relationship, my sister Melanie is biologically my half-sister Melanie.  At no point in time have I ever referred to her as anything but my sister and for all intents and purposes, she is my sister - even when I wanted to slap her face.  So, Melanie is about 3 years older than me, give or take.  I'm the middle child between 2 sisters, you don't know how many times I rued this fact in my young life.  To this day it affects me.  Melanie was as bossy a person as you could ever want to meet.  She was aggressive and she got what she wanted, or at least fought tooth and nail to get it, no matter who she hurt.  If you recall I mentioned that when my parents would fight my sisters would make it worse by prolonging the drama.  To be honest, it was mostly Melanie and my other sister, Jen - whom you'll meet later - kind of just followed along.  Jen REALLY wanted to be Mel for some strange reason.  And Mel really wanted the attention of my Mother, practically non-stop.  It was SUPER frustrating for me and caused a lot of friction with Jen too.  From Jen's perspective I think it was more the ability to always push Mel's buttons for sport.  I'll tell you more about Jen in the next segment.  Mel, would pile on the already stressful situations caused by my parents' yelling by saying things in a completely passive-aggressive manner so as to fan the flames just enough to insinuate herself into the fights, if she could.  And she usually could.  For as sweet and kind and patient as my mom was, Mel was exactly the opposite.  She was kind of like the fly annoying the lion just enough to keep him really ticked off.  I'm not sure why she felt like she had to fight for my mother's attention, but she did.  And she fought hard.  To the point of completely alienating me.  I would avoid talking to Mel at all cost.  If I did speak with her it was in monosyllabic words and phrases.  I wanted her away from me and the conversation over as quickly as possible.  And, I always just wanted the yelling to end, so when I was old enough to figure out what Mel was doing, it really upset me and she and I would end up fighting.  But she was scary and bigger than me until I was a Junior in High School so I usually just left the situation and went to find my friends.  Mel hated that and would always call me a wussy, or worse, for not sticking up for myself more.  I'm pretty sure she hated me.  I was OK with that at the time usually.  Funny thing was, when bad things happened to Mel, I got really defensive and protective.  I was the same way toward Jen.  It was surprising because I didn't think I really cared.

I guess one positive thing for Mel's temperament was that she had parlayed her aggressive nature into some pretty impressive sporting accomplishments during her pre-teen and teen-age years.  She was a great fast-pitch softball player, a solid long-distance runner, could mountain bike better than most guys I knew and was a GREAT swimmer.  In fact, I'm sure if triathlons had been more popular in the 90's she would have been terrific at that too.  Mel did well enough in school, but she wasn't a straight-A student or anything like that.  She cared a bit more than me, but I think she just did well enough to stay in sports.  She was pretty set on getting college paid for through sports.  In fact, she ended up getting signed by the Arizona State University women's softball team, but never played.  That story is for later.  My dad really liked that Mel was so athletic.  He was never the crazy sports dad, but he was definitely proud of her accomplishments and did whatever he could to help her improve and advance in her chosen sports.  It got especially important to him when he realized I didn't like any mainstream sports.  It's not that I wasn't good at them, I just didn't want to put the effort into them, and the pressure of that kind of competition never sat well with me.  I think he wondered if I was really his kid, I wondered myself sometimes.  For her part, Mel was always on the spot to let me know how great she was at sports and what a pansy I was.  I kind of hated her too.