Sharing a Room with my Sister

Starting to write again after an unusually successful post is always daunting. It's only tapping keys but it feels like more. It feels like they're staring at my fingertips and betting against them. It feels as though the screen is staring me down, reflecting my doubts straight back at me. I spent the week searching for some headline or some snappy take that will match last weeks post, even though last weeks has been on the list, and on my mind, for over a year now. I couldn't find one, so instead I'm going to write about my holiday.

If you follow me on Instagram, you'll know I've been away. Endless poolside snaps would give me away. If you work at the same restaurant as me, you'd properly notice there's been less of my spotty trousers around. But in pretty much every other way, I've been doing exactly what I do at home, just in the sun instead. I've had wifi, I've chosen not to take a holiday from my copywriting job, I've read five books and I've written a lot. I find breaks difficult. A lot of my self-esteem comes from producing things and physically doing things, so for me to have an enjoyable holiday, I still need to feel productive. If not then I feel low and agitated, and I snap at people very easily. Keeping up with a normal workload on holiday isn't for everybody, but it works for me. I'm only as good as what I'm making.

My sister and I have been sharing a room while we've been in Phuket. We shared begrudgingly until I was sixteen, before separating into a new house with old memories. This house was previously another family members, so we already knew it well, and the rooms we took on had previous names attached to them. In contrast, the room my sister and I shared when we were younger was always ours. Every inch of the walls was covered in posters that we never removed or replaced, so they served as a decaying reminder of our past selves. The room we're sharing now is hospitable and bland. We have even more differences than we did back then, when a sharp line separated my painfully neat side and her jaw-droppingly messy side. She's asleep next to me now, and if she leant over and read even a sentence of this, she'd snort and mutter about how pretentious I am and go back to sleep. She's carefree and runs into the sea, whereas I struggle without routine and get snappy without a schedule. But it's a comfort to share with her unexpectedly again, especially because I have a feeling that some of the experiences of this holiday are our last.

Me and Maddie were both ill early on in our trip, and so we went to a comfortingly familiar pizza restaurant last week and gorged on reliable dough and cheese. As we paid, I tried not to cry. Endings don't come easily to me. I'm constantly in a state of editing my life, sorting it into chapters, picking out moments from years ago that become important and relevant to something that's happening now. I'm writing and rewriting it in my head now, I always am. And sitting at that table, inhaling Italian food in Thailand, I felt like I'd just turned the page and seen that the chapter was ending. As I said before, I know myself a bit better now, and I know that productivity and progress in my work has a huge impact on my self-esteem and my mental health in general. This is likely to be the last time I'll return home for a summer with my sister. I've come back and forth from my home gratefully for longer than I'd planned, been greeted gleefully by family and friends, never once made to feel, as so many are, like I've outgrown my home. In my head I'm already behind, but I think I'll be back one more time, before I set off for good. My sister will graduate at the same time as me. She'll head off into the world of professional dance, a career that throws you around, has you leaping and falling, sometimes all in the same routine. Her schedule is unlikely to be constant, her whereabouts likely unpredictable. She's going to love it. She's going to find so many more beaches to run down, so many more waves to get knocked over by. It's not just me who's getting ready to move, she will likely be off before me. So I hope we can create a new kind of family holiday, where we all meet her on a beach she's exploring for the day, and we can play our respective parts of mermaid and bookworm and everything in between. I can't do holidays properly because I can't stop with my to-do lists, and really me and Maddie couldn't share a room without the novelty of it being a holiday. But all I can think is that despite the arguments over navigation and frostiness over stolen sun loungers, it was a pleasure, to have one last holiday together, and a few more nights of saying sweet dreams to my sister from just inches away.

This was inspired by a wonderful piece by Ashley C. Ford which you can (and should) read here.

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