Dear Afrin:

My thoughts: your parents chose to offer you and your sister “their way or the highway”. Your sister chose their way; you chose the highway. It takes courage to choose to depart from your parents’ way, to risk their disapproval and total removal from the family. And then to endure that pain of separation and keep living your life away from them. It takes strength to accept and endure the pain of your sister disapproving of you and give up the dream of her looking up to you as her big sister.

Like you wrote, you weren’t able to kidnap her, you were not able to remove her from your parents. She wouldn’t have left willingly, so yes, you would have had to kidnap her.

Even though the two of you share the same parents, the two of you experienced life at home a bit differently. She experienced many of the same events you did, but at a much younger age. There are events you experienced that she didn’t because she wasn’t born yet. Somehow it came to be that her distress about living without her parents’ approval is way more intense than yours. And fear is our greatest motivator, she fears the distress of being cast away to the highway, fears it too much.

She finds comfort with her parents. I hope you find some comfort knowing she has her own comfort, that she is not as distressed as she would have been if she chose the highway.

anita