You and you and me

We sit in a room, three women, all adults now, each with their own life.  Lives that could fill us each up, making us believe that there is no need for this, the invisible tie that binds us together so tightly I can't believe you don't feel it.

And someone says that when you think about it we're so different and we don't really have that much in common.  I nod and agree and realize now we have a choice.  For years you were my friends and I was yours, even when we hated and hit and screamed, we had each other, needed each other, there was no one who knew us really knew us like we knew each other.

We figure it out, we say the hard things, move forward, hug, and vow to do this better, this being sisters as adults, choosing to love.  Learning that loving people takes work and there are relationships worth fighting for.  There are people who own pieces of us and if we lost them, wouldn't we lose a part of ourselves?

I lay that night staring at the ceiling, the words swirling through my head again, I keep hearing you saying we don't have anything in common and I wonder how I could have nodded my head, how you couldn't see that if there is anyone I have anything in common with it is you and you.

I know her hands more than I know my own and I know you do too.  Her laugh is your favorite sound and neither of us can resist laughing when we hear it.  Your voice is my voice so much that there is not a person who can tell us apart not even me, except for her, who has spent her life sandwiched between these two identical voices.  We know when he's angry, when he's sad, when we've dissapointed him, it is each of our greatest fear.  Isn't that something, doesn't that count for something?

When I was 16, you were 14, and you were 12 and we moved far away and my heart broke apart and I do not think I would have survived if it were not for the two of you.  And you know that, no one else really does, really understands what it was like for me, why I'm scared of moving, of leaving, of changing.  Remember when?  And you do, you remember all the way back, back to the beginning of us.  I'm not sure that there is anyone I have more in common with.

And now I have this family, my family, 4 other people to love and love me back and maybe it should be enough.  But when the day is through and all is quiet, it's not enough, I will always need you, the ones who loved me first.  Someone to whom I don't have to explain, the ones who knew me before I belonged to so many people.  When I wasn't his wife and their mother, but just a girl, who used to dream big crazy dreams.

You and you and me, what we have is bigger than just having something in common, it is love and it is family, and it will always be worth fighting for.