Sometimes I wonder if the reason I get so upset about my sister is not only out of basic human empathy but also because there is a part of me that feels just a little bit guilty. Afterall, I didn’t have to go through what she went through. I haven’t had my whole life shaped and molded  by terrible things that happened to me. I haven’t spent my whole life trying not to remember, trying to think about how I’m a sister, a daughter, a mother a wife with a secret. Maybe I don’t even know what the secret is. Maybe those buttons just keep getting pushed and pushed and pushed until I can’t figure out why I’m completely out of control. On some levels I understand this because of the eating disorder I struggled with for many years of my life but I know that this is pain on a whole other level. Yes, there are levels of despair. I guess the truth is that when she is sick, which she is often now, selfishly it forces me to have to think about all the things that happened to her and I hate it. And then I think well if I hate it so much than I can’t imagine the confusion and pain it must cause her.Who are these people that prey on children anyways? I can tell you who they are because my father is one of them. Sometimes when I’m in a particularly dark mood I walk into a nice happy family oriented place full of fathers and mothers and children and I think of the statistics and I look at as many people as I can and wonder…because the guise of middle class family life,  reveals nothing of what lurks beneath what is revealed to the outside world. Out of everyone in my family I had a good relationship with my father and I loved him. I knew he was eccentric, I knew he was flamboyant, I knew he could be hurtful but I had no idea that he was what he really is. A monster. Again selfishly when I found out what had happened I was thankful that he was dead. My other brother’s and sister’s said they wished he was alive so they could kill him.  I was thankful he was dead because I knew the father that I knew, the person that I loved would have to go. He would have to go. The last few years I have struggled with this. I went to a therapist who helped me understand that my father was a psychopath…and by every definition he is one.  People close to me gave me room to love the parts of him that were there for me and to hate and despise the man that he was to my sister.Lately though, I feel like this is an indulgence. That when I recall any memory of him that makes me laugh or feel okay that that is something that is wrong. When I see my sister fighting for her life, passing all the craziness of our family life on to the next generation, when I see how broken she is by her life, I know I can’t give an inch. I won’t make any deals with the devil. Now I wish he was alive so I could kill him. There is no reconciliation with the devil.