Violence, Violence

A few years had passed, and your family had moved to a bigger house with a large backyard. We must have been ten or eleven, just hanging in your room playing Yu-Gi-Oh or something. Your younger sister by about two years came in, pest that she was, more than likely to poke fun at you as she tended to do.

Siblings fight and it sometimes gets physical. I recall the time when I was six and my sister got pissed at me for walking too slow to the car – she grabbed my hand and dragged me along, causing me to trip and scrape my forehead against the concrete of our drive. The hilarious thing is how pointless it was – my mom hadn’t even stepped outside yet, so it’s not like my dawdling was delaying us.

The less fun part of that was my mother’s panic over my kindergarten teacher potentially reporting this as a sign of abuse. I thought this was an overreaction, but later learned she had been threatened with the idea of having us taken away after my father was arrested.

I’d seen you get a bit physical with your sister before – you were quick to anger. But usually it wasn’t much at all – or perhaps with how little I had encountered such things before, it didn’t seem like much. But this time, you knocked her to the floor and climbed on top, punching her in the face. I was terrified. This was actual, dangerous violence. I’m not even sure how the rest of that day played out, it’s all kind of a blur after that point.

This isn’t where our friendship ended, but I quietly grew afraid of you. Your sister was a nice girl, she didn’t deserve that. No one did. We drifted apart – I used to think it was because you literally grew silent, but this is the real reason. The new friends I was making as time went on, they weren’t violent like you.

I hope you grew out of this.