I’ve fought many battles in my life. The one that remains fresh in my memory is the last fight where my sister and I used more than words to hurt one another.

We both stand there in the hallway yelling at the top of our lungs. I was victorious the last time so I refuse to stand down this time and I’m betting she won’t admit defeat so easily either. But what do you expect. We are sisters. We continue yelling insult after insult, our voices overlap and I no longer realize what I’m shouting.  I just hear white noise yet I can’t seem to stop. I noticed her eyes fill with tears and it is too late to take back what has been said. There has always been an invisible line that we as sisters dare not cross. But I manage to cross that line within minutes. Once I glimpse the first tear slide down her cheek, I know she has won. Her brown round eyes look at me with such hurt and betrayal. Her tears are merely a distraction; the crossed line was just ammo to make her tears that much stronger. She is a worthy adversary, tears are my weakness. She may have already won the battle, but there is no sense in letting her claim victory before I’ve had a chance to change it. She is done with yelling and lunges for me. My eyes begin to tear up as well, mostly because of the pain I feel as I hit the ground but partly because I’m afraid my words have actually wounded her. She is older and stronger than I am and succeeds in pinning me to the ground.

I try to move but she holds me down using all of her strength. The look in her eyes is pure anger, not exactly hate but still a distaste that will linger in the air even after we are no longer enemies. I look away; the hallway seems different when you observe things from the ground up. Pictures of childhood memories I’ve long forgotten hang on the walls. I wish I could return to the day when these pictures were taken. I’d rather be anywhere other than here at this moment. Even if it was minutes before the fight had commenced, I would just bite my tongue and we wouldn’t be in this mess. But that is a lie; I could never just stand there and hold back my anger. Of course in my opinion my sister enjoys annoying me, she pokes at my anger like a bruise and keeps poking until I poke back. Even now I don’t remember what started this particular fight. Most of these silly fights begin with one of us or both of us saying something the other does not agree with. And once the argument begins, anger develops into this large boulder you can’t out run. I return my gaze to the innocent smile my sisters seems to recreate in every picture. Too bad she isn’t smiling at the moment; I notice how her jaw tightens as she grits her teeth while her hands keep me in place yet I still try to struggle free. Escaping seems futile but I always seem to underestimate her strength. However, she always miscalculates the power of my anger and I tend to always wriggle free. As she continues pushing me down my elbow grazes the carpet and I feel the burn it leaves behind. I grab a lock of her hair and pull. She screams at me to release it, but I ignore her and keep my grasp tangled in her hair and pull even harder. Before following my lead she begins to claw at me, leaving red marks across my arm. She then grabs a hold of my hair and pulls while scratching and “puncturing” with her Lady Deathstrike nails. The arm which holds a good chunk of her hair is the only thing that stands between her and freedom. She is persistent and will not let up. When I no longer can withstand the sharp pain from her claws, I release only to switch hands and rewrap my fingers in her hair pulling it once again. She is thrown off a bit by the sudden change, yet she merely twists and turns and switches hands as well. Once again I feel the sharp pain, and we are back to square one. Both too stubborn to let go, to just say I’m sorry and admit we are wrong. None of that will be happening any time soon.

Every time we get into a looped fight such as this one, usually around this time I would yell for Mom. I had to stop myself several times from letting the words out. I cannot win if she runs to my rescue, even though she has told us repeatedly that she will not come to our aid. Realistically speaking she would be here within minutes, only to make sure we weren’t doing any permanent damage. I mean my arms are practically being turned into scratching posts but nothing that won’t heal and fade. I regain composure and knock the idea of screaming for Mom out of my head. I’m surprised I have room for anything else in there besides the pain of having my arms gouged and hair yanked. Which if you ask me she is the one who is actually cheating, using two attacks at once, she should just stick to the clawing. I could probably handle at least one of them. But no she has to copy me and pull hair as well. Not fair. But I guess it could be worse. And the minute, I finish thinking those words she begins hitting me. As if fists full of hair and arms full of scratches weren’t enough. I’m guessing her claws are starting to cramp up to resort to such childish antics. I guess I am no better because I start doing the same simply because the hair pulling was losing its touch. I finally managed to escape from her grasp and was no longer at the disadvantage of being pinned. Yet we are still locked in this war except now instead of just the normal hair pulling we decided to amp it up by pounding and kicking. No childish slaps are found here; we’ve transformed from children into warriors who accept no prisoners.  Besides being the winner, fights are usually to see who can cause the other more pain, and unfortunately she still remains in the lead.

She starts talking to me no longer yelling, she is going in for the kill. When a couple of trite tears don’t earn her an automatic win she heads for the big guns. I call this attack, the “Nina Guilt Cry.” She uses this attack almost every time we fight but only towards the end because she is getting tired and wants to claim her victory quickly. You would think I would learn how to avoid it. But I have yet to master a counter attack that will earn me a cheat free win. I’ve “won” too many battles by pulling the Mom card. And I plan to win on my own this time. She begins by bawling, I’m not talking a couple wimpy tears, I mean full on waterfall and snot to boot. She finally stops with the kicking and hitting, her vision probably blurred by the tears. We sit in front of each other in the same hallway where we would play, where we would lie and wait and countdown until Christmas morning. It’s the same hallway where we were the best of friends, and it’s the same hallway now where we are enemies. Competitors in a game that shouldn’t be won, it should just end right now. I feel the tears swelling up, I cannot handle when one of my sisters cries especially if I am the cause. I could end this all just by uttering the words she longs to hear or just by calling in reinforcements. Of course that would just add to the fire that is her anger.

My eyes blurred as well and my tears overflow. My sister was now going on about how we are sisters and we shouldn’t be fighting to this extent.  She goes on and on, I can barely get a word in. And when I manage to say a few things, she brushes them off and says they are just excuses. I try to explain why I’m so angry, yet she continues with the guilt and I’m left to wait my turn. If I even get a turn that is. She expects me to say sorry, she expects me to admit I was in the wrong, and that I have a horrible temper that I need to learn to control. Her comments only make me more upset and when I’m upset my speaking voice is not exactly indoor volume and not at all coherent. Frustration just bottles up inside me and I can no longer form words. I want nothing more than to drown out her voice and pretend to listen.

Unfortunately, I’ve outgrown the, I can’t hear you, lalala, I CAN’T HEAR YOU. Otherwise I would proceed into doing so, plus I lack the energy to stoop to such immature tactics.  The atmosphere around her changes from attack mode to truce. She is tired of fighting and frankly I am as well. Even though I expect the traditional post war comments, I feel I may be able to handle them and I am ready to put this behind us. I try to look at things from her perceptive and realize that no physical attack she could throw at me would hurt as much as the words that spawned from my anger. In all reality her wounds were much deeper than mine. Seeing her cry and search for the words to describe the pain I caused was rather heartbreaking. This was no attack. This was her. My sister and I couldn’t stay angry at her. This fight, even though it was clearly ridiculous, it did end up making us stronger. Not as enemies but as sisters and as friends. Because at the end of the day she isn’t just some girl I will never see again. She is my sister and best friend. A friendship that will last my entire life. And I wasn’t about to allow this fight to taint that. A compromise is made, and we both finally utter, I’m sorry. Both tear stained and red nosed, we go in for a hug. I wipe away the salty tears from my face and continue hugging her. She usually says something funny to make me laugh. A sign all is forgiven. Typical Nina, she always gets me to apologize even after I’ve decided to be angry for hours. We live to fight another day, because even though we are back to being sisters we are still warriors inside waiting for the next time to strike. I love my sister Nina.

Of course now, as adults, we just resort to verbal abuse.

-KMV-