good cop bad cop

I am more good than you. You are more resilient. I am more compassionate. You are stronger, incapable of failure, a harder worker and less likely to quit. You are a lone wolf. I am always in search of someone to touch me, not the outside of me, but the inside places, like I can only be happy if someone is beside me with their hand inside my flesh and warming itself on my heart.

We each have our roles that we must play. So this is still that same game, the one you invented with the monopoly board that made me bankrupt, or the one I invented using chess that saw the overthow of the monarchy and the rise of the common pawns. So we have not grown then. Not now. And if not by now, not ever.

I knew a couple once. One I liked. One I did not like so much. The good boyfriend and the bad one. The bad one teased and played and was a little fun but not much really when you think about it. The nice one sat and listened to your problems and talked to you about his life and his love and he was so nice you wanted to listen to him for hours. When the nice one died I never said it but I wondered why it was the nasty one who was left in the world. Then the transformation. I caught up with the nasty one and found that he was a little bit nice after all. Then each time he was nicer and then nicer again. “It’s like I have to become a piece of my boyfriend,” he told me when I pointed out how much he had changed. “I have to take on parts of him when before I could just leave him to do the nice things by himself”

I thought about you then, my sister, and all the things we must be when we are together. The division of labour stamped so clearly on this sibling bind. I wonder if I am like the nice boyfriend only when we are together. Light and dark, day and night, key and lock, one making sense of the other’s attributes and flaws. We stay at a little distance so that I can be part bad and you can be part good. An even balance and these roles that we have a healthy respect for.