I Hate March

For the past four years, I’ve faced the month of March with dread.

This next part is a little complicated, and involves death so trigger warning now.

My big sister was killed at her home in March of 2012. Because we had stopped talking to her for a few years, we didn’t find out about it until November of 2014. I won’t go into too much more detail, mainly because it’s still hard for me even now, but I will say that her body was discovered in her home and they estimated she had been dead for two weeks or more.

Finding out she was dead was devastating for me.

I suffered from a deep depression for at least a year.

The pain I felt from the guilt of not being on speaking terms with her when she died… it was overwhelming.

Because we don’t have a firm date of death, I just associate the entire month of March with her death. It’s hard not to.

As this month progresses, I feel myself becoming more “blah”. I can’t help but think of how long she was there, all alone, before she was found. When I’m in a kickboxing class, I feel all of that anger and sadness come out and I take it out on the bag. There are a few times where I’m throwing combos on that bag with such vigor, my eyes become watery and a lump starts to form in my throat.

It’s hard to process death when there is no closure. I miss her every single day. I wish she could’ve met her nieces and nephews. I wish she could’ve been there for my wedding. I wish she knew all of the hell I’ve been through to get to where I am today. I wish she knew of my anxiety and BPD. I feel like maybe she would be proud of me. But then I wrestle with the thought of maybe she would be angry with me for not being in her life when she died.

My sister was a Christian, 100%. She was always supportive of reading the Bible, of prayer and putting my faith in the Lord. She was truly the only form of religion I had in my life growing up, as my mom believed but never practiced any religion. We never went to church. The only one who read the Bible to me was my sister. Because of that, in some sort of twisted way, I feel like her death brought me closer to Jesus. I pray about a lot of things these days. I pray for other people. I listen to Christian music more often than I used to. We go to church when we can.

I feel like being a Christian brings me closer to her as well. It’s comforting, but March always makes it so hard for me. Being a borderline, in the days after finding out about her death, I felt those emotions so strongly it almost killed me. Now, four years later, I feel the dread and the sadness increase as the month goes on.

It just sucks. When someone you always looked up to, someone you saw as strong and brave, someone you loved more than your own mother, someone who took care of you more than your own mother… it hurts so incredibly hard when they aren’t on this Earth anymore.

I hate March.