
A few weeks ago, my boyfriend Kevin had a fight with his sister. Not something you’d think would send me spiraling into an emotional breakdown. Well, allow me to introduce myself then: I’m Dani, and sometimes I lose my mind over things as banal as sibling spats.
I spent a week doing the following:
- Alternating between crying and tending to my spasming neck.
- Not eating.
- Meddling and making things worse.
Watch: The Mamamia team confess their relationship deal breakers. Post continues below.
Because, if I’ve learned anything over the course of my lifetime, it’s this: I can see the future.
To give some context as to why a fight between a brother and a sister would rile me up so much, I need to say a few words — three in particular: cornucopia of dysfunction.
That’s what someone once called my family. For reasons about which I’m writing an entire memoir (*shameless self-promotion), my family’s been fractured for years — here are the cliff’s notes: mental illness, addiction, and financial ruin.
We are not a family that gets all warm and fuzzy at holidays, and over the last 10 years, that fact has filled me with a sadness I thought I wouldn’t survive. I did.
So when I ended up with a man from a big Irish Catholic family, I thought, "Score!" I’ll finally have a holiday-card-worthy family amidst a fun-loving (if rowdy) group, and all the fear and sadness of the last 20 years will be wiped away in an instant.
My first instance of knowing the future. What could possibly go wrong?
The details of the fight are not mine to share, and quite frankly don’t really matter. What matters is that the morning after the fight, I called his sister and tried to make her see his side.
I talked with Kevin and did the same in reverse. I pushed and I pushed, only making my dear, stubborn boyfriend dig in more. I even turned us into that horrible couple who argues in front of their friends.
A day after the fight, we stood outside a restaurant with another couple as Kevin relayed his version of the spat.
Thinking I was out of his sight line, I began shaking my head, rolling my eyes, and mouthing the word no.