I love my sister. She doesn’t get enough love. But she’s intolerable. She’s a progressive automaton. When I visit she wants to show me terrible movies she loves because they are all “feminist anthems”. That’s not a feminist anthem, that’s Melissa McCarthy playing against the fat girl trope. Not deep enough to be funny.

It’s all politics of victimhood and aggrievement. I can’t speak to her because she’s so brittle and fragile she fears I might say something political or religious, though she’s happy to lecture me on my perceived moral failings. Then back off before I walk away. I practice compassion in those instances. I wore a T-shirt that quoted 2 Corinthians 5:7 on a hike. She looked like lightning would strike her dead by association. Or maybe she’d die of cringe to be with such a backwards clodhopper. (The masters degree having, self made business woman, no debt, paid off house, loving and close family having benighted clodhopper to be pitied.) I’m disabled with severe skeletal issues. A T-shirt about walking by faith on a huge, hard hike way outside my comfort zone seemed appropriate or at least an in-joke with God. She has no God.

She’s been single for nearly twenty years since her husband decided to become a eunuch “woman”. She, my sister, is adamant about trans rights, him being a real girl. I’m in the you be you but biology is real camp. She stayed with ‘her’ for years. And has been lonely and miserable ever since as her identity has ossified into humorless, self righteous harridan.

What a waste of a beautiful soul and once flexible mind. When you can no longer tolerate any hint of dissent and can no longer laugh at yourself, you are lost. I miss what she could have been.