I'm am now 25. In 7th grade we had just moved to temecula, California from southern Arizona. New city. New state. My family moved quite a bit due to the nature of my fathers job. After about 4 months, on a Thursday afternoon, my sister tells me that she is going to have a friend drive her back to where we used to live in Arizona to visit her old friends there for the weekend, who she claimed she missed dearly. I later found out that she wanted to see the boy she liked at the time. I had a bad feeling about the situation. And told her so. She insisted it was all going to be okay. Her story to our parents was that she was going on a camping trip over the weekend. And thus, they were okay with her being gone for the weekend. I spent that same weekend visiting my grandparents as I often did at the time. So, Friday afternoon came. My sister and I parted ways. She "went camping" and I went to my grandparents house. As Sunday rolled around, I came home. She did not... The house phone rang at 8:15pm. It was her. She was in southern Arizona, 8 hours away. And all she had to say, was that she was not coming back home. My father, a strong willed man of few words, had to hear from his daughter that she was not coming home. And for the first time in my memory, I saw the one man in this world who I believed was unbreakable cry. Cry because he felt that he had failed. He asked me if I knew anything about this. To this day, I do not know why I responded in the manner that I did. Nor am I proud of it. As a matter of fact, I am quite ashamed to have lied straight to his face by telling him that I had no knowledge of my sisters whereabouts or actions. Was it fear of getting in trouble? Or fear of betraying my siblings trust? Or my inability to grasp the gravity of what had just happened? I still do not know. But I told him I didn't know anything about her being in Arizona and not camping. I was in fact aware of where she was. Though, it was my understanding that she was coming home at the end of the weekend.
I never told a soul of this until recently when I shared this shameful tale of mine with my significant other.
For months after this, my father stuck by my side and kept me close. At the time I didn't understand why. In hindsight I feel as though he feared that if he didn't do so, he may lose his other child. And it pains me to think of that.
My sister cut off all contact with us after this for many years. In time, she eventually contacted my father to apologize. Which offers a small amount of consolation to me. But I struggle daily with the fact that I fucked up and allowed something so sever to happen, when I could've easily spilled the beans on her actions and prevented all of this from happening. I have to tell myself on a daily basis that I'm not a horrible person. Because frankly, I feel like I am for this alone. It has eaten away at my insides every single day since then.
That is what I have to share. I do not expect or ask for sympathy for my serious lack of common sense or understanding. I know I fucked up. And it is my own burden to carry. Thank you for reading. You now know something that plagues my mind that I have only ever shared with one other person in this world.