terri tender square mom sent a morning moment of her and terri smiling together from years before, and i couldn’t remember the last time i looked at my sister; i don’t keep pictures of her up in my house, save a few family portraits with us all as kids. looking at her likeness, i felt all the air leave my lungs, like memory was pressing against the grief i carry, even though she’s very much alive. when i was growing up, terri used to pay me to clean her bedroom, ever the pigsty. rainwater incense ashes dropped in hyphened blocks along her dresser. bright eyeshadow palettes cracked and dusting their hues everywhere. half-drunk cups of coffee growing oily films. i’d place her loose change inside the beer stein she won in a european drinking contest. listen to dirty prince songs on her stereo, cd’s mom told her to hide from us. spritz myself with her ck-1 and wonder what it was like to be wanted, as if i could absorb an ounce of her coolness. she didn’t have to pay me $20, i would have done it for free. i’d hang her pleather pants and faux-zebra skin bellbottoms. try on her cropped fuzzy sweaters, the hemlines reaching far below my belly button. collect her matching silicone bra inserts (aka the chicken cutlets) and false eyelashes to secure in them in their holders. toss all her satin, floral butt floss in the hamper. windex the mirror. pledge the wood. make the bed, tuck all the corners in. sweep the floor, collect the dust bunnies. i always hoped that when she came home and saw how neat her space was, it would stay that way for a few days; wanted her to see her room the way that i saw her—as someone who deserved to be cared for, as someone worth the effort needed to keep it altogether. 210829 ... kerry ugh, terri with her endless incriminating questions. her bizarre expectations. her late night texts. i finally sent an email asking for a transfer. 210829 ... tender square today is your birthday. the last time we talked by phone was march of 2020. you had left homewood early because covid shut down their recovery program, everyone got sent back home. you sounded bright during our call, the way that i remembered you used to be, and said you were going to attend online aa meetings as a way to keep up your progress. i rubbed my rose quartz in my hands the entire time we talked, because i didn’t want to resort to anger with you, wanted to open my heart to forgiveness, or something akin to acceptance. the last time we texted was this time last year. i had put a birthday card in the mail for you but it arrived later than expected, and i apologized for that. i think you were surprised that i had even made the gesture. i emailed you this morning to let you know you were in my thoughts. told you that i hoped the year ahead would bring you inner peace, wellness, and the self-love that you deserve. i wished you a life filled with these blessings. mom texted a little later to say that bryan, your ex, had called police and ambulance for a wellness check because he was worried. you’re in hospital now and i’m sure this means what it always does, that you’re on a ventilator and being pumped full of fluids, that your coworkers are monitoring you carefully to see if the benadryl and alcohol have been filtered from your bloodstream, allowing you to wake. 210914 ... tender square you would think after 20+ years of knowing your struggles that nothing would surprise me anymore, but here i stand corrected, yet again. mom said that on saturday, after the ventilator was removed from your throat—for what now, the twenty-fifth time in the past 16 months?—that she got a call from your girlfriend lisa in st. thomas with information she thought mom would want to know. turns out, you used your cell phone to call an old high school friend you and lisa knew, someone who’s working aa. it wasn’t to get sponsorship, of course, it was to score benzos, while you were still recovering in the intensive care unit. 210924 ... tender square my sister’s a 47-year-old woman; when does this get better? (it doesn’t; it won’t. i know this.) * terri was the whole reason why i ended up going to walkerville. without her, i wouldn’t have known that the arts program existed. originally, she had gone to fj brennan, the catholic feeder school for our grade school, but she didn’t fit in with the girls there and was picked on. when she transferred to walkerville she found an outlet for her creative talents. i’ve always looked up to her for what she was capable of, i idolized her. terri was a charismatic dancer. there’s a vhs my parents have, a video terri recorded at a booth in canada’s wonderland when she was in her teens. she’s lip-syncing to a madonna song and doing an improvised dance in front of some kind of green screen and her moves are incredible. after high school, she was a go-go dancer in many windsor clubs, and often traveled to toronto to be a dancer on electric circus, a show that aired on much music back in the day. terri was a gifted artist. there were two sculptures of hers we used to have in our house growing up that my parents displayed proudly: a piece with a large platform that supported a dancer or gymnast using a rhythmic ribbon, the curls of it creating movement in clay. then there was the hanging face that had a mouth bolted with a steel plate and screws. i’ve written a poem about that face, about the visual metaphor of how something from her past can encapsulate her life now—the bolted mouth representing her inability to stop drinking or taking pills, or her inability to speak about what has happened to her which has caused this. for years, i have encouraged her, repeatedly, to return to her creative impulses. for years, i have told her what creativity has meant to my own sobriety. she refuses me. she turns away from a spiritual experience and looks to distilled spirits to fill the hole within. jungians call this concretizing the metaphor. * there are parts that i haven’t written about my family, parts which i’m working up the courage to post about in “joni_mitchell_never_lies.” what you need to know for this next part to make sense is the way my family tree is constructed. my sisters and i all share the same father, but we do not share the same birth mother. terri and candi, the eldest in our family—who are 10 and 8 years older than me, and 12 and 10 years older than brea—were born to carol, a former partner of my father’s. my mother adopted terri and candi when they were young, after carol’s parental rights were terminated. for all intents and purposes, my mom is their mom. terri and candi have a half-brother named ronnie. they all share the same mother, carol, but not the same father (our dad). when a shotgun went off in carol’s house when they were all kids, my dad brought them to his mother’s house to live. but he couldn’t keep ronnie because he had no legal right to him, no blood ties. after a week, ronnie was turned back over to carol. terri and candi never went back to carol after that incident. ronnie did not live with us growing up. there was a period for a few weeks where he stayed with us when he was sixteen or seventeen (i was around 4 or 5 at that time), but my parents kicked him out when they found that he was carrying a switchblade. there’s a reason for this. carol died when ronnie was 13. she committed suicide by taking a bunch of pills. he was the one that found her body. in the note she left behind, carol blamed my father for everything. for years, ronnie believed that my dad was actually responsible. * the worst we’ve feared as a family has already begun to happen. there was a time when terri could keep her wits about her when her daughter aubrey was around. terri has equal custody with my niece’s father, bryan. for years, terri would use aubrey as her sober buddy and act like the perfect mom during her stays, only to go on benders after she left. this is how we know what terri was doing is a choice; she was able to turn the drinking on and off at will years ago. now that my niece is sixteen, she is more aware of how her mother struggles. a few weeks ago, terri collapsed in front of aubrey; she had been drinking heavily and ingested multiple benadryl tablets while aubrey was staying with her. my niece was in hysterics, called candi and called terri’s friend lisa for help. candi whisked aubrey away to stay the night at her place after the ambulance arrived, without telling bryan what had occurred; they covered the whole thing up to protect terri. for years, my mother has been telling bryan to get an emergency injunction against terri, to have her parental rights taken away, to fight for aubrey. he won’t do it. mom keeps warning him that his daughter will be the one to find terri lifeless, just like ronnie found carol, that this is an evitability. bryan is still allowing aubrey to see terri; aubrey’s been back to terri’s place since this incident occurred. the only difference is that aubrey brought a girlfriend along on her last visit so she wouldn’t be alone in case of trouble. 210925 ... tender square an unexpected (but maybe expected?) email in my inbox this morning from my sister: “i am going to homewood tomorrow, i called them so many times i lost my phone privileges! but the squeaky wheel gets the grease. i will beat this. how are you? what’s new in your neck of the woods?” i will not respond to you. you don’t get to act like our relationship hasn’t been obliterated by what you’ve done. you don’t get to be so dismissive of the letter that we all sent you in early december stating that your words are not enough for us anymore. we made it clear that we were only willing to receive correspondence from you about your recovery progress and nothing more. nothing has fucking changed. you’re still trying to weasel your way back in whenever you see there’s an opportunity, dragging us back into your bullshit. 210929 ... tender square i received confirmation that terri is, in fact, at homewood right now. at least my family can breathe easy for the next 6–8 weeks. my cousin kristy helped terri pack her personal effects for rehab after swearing off ever helping her again, and kristy delivered terri’s bags to the hospital before a taxi drove her 3 hours to guelph on monday. terri packed 6 huge pieces of luggage to take with her; kristy told mom that terri had 10 pairs of shoes in there. this amuses me endlessly, to think that my sister sees herself as carrie bradshaw checking into the betty ford clinic or passages malibu. yes, i understand the importance of dressing well to channel power when you’re in a vulnerable position (see “in_clothes”) but my sister’s vanity is her undoing when it comes to trying to stay sober. terri is a gorgeous, tiny, blonde woman and she uses her looks to manipulate people into thinking that she has her shit together when she’s an absolute walking disaster. i sincerely hope through her program she can come to recognize how toxic her ego attachment can be, learning the differentiate between “identity_vs_role” as unhinged shared a few days ago. 211008 ... tender_square over dinner a couple nights ago to celebrate his own sobriety, michael said to me, “y’know, sometimes it takes addicts 20 years to get sober, for it to really stick.” “are you saying you think that terri could be successful at homewood this time?” “you never know,” he said. michael’s worked in a recovery home before, so he’s seen some things. a pang of hope tugged at my chest. i want so badly to believe this, that my sister is capable of a major transformation. but the thing with terri is, i don’t think she’s ever managed to be sober for more than a year in two decades, and even then, i don’t think she stitched all those days together consecutively without a “slip-up,” as she so lovingly likes to call them. terri drinks and keeps the clock on her sobriety going like she doesn’t need to go back to day 1 and begin again. i told her that once, on a telephone call two years ago after i first moved to bg, and she scoffed at me. i said it again, during a group call last fall with my family, terri, a social worker, and a hospital psychiatrist; the social worker chided me and said that “slip-ups” are part of the sobriety process. and while i understand recovery can take several tries before one finds their footing, i don’t agree with the self-deception of saying to oneself that a “slip-up” doesn’t count and that you get to carry on as if all those days of sobriety are steadily collecting toward a larger goal. it’s horseshit. 211011 ... tender_square she completed the recovery program at homewood some three weeks ago. but she’s already back on the sauce. last she told mom she was working her second step with her sponsor. bryan was the one that texted mom yesterday, worried, saying that terri had neglected to pick up aubrey on her custody day, which could only mean one thing. and even though we all expected that this would happen, it still feels shitty to have that little glimmer of hope that this time could be different be blown to particles of meaningless dust once more. 211211 ... tender_square terri’s been on an intense bender for a week, her worst that we’ve ever known. mom has access to terri’s bank account; not the money side of it, mom can just log in to terri’s account and see her transactions. which may sound fishy, but terri gave mom her login years ago, back when she went to live with our parents while pursuing recovering six years ago. it was her way of being transparent with them and helped keep her accountable (at her suggestion). it isn’t mom’s fault that terri never changed her password. she’s dipped into her overdraft, and only $250 of it remains. she had been receiving checks from the government (for what, we don’t know) but the last one was deposited on november 5. her bills have been paid, but she’s hemorrhaging money. mom says, based on terri’s transaction record, she’s hitting up metro at least once a day to buy two bottles of wine. then, she’s taking out cash transactions of $40 and $60, which means she’s buying street drugs on top of that. in the coming days my sister is either going to run out of money, end up in the hospital, or die, or it very well could be a combination of all of those things. how do you prepare for the worst? 211214 ... tender_square brea gave us the greatest christmas gift we could ask for this year: she got terri formed and committed over the holidays. we’re breathing a collective sigh of relief knowing that she can’t harm herself, that she’s in safer hands than her own. i went to terri’s house for the first time in three or four years. brea has a key (she used to care for terri’s cat the previous times she was hospitalized). terri has had books of mine that i lent her all this time, books i assumed i’d never get back given our lack of relationship. her house was in better shape than i expected; there was a christmas several years back where she had open bottles of rubbing alcohol on the kitchen counter that she’d been drinking, and dried vomit on the floor. terri’s place was relatively tidy given how she typically treats her space. i didn’t find all my books, there was one missing: “blackout: remembering the things i drank to forget” by sarah hepola. which miffed me because terri never read it even though i shared how much it helped me, and i know she passed it on to someone in the recovery community acting as though she did. i could just picture her telling the person she gave it to, when it wasn’t hers to give, how “life changing” of a narrative it was. our family's holiday conversations the past couple of days have been filled with talk of terri and talk of candi and their issues. it’s upsetting dad because terri’s mental illness is so reminiscent of carol, the woman dad left before my mom came into the picture. it brings back trauma for him. today he said, “i wish i would’ve never taken them,” meaning candi and terri, because he took them away from carol for their protection. “don’t say that,” mom and i countered. when i relayed this anecdote to brea, she said, “don’t tell him what to feel.” mom played me the voicemail terri left for dad a couple of days ago. she’d only been in the hospital for a couple of days. her voice was slurred and slow, like she had a mouth full of cotton. she could barely form the words, she was incoherent. she was weepy and apologized to dad. she argued that brea had no right to act as her guardian and get her committed. “if you think i’m insane, you need to look at brea,” she deflected. she tried to make the case that this was only a "slip-up," that she was doing so good before this. terri has been steadily using since before march of 2020, which is the first time she entered homewood. when terri left homewood for the second time six weeks ago, she sent mom her complete chart hoping it would shed light on her concurrent disorders. instead, it provoked more questions than it answered. terri told counselors there that she’d been sober for 10 years, and that she achieved this with aa. my sister has never been sober for one year, let alone ten. she only started aa in the past few months. what’s disturbing about the severity of her mental illness and her substance abuse disorder is that she believes her own lies. when mom challenged terri on the contents of her chart, she yelled “it’s my truth!” brea remains unfazed by the anger terri is directing her way; “she has to be alive in order to hate me,” brea says. 211225 ... tender_square terri is on the verge of losing her house. she missed her most recent mortgage payment. mom discovered that there’s a long-term disability program terri could have applied to for financial help. terri consistently files for short-term disability, claiming that she intends to return to work. her intentions have been unraveling over two years, slow like a sweater string snagged and pulling. at first, she’d able to return to work, but only for a few short weeks before she began agreeing to overtime. her anxieties about money compelled her to take on more than she could handle. she’d agree to midnight shifts even though she had a doctor’s note excusing her from them, because of how it affected her insomnia, which further fueled the anxiety. then she’d be forced to leave work again because of her drinking. then, in anticipation of preparing to restart work, she have a “slip-up” to not have to face the coworkers who saved her life in the emergency department each time she was hooked up to a ventilator, the coworkers who cried at her bedside in disbelief wondering how a woman of such compelling beauty could be so unhappy. she missed a meeting with her employer months ago regarding a plan for her to return to work. we have no idea if she still retains her position. when i was in her home a week ago, on her dining room table i found a framed and matted photo of her smiling in scrubs. the hospital had chosen her as a model for their marketing campaign around patient care and compassion several years ago. that same picture is hanging up as a huge banner in the entrance of one of the area hospitals. and now there’s a growing suspicion that, through all the recovery programs terri’s been through, she has avoided filling paperwork for long-term disability. because to do so would be both admission and stigma that her mental illness is far more insidious than she allows herself to believe. 211231 ... tender_square terri’s been out of the hospital for a week now. and so the funnel cloud of drama that is ever looming in our family meets ground. a pipe burst in her condo causing $50k in damages before she was discharged from the psych ward by her psychiatrist. terri called mom from the hospital in a panic, freaking out about what she should do. mom assured her that if she had been keeping up on her homeowner’s insurance, all would be covered. mom also encouraged terri to call her aunt—the same sister that refuses to talk to mom, the same sister who insists she knows what’s going on with terri better than we do—since our aunt has experienced similar damage in her condo years ago. dad went over to terri’s place and turned off the water. apparently, a plumber had been trying to reach terri incessantly on her cell phone in the lead up to the holidays. terri has been telling the condo association that everything was in perfect working order with her pipes before the accident happened, but she asked mom, “could tampons have plugged the pipe?” “i know you’re not supposed to flush them,” i said to mom. “but would that really cause that kind of damage?” “well, brea seems to think it could be related to hand sanitizer.” “how do you mean?” “that terri’s using hand sanitizer on tampons. this is how addicts bypass the liver.” “oh my god, tampons are the worst; i can’t even imagine trying to go in dry!” i cried. “she’s not using them there…” “NO!” i gasped. before the pipe burst, mom and brea had been in the house to check on the cats and hide terri’s cell phone in her couch cushions. they noticed that one of the toilets was clogged and full of shit. the shut the lid so that the cat’s wouldn’t get into it. terri said to mom that she’s responsible for paying the plumber out of pocket first, before the insurance company will reimburse her, which sounds fishy as fuck. terri has been staying in her condo, without running water, for the past four or five days. “the insurance company should be paying for you to be in a hotel until the restoration work is complete,” mom said to her. repeatedly. instead, terri is calling mom to ask if she can come and use the shower. and when mom mentioned the hotel again, terri said not to worry, that she would warm some water on the stove top and have a sponge bath. her kitchen is inundated with the contents of the burst pipe, it’s where most of the damage occurred. mom gave candi and heads-up that terri was out of hospital and would likely be calling her. “protect yourself,” mom warned. “don’t pick up the phone.” any time terri brings the tornado, candi get sucked into the vortex and relapses from the stress. not ten minutes after that phone call, candi’s cell was blowing up with multiple messages from terri. “this is an emergency, i need you to call me back! i need to know if i can stay at your place with aubrey, i have a pipe that burst!” candi’s house is vacant because she lives full-time with her boyfriend, their daughter, and her step-daughter. mom spoke with terri afterward. “why do you need to stay at candi’s house? why aren’t you going to the hotel?” “well, i need to get aubrey. i haven’t seen her since before i was in the hospital.” “aubrey is fine, and she is being taken care of and she’s in a safe place. you need to focus on yourself. you need to be calling the insurance company and getting into a hotel; you can't stay in your house.” mom told me she felt guilty, like she should be doing more to help terri in her state. “if she was well, i’d be offering for her to stay here with us, but i can’t.” a few days prior, terri had come by mom and dad’s to drop off money she owed them. mom didn’t want her in the house, she didn’t think she could handle it. dad, having his memory issues, let terri in without a second thought. it was the first time terri had been in their home since she chugged transmission fluid in front of mom in march of 2020, when mom had to perform cpr on terri as she waited for the ambulance to arrive. “i thought i would lose it having her in the house again,” mom said. she was still shaken by what she witnessed that night. “but it ended up being okay.” “mom, you’ve already done so much for her. you got dad to turn the water off when you learned of it; you went over to the house to let the restoration guy in while she was in hospital; you advised her to deal with insurance and call aunt rena for added help,” i said. “i’m sorry that terri’s going through such a rough time right now; but if she can’t handle what life is throwing at her and stay sober, she shouldn’t be out of the hospital.” “you’re right,” she said. “and if she has to be hospitalized again, i know you and dad would continue to go to her place and let workers in if she needed you to do that,” i assured her. 220113 ... epitome of incomprehensibility In my dream last night, someone named Terri was a cousin of my mom's, but my smart-but-careless uncle had various CDs by two different people with that name. My goal was to figure out which Terri was their cousin. One was a singer-songwriter who was sometimes mainstream, sometimes more underground, but still a recognized name. (My dream mind seemed to be thinking of Tori Amos.) The other one moderated conference proceedings or made educational content. She wasn't famous, but the dream gave her a full name: Terri McEachern (pronounced Mik-Eekern). Smiling, middle-aged, friendly, but less interesting to be related to. The small bungalow had expanded into a luxurious house with a stone-rimmed fireplace and a large shelf with glass doors. I looked in and around this for the CDs. Where they were, as well as what they were, kept changing - and I wasn't sure whether to blame my uncle's organizational skills or my own. 220116 ... e_o_i (and sending waves of encouragement to tender_square in such a tough situation; I said something about this back in mere_christianity, but that was long and rambling) 220116 ... tender_square brea hooked up the sony camcorder through the television so we could watch home movies. and terri filled the screen with her friend kerry in the basement of our old house with the wood paneling and brown carpet, our christmas tree decorated in tinsel and in light behind them. terry and kerry were in their pajamas; terri in one of those long cotton nightshirts with odie on the front, and kerry in some pink long-sleeved fleece thing that zipped to her neck. company b’s “fascination” was playing and they were dancing and lip-syncing in front of the camera. terri was holding a hairbrush she sung into like a microphone. and we couldn’t get over how much she looked like her daughter aubrey in that moment, how terry was very likely fourteen or fifteen in the video, the same age aubrey is now. and i wanted to tape it what we were witnessing with my phone and sent it to terri and say “do you remember the essence of you?” after not having spoken to her in two years. she was all i wanted to watch. kerry kept flipping her shoulder-length curls as she danced, but she was no match for terri’s coordinated moves and charisma. mom entered the frame about halfway through the song. “how are you getting your hips to move like that?” she asks terri, and she demonstrated her tight, concentric swivel that no one could match. 220418 ... tender_square yesterday afternoon, i had this overwhelming sense of dread. a rotten sensation rooted in my stomach without a place to pin it to. i thought it was related to my own challenges and stemmed from being alone for too long with sickness. it may have very well been. but this morning terri texted with three photos she though i'd want to see: one of brea and i in our shared bedroom, hanson posters plastering the walls. another candid of brea putting on pantyhose in the same room. a third of brea posing in a tankini up in the tree from our old house. i didn't respond back to terri. what was i supposed to say? "thanks for these photos i've seen before"? i hate that my first internal reaction to her text was that she must want something; why else message out of the blue? i know it's reductive, but my sisters only reach out when they need something. it always appears as an innocent gesture but i've been here enough times to feel the emotional manipulation at the core of it. and now, while with my parents this afternoon, mom's cell phone sang with terri's programmed theme: the song from the micheal myers "halloween" series. terri was slurring, terri was drunk, terri relapsed again. detox won't take her until 8 am tomorrow. she claims she's not trying to hurt herself. she claims she feels like shit and is not planning to drink anymore. but fifteen hours is a lot of time to fill, and when you've already sullied your sobriety, what's one more drink anyway? mark my words, she's going to end up in the er tonight if she's not dead by morning. 230124 ... tender_square a few days ago, my mother texted to say that terri finally got her nursing license reinstated. terri had said to her, "i don't care if i have to piss in a bottle every day for the rest of my life, it's worth it." terri then celebrated by drinking a bunch of vodka and calling an ambulance. she left the vehicle as it pulled into the er and didn't admit herself to the hospital. 230407 what's it to you? who go blather from