the road to hell

last weekend we went to chicago--i say we, meaning me, my sisters, and our friend shelly. it should have been a fabulous weekend filled with cocktails, sightseeing and laughter, but it turned into an emotional rollercoaster.

i remember getting on the plane and watching the sky move past as we took off, and thinking of the brush of bristles on dan's face as he kissed me good bye that night. if i knew what was going to happen i suppose i'd have turned around and gone back home, but then again, that's the beauty of life--it's all a surprise.

friday night we spent flying, riding the train downtown, finding the hotel, and then finding a cocktail. saturday was fine--roaming into little italy, where we noshed on irish fare and coffee, and then downtown again, where we located a starbucks for additional caffeine.

it was there that the whole weekend came into brilliant and ugly focus. i remember sitting down and seeing beth's face, the muted crimson blush of anger. i could feel the tide of emotion washing off of her, and i knew that the weekend was a loss, not even twelve hours in.

the accusation was that we--being my middle sister and i--had been inconsiderate when we planned this trip, and the fact that we surprised her was unforgivable. we didn't understand where she was coming from--i think the term "you don't get it" was uttered about five hundred times--and then she stomped off down the street. shelly followed, and sara and i were left to wander about by ourselves.

the weekend was supposed to have been a surprise--beth just had sent off her best friend to prague, and her puppies had been adopted out. shelly'd come up with the idea of surprising her with a trip to chicago for a weekend, just to get away, and sara and i jumped on the bandwagon.

and then, in the blink of an eye, shelly was the only one who loved her and sara and i were depriving her of the best part of her day--coming home and seeing her dog's tail, waving hello.

there was the eventual knock down drag out in a bar, until sara stepped in and said she was done discussing this, we were in chicago and we might as well enjoy ourselves. so we all put on our happy faces and had a good-ish time, but the whole weekend was flawed.

i don't understand why it had to happen like that--i know that people are under a great deal of stress, and i know that there's financial strain. between sara and shelly and i, we paid for the whole weekend for her, and the only reply we got was that we were treating her like a charity case.

it hurts--hurts, hurts, hurts. at one point sara and i sat in the upstairs of a brewery, in the two seats near the bathrooms, and tried not to cry. i remember us agreeing that we were enjoying each other's company, but that if we could go home that night, we would, since we'd so obviously fucked up.

i didn't expect that beth would be gushingly grateful, or that the weekend would be utterly fantastic, but the fact that my own sister could be that ungracious, and that angry, over what had begun as a gift--that incensed me.

it still ticks me off, today.

this weekend was admittedly not a good time for me to travel, either. it's the middle of our busiest season at work, and i've been dragging the bottom of the barrel to keep up. i had to work my ass off to get done with work in time on friday to actually make it to the airport, and i'm still catching up on lost sleep. i haven't spent much time at home in the last few weeks, and when i am at home, i'm sleeping.

so, while sara and i were forced into walking in beth's shoes, she neatly avoided walking in ours.

the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

our intent was good, pure and simple. beth found out about the surprise the week before--plenty of time in which to speak up and say "no, i'm sorry, i can't go." i would have been fine with that. flying to chicago to be told i was inconsiderate by my beloved sister was not preferable to being told, honestly, that she did not want to go on the trip in the first place.

i don't want my family to end up being one of those families who are related but do not speak to one another. it's not something about which i dream--in fact i have nightmares about it. but in the end, it's not up to me, not entirely. i can only soothe so many irate people, and i suppose in the end, i do expect that my family, of all the people with whom i have contact, will be a place of harmony and honesty, and not a backstabbing mess of hurt.

an expectation that i need to chuck out the window, another bit littering that god-damned road.