One of my sisters, as some of you may and remember, up and moved to a foreign country because "everything's better there" and "there's nothing we really care about here." That was six years ago, and I'm still embittered. Anyhow.
The clearance rack at the fabric store had woven "Made With Love By" tags. I found a set with her name. We both have fairly unusual names. Say hers is Dinah and her Hebrew name- in traditional Conservative American Jew fashion- is Peninah. She has decided that Where Everything's Better, her name is, instead of either of these perfectly good names given her by her loving parents, Rafaela.
I got the name tags that say Dinah.
(There are lots of good reasons to abandon your name and your family. However, the worst thing anyone in our family ever did to us was... yell. Very occasionally, like when we were 13 and probably deserved it. Or, once, give a trashy see-through lace skirt to Goodwill. Or, er, send us outside to rake as penance for slamming doors and stomping about shouting and hitting our sisters. No, really, that was the worst. And we totally deserved it.)
Those situations are hard. One of my brothers is distancing himself from the family -- not in such an extreme way, and I understand why he does it, but it still hurts.
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