How Would You Speak of Love When Language Dies? (Volume I)

IX. Of those that speak of cardigans and hidden piggy banks

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Content Warning
Mention of Eating Disorder

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For the sisters who grew up.

For those who finally dared to walk away from home.

"You don't have to go.
You don't have to go home."
— Harry Styles in his song,
MATILDA

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Entry IX.
THE STORY OF CORDELIA AND CORDELINE

Growing up with Cordeline meant having an extension of myself within the household.

Quite not literally because she's older than me by two years. Still, living under a roof with someone who looked almost like you—we could even pass as identical twins—felt like watching an extension of yourself grow up. Perhaps with the time warping by two years because she had seen this world earlier than I did.

Honestly speaking, I used to hate having Ate Cordeline around the house. Not because I specifically hated my mother preparing for another dinner lecture on why I should take my sister's step too for college—as she luckily wanted to take the traditional path that would impress our Asian ancestors in their graves, but generally because of how I feared I was seeing where my future lies ahead because of exactly how I practically lived as an extension of her. Like how she also lives as an extension of me.

When your future is just around the corner, waiting to be handed over to you in a year or so, sometimes life gets pretty nerve-wracking.

When I was six, I watched as eight-year-old Ate Cordeline enroll to ballet classes. Every Saturday, she would come home with her legs wobbling in pain after getting pushed towards the wall with her legs apart just to perfectly achieve that split. I ate dinner that day with her crying beside me knowing that in two years, I would be in the same exact spot in the dinner table with my hair pulled up into a ballet bun while bawling my eyes out.

When I was seven, I watched as nine-year-old Ate Cordeline open stacks of Nancy Drew books under the mistletoe that Christmas Eve. That came with a checklist of titles along with the reading dates—more like deadlines—that she had to stay ahead of before the school resumes by January.

When I was fifteen, Ate Cordeline messed up for the first time. Came home thirty minutes past the curfew with a bruise on her leg after a ballet rehearsal and a missing wallet. And I watched as Mom took away everything for a week; her phone, books, food—even food. For a week, she was forced to consume only strict vegan meals despite her health deteriorating from all the overlapping ballet, piano, math, and volleyball lessons.

It felt like watching your own life unfold before you. Like a trailer of a film you're about to set foot on years from now.

Because growing up with Cordeline meant having no identity to live with. Growing up with Cordeline meant putting yourself in the second round of a pilot study that hadn't undergone an ethical review in the first place. Growing up with Cordeline meant reliving the tragedies she had to go through before leaving.