Sorry, I'm kind of a BrAT

5.25

Dear Sienna, 

I’m sorry I’ve been so bratty lately. 

The worst of that side of me came out the other night when my friend Kevin gave our other friend Tracy a bigger flower than he left for me when we were huddled around our small table at Billy’s by the Beach in Newport. We were nursing our hangovers after a successful birthday weekend that Asa had coordinated for Kevin and I. 

As you know, Kevin and I have the exact same birthday, lucky number 23. But it was my birthday this year because of the milestone of turning the big three-oh. That’s how he and I have always done it since coming into each other's lives, whoever had the more important year out of the two of us, got more of the birthday attention. Were Gemini’s, I think that means that every now and then, we do indeed like the attention.

I wish you were here to celebrate with me. 

You would’ve had a lot of fun this past weekend with us, you and all my friends were really starting to take a liking to one another. Remember our group field day last summer at the park by Tracy and Jasa’s apartment? I think I have a video of us somewhere jumping rope together. You were having so much fun with us that day, you blew off your booty call to stay through the rest of the night, I think you even slept over at our house after…

“Can you guys shut the fuck up,” Asa and I hear you sassily yelp from your side of our ginormous couch in Long Beach. Lol. We started cracking up over whatever it is we laugh about, having completely just forgotten you were right there next to us while we loudly joked and giggled during the movie we had put on. 

“Holy shit, where did you come from?!” I squealed, genuinely astonished by your forgotten presence. “Woah, where did you come from?” Asa laughed under me. 

“You guys are so freaking annoying,” you’d say in between bits of your snorty laughter. You loved us, even when we were being annoying…

I know you would’ve been at my birthday party if you could, but unlike me and all my friends, you know when to call it a night.  Knowing you, you’d probably be over it by the third day of heavy drinking, shaking your head in our direction with your feigned disappointment clearly marked across those eyes that started to look so much like mine.

“You guys are crazy,” I imagine you saying from your corner of the couch as we take another shot of tequila. What time was it? Despite our degenerate behaviour, you’d be proud of our capabilities, and just happy to be there and included in the fun. And let me tell you, Sienna: the party has not stopped since Friday…Cousin Gabby came back with me from Vegas for my birthday weekend and we thankfully managed to get her in with her fake ID. Everyone you already knew and (not worth mentioning right now) was there to help me ring in the end of my twenties. 

I try to picture you there with us too; your face mirroring our giddy smiles as we order our first drinks of the night, thankful that the bouncer didn’t flinch with suspicion when he handed Gabby’s obviously borrowed ID back to her and let us in. We’ve spent the last two days having group sleepovers at Asa and I’s house followed by brunch and bar hopping around the beach cities the rest of the weekend. It’s been nice, it felt like a homage to old times, the last hurrah of my twenties. I felt surrounded by love and I really needed that because afterall, we were still in a time like this. 

It’s now Sunday.

We started today at our favorite bar in Costa Mesa and eventually moved closer to the water, heading two streets down to seventeenth street, ending our night at a local dive bar on the beautiful Pacific Coast Highway. With a collective seven hours of sleep since Friday and four beers already in my belly, we were settling into our last day of partying before we all went back to our respective homes to socially recharge after the weekend. 

I can already hear Dad now, “and how old are we again?” I know, Dad, I know. 

I’ve had a headache since I woke up this morning and the pressure forming behind my eyeballs is starting to border on debilitating. It’s starting to be a trend of mine that after every one of my birthday parties I have a record breaking hangover from the year before. I wonder if that means something…

Maybe Dad is on to something. But mamma didn’t raise no bitch so I pushed through the raging headache and made the most of this last night together with all of our friends. And man, was I feeling good. But feeling good has its consequences, Sienna, a piece of advice I wish I had given you more often while you were here. 

I’ve always loved the idea of how the universe gives and takes from us. It’s why I got a circle tattooed on my back because I believe that the energy you put into this world, is the energy that you get back. Now, I don't know if you knew this, but feeling that good also comes with its assumed ramifications. It’s like, sure, you can feel this good for now, but something must be taken in return, a cosmic justice if you will. 

And it doesn't have to be something big, the universe isn’t going to be like, “you’re happy right now, out drinking with your friends, I’m going to kill your dog.” (At least I hope it’s not) It can be subtle and you have to be in tune enough with yourself so you can better recognize the patterns in which it gives and takes. This way, you can better point them out, and address them for yourself.

 For example, I’ve come to learn that one of my many inferred consequences from ‘taking’, i.e. feeling this good, has been recognized for me as, “WARNING: may lose the ability to filter the thoughts that are meant to stay inside your mental filing cabinet and the ones that come out of your petty ass mouth.” 

Translation: feel good now and you may risk saying something stupid later. 

Which leads me back to me being at peak brattiness to Tracy earlier. 

Shake my head. 

Little Arianna was in full control and took advantage of me tonight. 

Using my inebriated state to rear her eight year old bratty immaturity in anyone’s eager direction, I can still hear those words echo back at me and into the group's unforgetting ears. I thought I said it out loud with a joking tone. I, mean, I fucking hope that I said it out loud with a joking tone. But I cringe now at the thought that that comment may have come out of my freshly turned thirty year old mouth sounding utterly childish and ugly.  

“What! Her flower is bigger than mine!” I hear myself whine. 

The image of my little foot stomping down in adolescent jealousy plays over and over in my head on a loop. With furrowed brows, arms crossed across my chest out of frustration, it was my own personal snapshot of shame. Now relentlessly stamping itself into the pages of the book I’ve clearly labeled, “Burn After Reading.” 

Did I really just say that out loud? 

I couldn’t tell if that hurt her feelings or not, like, who says that? 

Truthfully, I turned away and ignored her, storing away the mental image that I may have actually sounded like a petty ass bitch tonight until I could dissect it here with you now. Did anyone else notice or is it just me? 

But also, whatever, right? 

I think I’ve earned the right to be a little bratty: my little sister just died.

Anyways, I miss you.

Pray for my safe return. 

Love, 

Sissy