On a missing ACL.

Anterior cruciate ligament.

I think that’s right.

It’s what I don’t have.  I simply don’t have one. I have scar tissue where my ACL once was.  I had a normal knee, and then I did not.

September 30, 2017 was a fateful day.

It is the reason I no longer have a sibling.  I had a sister who was four and a half years younger than me.  But now I do not.

Prior to September 30th, my sibling and I were engaged in a series of arguments, all centered on her ownership of a house.  This was a house that was purchased with my mother’s money as a means for my sister to live close to me while she was getting a divorce from her apparently abusive husband.

But that divorce never came.  Six months after she moved to that purchased home, she elected to reconcile with the deadbeat, never-employed, abusive prick.  The same man who hurt my nephews on more than one occasion – some that I even witnessed and foolishly ignored.

What transpired after that became the stuff of soap operas.  My mother transferred her half-ownership in the home to me, in an effort to divest herself from a situation she never wanted.  My sibling became more erratic (mental illness?)  and outrageous.  She spent five hours on the phone with me in May, verbally abusing me. Talking about things from our childhood….things I had long forgotten, or things that were not even accurate, or things that I had no idea she still cared about.  It was clear she was sick and haunted and out for blood.

We had no role in each other’s lives except for terse emails which primarily consisted of me telling her she now needed to sell the house she was living in and her saying she would not do it.  There was a lot more window dressing, but that was it.

And then, inexplicably, she invited me to her 2 boys’ birthday party.  My precious nephews; the same ones I had taken in 2008 when she was too drunk and high to be their mother.

I struggled with the idea of whether or not I should go.  Up until a few days before the party, I was pretty sure I was not going.  Not because I didn’t want to, but because….I didn’t know why, but I was afraid.  Afraid of an argument.  I didn’t want her near my children.  She was out of her mind.  She was obviously on drugs.

But my nephews.

So I went.  We all did.

And long after the party was done, she hadn’t left and neither did it.  A verbal dispute ensued between us.  It was started by her, by her stupid statements and crude remarks.  I listened and ignored as long as I could, playing games on my cell phone.

“I’m sure everything will be just perfect, because my sister is in charge!” she spoke with thick sarcasm as she talked about my mother’s transition from her home to a retirement community.

I snapped. “How the hell would you know?” I finally glared at her, looking up from my cell phone.  “You have no idea how hard this is because you don’t do anything – because you aren’t involved.”

“Well, nobody calls me!”

“Nobody CAN CALL YOU!  YOU BLOCK EVERYONE’S PHONE NUMBER!”

Her face changed.  “I’m just here for my CHILDREN!” she announced, while my aunt, literally sitting between us, put her hands up.

“Okay, okay,” my aunt said, in an attempt to calm the situation.  “You both can’t keep this up, it’s been going on for months.  You need to decide if you are going to be sisters again or not.”

I was silent, but her answer came quickly.  “No,” she responded, clear as anything.  “We’re not sisters.  Fuck her.”

I didn’t say a word.

As my aunt tried to mediate some kind of a peace, my sister looked at me and said, “I’m not going to have this argument in front of MY CHILDREN.”  She emphasized “my children” so dramatically, it was ridiculous.  “Do you want to go outside?’

“ABSOLUTELY,” my response came firmly.  I picked up my purse and began to walk outside as she followed me.  I could hear my aunt telling my husband (who was headed to the bathroom) “You’d better come along.”

I had no idea a fight was about to ensue.  I had never been a physical person and I had never been involved in any kind of a physical altercation with my sister before.

We walked out of the front door of my aunt’s home.  I was first, walking toward the middle of the front lawn.  It was there that I felt it.  A shove.  Hard.  In my back.  No one had said a word, but my mind was shouting, I’m falling…I’m falling and I can’t stop.

I was face down on the ground, and she was on top of me.

I tried to move, to twist around to grab at her or push her away.  But something was wrong.  I couldn’t stand up.  I grabbed a small piece of her sweater.  “Get off!” I shouted.  “Get the fuck OFF OF ME!”  When she wouldn’t listen, my husband came over and removed her in front of my shocked family.  He held her tightly in a bear hug.  I was gasping for breath.

“Are you finished?” my spouse asked her and she agreed that she was.

She stood above me and began to shout at me.  My husband took out his cell phone camera, later we learned that it hadn’t recorded a thing.

But I couldn’t get up.  I tried and tried, but my knee kept buckling.  I was finally helped to my feet and my knee just kept buckling.  I knew something was very wrong.

“Call the police,” I told my husband, while my aunt sat there shouting “No! I don’t want the police at my house! Do NOT call them!”

After we agreed to go to urgent care and we were alone in the car, I told Jon we were calling the police anyway.  When we got to urgent care, I waited to be seen while the police arrived.  I stated what had happened.  The police took pictures and then my sister, who was still at my aunt’s house (was she stupid?) was carried away in handcuffs and arrested for simple assault.

A week later, after an MRI and a consultation with an orthopedist, I learned that my ACL was completely torn away.  Gone.  Other ligaments were also badly damaged.

I went through months of physical therapy and it was eventually decided that I could live a reasonable quality of life without an ACL and that surgery might not make things better.  So I didn’t have surgery.  Constant aches and pains, a knee brace for the rest of my life, but no surgery.

And no ACL.

And no nephews.

And no sister.

And that’s it.