I resent my sister for having an easier life and I have never said that to a single human being.

On paper nothing was taken from me. We grew up in the same house with the same parents. But I was the oldest and she was the one with the asthma, and from the time I was about eight I was the one who was fine. I was told I was fine so consistently that I organized my whole personality around being fine.

She got to be a kid. She got to fall apart in public. When our parents split she cried at the kitchen table and got held, and I made dinner. Nobody asked me to. That's the part I can't even be righteous about. Nobody ever sat me down and assigned me the job.

I took it because being needed was the only way I knew how to be loved, and then I resented everyone for letting me.

She's thirty-four now and she calls me when things are hard, and I'm good at it, and I hang up and sit in the dark for twenty minutes.

Last Thanksgiving my mother said, in front of everyone, "I never had to worry about you." She meant it as the highest compliment she has. I said thank you.

What I'm actually afraid of is that this is permanent. That I'm forty-one and the circuitry is set, and I will keep being the one who holds things, and keep being quietly furious, and keep being told it's a compliment. My wife says I don't let her help me. She's right and I don't know how to start.

Does this ever reverse? Has anyone been the competent one for thirty years and learned how to be taken care of? Or do you just manage it.