Guest Post : You Can Choose Your Friends...

Due to being busy this summer with a wedding and honeymoon, a few people have kindly volunteered to step up with some guest posts.  Today we have a brilliant post from the lovely Adele Archer from Adele Archer Writes - a writer, blogger, lots of other things and all round great person.

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You Can Choose Your Friends...   

I’m very pleased to have been asked to do a guest post on the fabulous Mike Raven’s blog (seriously, I can’t quite understand why people keep asking me. But until they begin to realise that I’m a fraud, I’m going to make hay while the sun shines!). When I was brand ­new to blogging with zero visitors and zero views, I posted this particular piece on my own blog site for about thirty seconds before I realised that it probably hit too close to home (literally) and swiftly took it down. But I have this crushing need to be honest lately and I hated that I had to hide my feelings away so what better way to keep the post alive than to give it a home on a blog where it’s less likely to be read by Archer family members? I truly am an evil genius *steeples fingers with a cat­like smile*. I really hope Mike Raven is going to be okay with this...

You see, I did a shameful thing recently. I de­friended my sister on FaceBook. ​ My sister. My own flesh and blood. But one too many smart­mouthed, offhandedly snide comments pushed me over the edge.

It was a chance remark (made on FaceBook for all the world to read) about my up-­and-­coming writing career (y'know, the one that I don't really have but have stupidly decided to pursue anyway). I don't suppose she honestly meant anything by it, but it's her insensitivity, her heavy-­handedness, her bluntness. I'd just had enough. I suppose I'm easily offended. Alright, I am​ easily offended. But I don't consider myself the type of person you need to walk around on eggshells with. I understand humour, I understand a good put­-down (I grew up with those and am rather partial to them if well­timed and amusing). But some people are laughing ​at you, not with you.

She was always a difficult sister, the odd one who didn't quite fit ­- every family has one of those. Why are families like that? You were born to the same parents, you had precisely the same upbringing, so what happens along the line to make siblings so utterly different? How are we so altered that if we weren't related, we probably wouldn't even be friends? Nature vs nurture; both are important but I can't help but feel nature is stronger. Even as children, we didn’t understand one another. She was strange. Her humour was strange. She also had a temper that could be triggered at the drop of a hat. I used to think she had a split personality before I grew up and found out what that actually meant in psychiatric terms. But even today, if I fall out with her in a spectacular way (which happens occasionally), she can go off and not speak to me for half a year then reappear like nothing has happened.

Today I miss my sister who died (my other sister; there were six of us kids, mostly girls, it gets confusing). I always miss her, of course, but the enormity of her death was so crushingly terrible that I've learned to put her out of my head for the most part just so I can function. Isn't the human brain a peculiar thing to be able to do that? To shut down a part it can't cope with? But I can't put her out of my head today; I've lost a sister and a best friend and that's never going to change. And I want to take comfort in the siblings I have left, that's all. It just makes me sad that one is a disappointment. Perhaps I'm a disappointment to her too.

Anyway, it doesn't do to be maudlin (she says, as her stomach ulcer gnaws away at her insides), you just have to keep plugging away and work on the relationships you've got left.  Maybe one day I'll be able to fix the relationship with my weird sister. Maybe one day we'll be the best of friends and go for coffee or to the spa or theatre and ring each other for weekly, girly chats. Maybe she’ll even forgive me for this blog post. Maybe.

A bit about Adele:

Adele Archer was born in East London in the 1970's, the second youngest of six children. Growing up in a council flat in not the most salubrious part of town, she was always a dreamer - and her imagination was the best escape of all. Adele was writing books from the age of eleven - but inventing stories in her head long before that.

Adele spent the majority of her working life as a trained nurse but decided that writing novels could no longer just be a secret hobby. Life was too short for 'if only's'.

Her first novel, 'International Relations' was released in 2015. Adele writes contemporary women's fiction with an amusing (albeit slightly bitter) take on life and romance. She writes for strong, witty women who want to read about strong, witty women (but witty men would totally LOVE it!!).

Adele now resides in the West Country with her wonderful husband and two amazing daughters. In her spare time, she writes songs and sings, reads voraciously and crams in as many period/costume drama shows as her long-suffering family will allow. She would wear a bustle and a bonnet on a daily basis if she could…

Adele’s Blog:
http://adelearcherbooks.wordpress.com 

Adele’s Amazon Author Page:
http://amazon.com/author/adelearcherbooks  

‘International Relations’ by Adele Archer
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00SIEX7CI