I have two sisters, one by blood and one by spirit.
God-given, both of them. The wandering hand of something greater that plucks two queens from across a sea of checkered squares and drops them off where they are needed. A divine intervention that guards a lone pawn, stranded in a far-off corner, from the imminent threat of checkmates.
And checkmates are all about kings, fragile and overprotected like that of masculine egos. We work relentlessly to keep the reign intact, regardless of how many players are claimed at the sanguine-stained hands of the journey.
These two queens, one black and one white, have nothing in common but their kings. And like all other queens too, they have been fatefully destined for all of eternity to service the fanciful whims of kings.
My sister by blood has vowed to never marry. She is committed, instead, to an intimate relationship with herself – the only real bond in life that will never and could never be separated. I’ve heard her many times before disdainfully criticize the foundations of a traditional marriage, a specific disgust that only my wonderfully unique sister could have. To wed yourself off to a man. To walk down the aisle, only to be handed over like a business transaction. To be given away like women are nothing more than distressed damsels, or sleeping princesses, or dowdy housewives. To be given away to kings who will always have it all.
“But I’m a Miller,” she’d boast proudly. “That’s my last name and I want to keep it.”
My sister by spirit, however, has pined to be married. She is committed to idealisms, the perfect soulmate, the perfect wedding, the perfect family, the perfect future. But a world of idealisms is not always ideal, often failing to provide what it has so willfully promised. And even now, after years of heartbreaks, in a relationship that is finally ideal, my second sister fears that dreaded last name. Just like my first sister.
It’s a detail that only I could notice about her, a testament to our years of invested friendship and shared love. I know her better than I know anyone else, and I know when she is hiding behind the trivial to evade a lurking truth.
“I hate it! His last name. It’s silly. It doesn’t sound pretty with mine.”
But that’s the trivial. And this is the truth.
She is afraid that she will love someone so much that she, out of her own volition, will sacrifice her last name, and along with it, her identity.
Checkmate.
Both sisters lose.
You can either give yourself away to a king – or – you can spend the duration of your life overcompensating for the world they have created. Because no matter how hard we try, in chess or in life, with kings or with men, we will always be servicing the spacious thrones of royalty.
In chess, and in life, you can keep playing the game long after your queens have been stolen.