Loving My Sister’s Husband

I have loved him for ten years. Ten quiet, careful, and unforgivable years—the same ten years he has been married to her. Ten years of standing on the outside, looking in. Ten years of swallowing every feeling whenever I saw them together. Ten years of hating myself for loving my sister’s husband. No one knows. No one has ever suspected. I made sure of that. I told myself it would pass. That if I buried it deep enough and ignored it long enough, it would eventually fade into something distant and harmless. Just a mistake I never acted on. A feeling I refused to name or acknowledge. Because how could I ever admit something so wrong? So cruel. So selfish? He was never mine to love. He still isn’t. I tried everything to stop it—this longing, this love. I left. I moved away. I convinced myself that distance would finally silence what I felt. I told myself it was the only way to be a good sister. The only way to stop wanting someone who was never mine. The only way to protect her from a betrayal she would never know existed. But distance couldn’t erase it. Time couldn’t destroy it. My feelings remained. And now… My sister is gone. The words still don’t feel real, no matter how many times I repeat them in my head. She’s gone. Wala na siya. I never thought I would come home like this—not because I missed her, but because of her funeral. Back to the place I once called ours before it slowly became theirs. Their house. Their life. Their love story… And now, its ending. I should be mourning her. I should be grieving the life she left behind. Instead, I find myself betraying her again. I thought distance would make it easier. I thought time would make me whole again. I was wrong. Now I don’t know how to face this grief. I don’t know how to face her absence. I don’t know how to face him. Hindi ko alam kung alin ang mas mahirap—seeing my sister one last time or seeing the man I have loved for ten years again. Because no matter what happens next, one truth remains: I loved my sister. And I love her husband. And this love is the sin I will carry with me… even to her grave.