They all, every one, agreed that their siblings, who were not abused, did not lived the same type of abuse that they did.
Each of my siblings was abused. A gamut of abuse, from cruel response to some faceless something come live in the middle of the night.
Scary, that stuff. I am a grown up person close to a million years old, and that place, those places, are still breathless.
I kept trying to make them LIKE me
I don't get that part, either. I still get a little punched in the stomach feeling when I think that what I think about my sister now might be what really happened. Might be what is really happening to this day. Maybe that is why we keep going back. We keep poking at the things that could not possibly be true.
D H says: Toxic is toxic. Every time you open that vial, it is poison. The essence is in the bottom of the vial, but the fumes are poisonous things.
I say: (Thank you, Eckhart Tolle) "The pain body cannot stand before the ~ however it goes. Something about the pain body cannot stand before the fact of my presence.
What I know about this now is that my sister, like me, like I am too, is healing the best way she knows how.
I don't have to like it.
It is what it is.
But it is a good thing to see what is for what it is.
but that was at a time when going no contact with your own mother labeled you a horrific person.
I blamed some rottenness in me for the last time my parents and I were ~ for the last time my parents chose not to see me. And my mother said, "I told you I was going to do this."
And my father said, "Is there anyone else here you would like to talk to."
He was on her side. That is why she gave him the phone. To make that very clear. The hero, the one protector any of us had, had decided to take a freaking powder.
Alone.
Reviled.
Judged and found wanting: Nothing to do with fairness or decency or hope.
It is what it is.
But I was pretty ashamed of that. Ashamed that happened. I think I took it as just something my mother did. The betrayal was in that my father chose sides against me.
Wonder how he felt, about that.
In his secret heart, I mean.
Perhaps I won't post this part.
So that is why I have to, I suppose.
For heaven's sake, dammit.
Yep.
My shame cannot stand before the fact of, before the force of, my presence.
Feets, don't fail me now.
Stand up.
Feel the Wind. (Child of the Wind before and behind her....)
That happened, to me.
Ours is an ugly story.
WE also discussed how we are usually tossed out of the family for making choices the family didn't like
I don't know to this day ~ and neither does D H, what I did.
I know my sister was involved. I mean, I know she was visiting when it happened. Maybe, given what has come to be now, with my mother staying with my sister during the winter months...must have been the same dynamic.
What...the win must be what the win is, now. Get rid of the other sibs and have the parents for her own.
?
So, the question becomes
what is the win for my mother?
Can it be that she hates me that much.
Why doesn't matter.
It is what it is.
It is better to know.
What in the world were they thinking, to do this thing?
But I have seen her do it, for no particular reason that I can figure out, to my brother, and to the woman who drives her to my sister's.
I have heard how she and my sister and my sister's family roll their eyes at the woman,, at her predicament in being tired from the long drive and of still having hours to go.
There was a time, in the beginning, when my sister would have the woman, the driver whose car it is, spend the night in her home.
This time, the time I heard about, the woman was told there was no room; that she would have to find a hotel, if she was tired.
And they all thought that was funny.
I can see it sometimes, how messed up they all are, in the things I see or hear about them doing to others.
I cannot see the wrongness in what they do as it applies to me.
That is where we are working, today.
And I actually laughed when I told the group how my sister wrote that I had NPT/Borderline Personality Disorder (Borderline Personality Disorder (Borderline (BPD))).
My sister doesn't do things like that. She does: "What would Cedar do." I have posted about the hurtfulness of that one, before. My sister is uber-religious. There is not a chance she would confuse me with her concept of Jesus ~ just the opposite.
She told me about that, about what she and my mother do, about the feeling tone of how they see and talk about me. It was supposed to be funny.
But it hurt me, to know they saw me that way.
"Cedar is the romantic in the family."
I have been a fool for lesser things.
Remember that song about the boxer? Simon and Garfunkel?
Brother? Who cares what his issues are.
I do.
But as I am becoming healthier myself, I see that he does not need my protection; he is his own champion.
And if I am strong enough? So is he.
Same bloodline.
One refers to her by her first name.
My son refers to me by my first name.
But he has been calling on Mother's Day, on my birthday, and sometimes just out of the blue. On Mother's Day this year, he called twice. Once, he talked to me. The second call was so his children could talk to me.
He wanted me to know, after I had talked to the kids, how much I had missed in not being in their lives these past four years.
All I could do was agree.
I know things he does not, about how irreplaceable those times with a little boy are. And I know how it is, when things change.
But all I said was, "Yes."
I told him too, that there was a time I loved him in that exact same way he loves his son.
He could not understand yet, that this does not change.
But I know that, and that is more than enough.
For now, for today.
Sometimes, we just have to fly by the seats of our pants. Hearts in our throats, flying by the seats of our pants.
Hey, baby. Remember that, when we finally saw the faces of the children we had been pregnant with?
"Hey, baby. I waited so long for you. I wondered so many times who and how you would be...."
:O)
And in my case, my mother was angry that HER mother would take care of me, no matter what.
Maybe SWOT, this is why my mother so passionately, years and years after her death, hates my paternal grandmother.
I didn't even realize how much was still fooling myself and lied to myself and told myself that it was ok for my mother to abuse me and disown me.
I still don't believe it. I mean, surely this way I am seeing now could not be true. Surely, every one of us (my sibs) would want to form a community of support for ourselves and for one another.
?
I feel badly for you that you went through that disowning part too, SWOT.
What in the world were they thinking? I know I sound like a broken record. I still don't get the win. Well. If the win were anything I could understand, then I would have to reinterpret what my situation, all of my life, has been.
Huh.
Well, how do you like that.
I refused to think about how my siblings said nothing in my defense while, at the same time, using my company, advice and,yes, compassion when they felt entitled.
Yes.
True for me, too.
With my sister, not with my brother. He doesn't talk about these things. Not with me. He does the right thing by our mother. Whatever she does to him
or to his family, he does the right thing by his mother.
She holds her death over all of our heads.
Here is a story: So, I was helping my mother clean in the Spring. I was doing exterior windows. I am not sure what she was doing. I walked around a corner, and there she was, facedown on the ground.
Motionless.
And I said whatever ~ Mom are you alright, or whatever.
And she jumped up and thought that was very funny.
So I finished cleaning the windows.
But I still don't think that was very funny.
They address a few incidents that they didn't approve of, but do they know the good we do, the love we have (yes, even for them before t he final tumble), the truth we are not afraid to look straight in the eyes?
Well, that is a true thing.
We are looking it straight in the eyes right here and now.
Anonymously, of course.
But I could just pretend this was not my story. Here on the site I could do that. I could just be an advice-giving person.
Instead of some person posting away and posting away.
So, that takes courage, that choice to be ugly and to be not enough. And to admit that my own mother doesn't find value in me ~ twice, now. (Ha! Twice now ~ except for all the times in all my life that she hit or kicked or bit or burnt. Or pulled the strings out that held me together in whatever possible way that she could. I just thought of that, as I reread this before posting. In case I decided to chicken out on posting some of it.)
It is what it is.
Looks like I am still here. And actually, am reclaiming the territory of the heart at a pretty good clip.
They weren't there. They were never there.
BOOM
They never were who I grieve, today.
They
never were.
I
never had that stuff I keep believing could be real.
Huh.
That must be why saying I don't believe in my sister anymore feels right.
She never was who I believed myself into believing she was.
But still, that was a dirty little trick, to pretend we were making a pact not to exclude.
Grrr.
I have been a fool for lesser things ~ pretty much, every day of my life...but that was a pretty freaking big thing.
How could she know that would work. And
why would she use it if she did know it would work on me. I know, I know. Why doesn't matter.
It is what it is, and it is better to know.
Can't help but feel a little stupid about believing that with all my heart, though.
Cheesh, Cedar.
Do NOT believe what a scapegoat tells you.
Well, that's pretty good advice.
Just in case my sister does show up at my door one day this summer. Which D H says she is going to, as per her threat to do so on the last phone message I didn't pick up but somehow, could not help listening to just in case my mother...you know.
Because I don't know how I am going to feel about myself once it is too late to undo this.
D H says I will have to be very careful then, because that will be how my sister latches onto me.
"Do NOT believe what a scapegoater (I added the "er") tells you."
On the fridge it goes.
Sisters can be scapegoaters, too.
Well, duh.
I always see those times when I could not stop what was happening, when I think of my sister. I don't get it that she doesn't see me that way.
It could even be true that she sees me in a very unattractive light.
Ahem.
Anyway, if I post that phrase on the fridge, I will see it, when I go to the door.
Research indicates that we will open the door, even to a criminal, when someone knocks.
I wonder how I want to treat these people, if they come here. D H says: Sanctuary. If I am here when they come, I will deal with them. (Between D H and me? His muzzle regarding my FOO is off. That is just how he describes it. I swear he is eager for a confrontation. He says that is how I need to be, too. But you know? I just wish....)
"Do NOT believe what a scapegoat tells you."
The only place I am...not eager for confrontation, but willing to stand up, is around what my sister did to my daughter when she was so hurt.
Snip.
They don't get to come to my house. And if they show up, I am going to say:
"You shouldn't f*** with someone who is loyal to you."
There is nothing about me that is any business of yours.
Cedar
One more time, everybody: Thank you.