Hi LMS,
Do I understand you to say you are estranged from your mom? As well as the others. I am so sorry.
I don’t mean to hijack your thread, my friend, but since you mentioned bi-polar, I’ll post.
Yesterday, I lost my best friend here who had bi-polar although I was never affected by it In any way. In fact, I never knew she had it until recently and I had known her for five years. She committed suicide. I am devastated as are all who knew her. We knew she was hurting and we were there for her always, loved her like a sister, but that wasn’t enough for her to love herself.
As you know, I lost my son about 6 months ago and the unbearable grief is making a second wave. Crying has become a way of life for me. But I am ok. I have good support, thank God. And I have lots of good moments with my remaining family.
I admire you, LMS, because you are so honest and open about your mental illness. An illness that many, many people have. My friend had great difficulty accepting it and didn’t want to be labeled. I’m not sure if that’s why she wouldn‘t take the medication or complained about the doctors not knowing anything. She was probably self-perpetuating her depressed state and she struggled with alcohol as well, which might have affected how the medication worked—I really don’t know.
The truly sad part is that she was estranged from her daughter. Why, I don’t understand. There was no single incident but apparently, the daughter gradually wanted to spend less and less time with her mother. My friend never understood why. She had been a very young mother. I’m sure there must have been issues and I didn’t know her then. She offered to go to counseling with her daughter but the daughter would have none of it and insisted that she just needed to work on herself. My friend got fed up, totally detached from her daughter and actually wrote the daughter out of her will. And she has considerable assets. She left it all to a local non-profit.
And of course, now—all of the estranged parties, a sister included, want to be involved and they had to be told that my friend, the mother/sister had given someone else power of attorney and that she wanted them to have nothing to do with her death arrangements and were not included in her will. This sounds like the storyline out of a novel, but I assure you, it is real.
I imagine there is enough guilt to go around.
I am estranged somewhat from my sister too. She couldn’t seem to be there for me when my son, her nephew, died. It hurt me deeply. I don’t feel I can share anything with her because she can’t seem to take it. It didn’t used to be this way—we used to be best friends! There are other issues with controlling, criticism and sometimes just snarky comments she makes that have helped me make my decision.
But then I think about this, my friend’s death and all the pain it caused, and I wonder—When does estrangement become necessary in a relationship? Or maybe I should ask, why does it become necessary? I imagine we would all have some interesting answers.
I have a dear friend who is is as sweet as she can be, who puts up with verbal abuse from her sister but will not stand up to her for fear of the sister ending the relationship and she would have no one. She also has a zillion health problems! Is there a connection?
What makes a toxic person? My sister feels toxic to me, sometimes. Often I feel worse after talking to her than I did before. I’d love to hear what others think.
Love, Nandina
