'Last week Borderline Personality Disorder (Borderline Personality Disorder (Borderline (BPD))) sis was in a very bad accident. My dad contacted me, it is serious. I feel terrible this happened. I don't want anything to happen to her. My dad begged me to reach out to her family. My dad is older so I did. I sent my sister a beautiful bouquet of flowers with a nice card. I texted her daughter. I got no acknowledgement at all. This does not surprise me. The accident doesn't change what she has done to me and my family. I am so conflicted. On one hand i feel awful for her accident. On the other she has said and done horrible things to me my whole life. My therapist validated my feelings. Just wondering if any others have been through this? Thanks.'
Just something off about the motivation, here. To identify a sister we are supposedly grieving by naming her not "my sister" but a discredited mental illness is so strange a thing. It sets the tone for the rest of the post.
I am surprised at the sister. She was so kind, in letting us know what had happened, and that you were going to be alright.
The false notes:
My dad contacted me, it is serious.
I feel terrible this happened.
My dad begged me...my dad is older...so I did.
As though you didn't matter; as though what happened to you and your family was somehow seen only as it affected the sister.
***
This is where the emphasis changes. The beginning sentences are defensive and are unusual in that sense, but this is where the emphasis switches entirely to the sister's "poor me". Someone has been hurt...poor me, I hardly know how to see myself in relation to my sister's injuries...
and the attention she is receiving, and the way my father loves her...?
***
The accident doesn't change what she has done....
I am so conflicted.
On the one hand I feel awful for her accident. On the other she....
...
has said and done horrible things to me my whole life.
***
There is not a particular incident the sister cannot forgive. There is a sense of wrongness, of global condemnation couched in accusatory terms. Again, a patent justification, a rationalization of feelings that cannot be justified.
The feelings were there, first.
Artifacts of the rigid roles required for the disbalanced, dysfunctional family of origin to operate, at all. I don't understand why the sisters cannot let go of them, now. I do know that they choose not to. They are adult. They are aware. They are responsible for their feelings and actions, just as we are.
No more free ride, for the sisters.
My therapist validated my feelings.
Sister does not say which are the feelings the therapist validated. Those of someone whose sister has been hurt in an accident and who is confronting fear of her own and her sister's mortality, or those of someone looking to justify inappropriate feelings for a sister who has been in a terrible accident, and for a father who confesses his love of the injured sister and requires that the uninjured sister behave in an acceptable way.
Serenity, this is not about the sister. You are here with us, now. The accident happened, it is past.
You survived.
You are healing.
Everything takes time; so much of it is painful.
I would be so angry too, to have been betrayed by having been treated one way to my face and another, in the sister's private thoughts. I am so sorry she did that, Serenity. I don't know why they do these things. What I do know is that we can see the sisters' motivations through their actions. Once we do, then we know where we are. That they say or see in a particular way does not make it true.
That your sister seems invested in defining you by naming you with a
discredited mental illness says more about the sister than it does, about you.
I am sorry she is doing that, Serenity, but it cannot matter. The other side of this is that you did cheat, Serenity. I understand that you needed to know whether sister had changed, or whether the caring facade was a masquerade. You knew Serenity, when you decided to check her site, that what you found there might hurt you.
It did.
That is the cost of knowing, sometimes.
Hurt.
But you did need to know.
Now, you do.
***
Your sister was kind to us when we worried and wondered where you had gone and whether you were okay, Serenity. It meant a great deal to us that she did that for us ~ that she told us you'd been hurt, but that your recovery was coming along just fine and that you would be back with us, soon.
That was a decent thing for the sister to do.
What we want you to do for this time Serenity is to concentrate on your healing. The truth is that the sisters do love us, just as we love them. Each of us has been marked by circumstances over which we had no control. We were little kids, just little girls (or, little boys) who made what sense of the world we could. I don't know why the sisters need to feel we are less than in order for them to feel they are alright. I think it is all wound up in the pseudo mom thing, and in hating us because they could not hate the mother without confronting their own mortality and blah, blah, blah. You know already how I think that complexity of circles moves. Whatever it is that is happening here, I do know that each of the sisters seems to need to hold the same kinds of beliefs to achieve some internal balance.
They do seem to need to focus on, almost to stalk us, and to measure themselves against us in particular. I don't know why.
It has nothing to do with us, Serenity.
The sisters are trapped in it as surely as we are. The difference is that we are having a look at the patterns and ferreting out how to heal ourselves so we can go on from here as better, stronger people. The sisters are going to see the things they need to see to keep that same feeling of okayness they grew up in. That feels right to them. I think a piece of that is that, if we are not bad or wrong, then they are. In order to ally with the mother, any relationship to us was sacrificed. In all three of our cases, the mothers have seen to it to the degree they were able to that the siblings would never come together.
I don't know why.
But I do know that dynamic is in there, somewhere.
The things the sisters do, the ways the sisters seem to feel about us, are too similar.
It is a sad, hard thing, to know this. But it is better to know.
You have us, and we have one another, and somehow, we will make it through this.
Everything is going to be just fine, Serenity.
I am so glad you are home. It must feel wonderful to be in your own bed with your husband beside you.
:O)
How did your little guys (your little dogs) take your homecoming? I'm thinking they are ecstatic; you have been gone from them for so long.
Buddha Baby still has her grandmother. Oh, how fortunate you are in this, Serenity. So many blessings, for you.
We are so pleased you are back. We have missed you ~ not just here on FOO Chronicles. The Board has not been the same without you.
Cedar