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Sharing the very last time I will Sis break my heart.
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<blockquote data-quote="Scent of Cedar *" data-source="post: 652634" data-attributes="member: 17461"><p>Why, you rebel, you!</p><p></p><p>Seeking, I feel badly for your brother.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>For me, the sadness and nostalgia I feel around my sister and my mom have to do with loss of that dream of communication and decency and intimacy that we believe exists between ourselves and those we love. After we have forced ourselves to see what is true about our own beloved difficult child kids (and ourselves) to get to detachment, the intensity of emotion in the games our families of origin play seems like a cheap imitation. The transparency of the games we now allow ourselves to see and the paltriness of the power-over "win" seem so lame, so weirdly out of balance or out of context or something. (Remember the thread about our children, so troubled and rotten sometimes, being beloved, being truly cherished, despite it all?) </p><p></p><p>That's love.</p><p></p><p>Not the meanly cruel, power-over "win" that pinches and puzzles and passes for love in dysfunctional families.</p><p></p><p>And you are right, Seeking. We cannot unsee what we see so clearly, now. I cannot unsee it, either. But here is a thought that drives me batty: they are the ones who blinded us to their shenanigans in the first place.</p><p></p><p>They created perfect victims, and they either didn't know <em>or they didn't care</em> that their behaviors would put us at a disadvantage in every arena of our lives.</p><p></p><p>Grrr!!! Yay that we are talking about this. I did not know I still had such a head of steam going on around these issues. </p><p></p><p>Here is a secret: I have been missing my mother and my sister, lately. <em>They even took that away from me. I don't even get to have a mother, or a sister, because they cannot help but play bad games.</em></p><p></p><p>Where is my pirate skirt? I need to be stronger than this and stop pretending they have changed. They do not want to change.</p><p></p><p>Too bad, for them. Being in love with each other is way more fun.</p><p></p><p>And we do know how to do that.</p><p></p><p>:O)</p><p></p><p>But...though it can make us stronger? Recognizing we need to put on our pirate skirt is a lonely thing.</p><p></p><p>I am going to sew bells on my pirate skirt.</p><p></p><p>F you, mom.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>My mom has done that. </p><p></p><p>We need to be wary, and we need to be wise Seeking, where our mothers and sibs are involved.</p><p></p><p>They do not see the way we see.</p><p></p><p>We are vulnerable to them, because we love and miss them, and we miss what could be. But just like it has been for us sometimes with our kids, what could be never was.</p><p></p><p>We never had that.</p><p></p><p>For them, for our dysfunctional family members, the win is in the power-over. That is the difference between us. Some of us get together and feel happy to see all those faces that somehow bear a resemblance to ours. Others of us see ~ I don't really know what they must see. I remember my sister having her children parade around singing songs and waving flags at family gatherings.</p><p></p><p>And there were very few family gatherings to begin with.</p><p></p><p>It stopped conversation, of course. Sort of left the gathering weirded out and off-balance and you know how that goes. Once the rhythm of a gathering has been broken, it is too much strain to have it back, easy and smooth like it was before the interruption. </p><p></p><p>It was like that is what she wanted.</p><p></p><p>It felt so put on and wrong. Everyone listened, of course, but each of us was there to see our own kids together with hers and everyone being all of ours, all of <em>us, </em>of that mystical thing family is. Not just her kids, being outrageously talented or well taught or whatever it was she was trying to do with them instead of just letting things develop naturally.</p><p></p><p>It has always been just so wrong.</p><p></p><p>Looks like we never had a chance. To establish normal family, I mean.</p><p></p><p>My sister does the same thing now with her grandchild. Just after she turned three, my sister had trained the child to salute the flag and say the Pledge of Allegiance. This would be performed in restaurants, at gatherings, on campgrounds and golf courses, anywhere there was a flag, <em>as though it were a surprise, and the child had come up with it herself.</em></p><p></p><p>Though my sister would be right next to the child, smiling so big and proud.</p><p></p><p>I know I sound petty and jealous. That is how feeling the way I feel about it made me feel in my secret heart, too.</p><p></p><p>But it is a weirdness, for sure. And between the sister and the mother and the famous grandchild, my brother's grandchildren, who are the same age, have been relegated to non-status. Not only non-status, but only pics of the one grand ~ no pics of the brother's grands displayed at our mutual mother's house.</p><p></p><p>Big, blown up pictures of sister's grand.</p><p></p><p>That is not going over well with the wives of my brother's sons. They required my brother to stand up to my mother over that. I posted about what happened to my brother because he stood up to her.</p><p></p><p>About the thing in the garage that my mother gave away on the condition that the person who took it could have it for free, but that it had to be moved that very day. The next day, she sent my brother into the garage for something to be sure he would see that the thing was gone.</p><p></p><p>Like magic.</p><p></p><p>Do not cross me. Do not complain.</p><p></p><p>You will pay.</p><p></p><p>Anything to shame him back into submission...and for what? I don't get the win.</p><p></p><p>I used to feel so badly for thinking like this. Of course I love my nieces, I would think. Or my great-niece. But once my sister inserted herself between family members and whatever child was able to elicit our attention, it destroyed whatever relationship was being formed with the child.</p><p></p><p>I am becoming angry about all that lost time, and about the nieces I never got to know and the family time we never got to have.</p><p></p><p>How dare they have wasted my time, the time that was <em>my life</em>, in this way.</p><p></p><p>(Whoa. Someone get that pirate skirt away from Cedar! Who told her it was okay to cover her pirate skirt with doorbells, not tiny silver bells? There she sits, defiantly gonging away on the doorbell from the Adams Family. And what is that?!? The tower bell from Quasimodo? For Pete's sake Cedar, get a grip.)</p><p></p><p> <img src="/community/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/emoticons/talkhand.gif" class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":talkhand:" title="talkhand :talkhand:" data-shortname=":talkhand:" /></p><p></p><p></p><p><img src="/community/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/emoticons/hangin.gif" class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":hangin:" title="hangin :hangin:" data-shortname=":hangin:" /></p><p></p><p><img src="/community/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/Graemlins/9-07tears.gif" class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":9-07tears:" title="crying :9-07tears:" data-shortname=":9-07tears:" /></p><p></p><p></p><p>Oh, for Heaven's sake. I finally recognize your incognito self, Somewhere. </p><p></p><p>:O)</p><p></p><p>Did you ever think, incognito detective friend of the heart, that you may never have had an illness, at all? You were raised, like I was, in such a twisted environment that every symptom could be a response to that. Given this last business your sib has done, I would say she is heavily invested in proving your instability. I have actually wondered about this before. Your basic nature is so truthful. You don't seem heavily invested in hiding who you are in any sense, or in presenting yourself as more than you are.</p><p></p><p>Your sibling's behavior is not normal ~ to be so heavily invested in identifying you as ill.</p><p></p><p>That is not normal.</p><p></p><p>Normal would be to celebrate the sister's (your) hard work and recovery.</p><p></p><p>You know this is true.</p><p></p><p>We have all spent so much time and energy ferreting out what has really been going on with our family of origin relationships that I think we are seeing true things. Incident after incident, we are seeing what really happened, not what we wish happened <em>or what they told us happened.</em></p><p></p><p>Could it be true that sister and mother were engaged in gaslighting you and the brother? Could this have been happening for so long that you both grew into who you were taught to be?</p><p></p><p>That whole calling the police thing ~ there was a smacking wrongness, there.</p><p></p><p>Torture the sister, make her feel guilty so she comes crawling, crying, demanding to make sense of what has happened...and condemn her, roundly and repeatedly and publicly, when she does.</p><p></p><p>It may have been the other sister who has been harboring Borderline tendencies, all along.</p><p></p><p>And that thing about the brother being too unattractive to attend a wedding. That is way out of line thinking. </p><p></p><p>I have wondered about this for awhile, now.</p><p></p><p>Could it be true?</p><p></p><p>Even the stalking issue. I am not stalking my sister. I feel badly but I am angry at the way she treated daughter after the beating and I see what kind of person would do that and I don't like it at all. </p><p><em></em></p><p><em>But my sister is stalking me.</em></p><p></p><p>Those unpredictable phone calls. The pretending our mutual mother was failing to get me to call back <em>and having it turn out to be that she wants me to know they are all going to vacation at the seaside, and I should put my hostilities aside for the sake of our failing mother and what kind of person am I, anyway. </em>There is more complexity to it than that, even, but I cannot believe it myself. I don't want to come away looking like the villain here. The more deeply I try to figure it out, the more I feel like I am being a poop.</p><p><em></em></p><p><em>And that is the intention. To make me look like someone I am not. And once I do look like that? That is the win, for the sibling.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p>It is a deadly game, and they never miss their marks.</p><p></p><p>(Cedar rings the Adams Family doorbell on her pirate skirt. Laughing like Lurch, she rolls her eyes toward the ceiling, where a giggling Uncle Festus hangs upside down, like a bat.)</p><p></p><p>***</p><p><em> </em></p><p>Like mistreated puppies or kittens, mistreated human babies can believe all kinds of terrible things about themselves.</p><p></p><p>But what if it isn't entirely true, about you and the Borderline?</p><p></p><p>Even depression could be attributed to the way you were brought up and then, viewed by a family not above torturing you to get a reaction.</p><p></p><p>It ~ you are so kind, here on the site. You answer immediately and you answer so many posts. This means you are not crafting them, editing them, presenting yourself as someone other than you are here for us.</p><p></p><p>So, that must be true about you in real life, too.</p><p></p><p>Which sister is actually displaying borderline tendencies? Which sister is teasing and taunting and stalking the other?</p><p></p><p>Your sister's behaviors are abnormal. Here is a key: Which sister <em>were you taught to believe </em>was the more popular, or normal, or whatever the primary but unattained value <em>for the mother</em> in your family of origin was?</p><p></p><p>Case in point.</p><p></p><p>Cedar</p><p> </p><p>For whatever reason, certain members of our families of origin do not experience compassion. They do not experience trust. They do not experience heart to heart fullness. They experience loneliness.</p><p></p><p>They are deeply lonely.</p><p></p><p>As wounded as we are, ourselves, they take their pain out on others instead of trying to make room for others.</p><p></p><p>We cannot help them.</p><p></p><p>They have no real place inside from which to see us.</p><p></p><p>We really do need to be wise, and we need to be wary. Kind, when we can do it, but that is for our own sakes.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Scent of Cedar *, post: 652634, member: 17461"] Why, you rebel, you! Seeking, I feel badly for your brother. For me, the sadness and nostalgia I feel around my sister and my mom have to do with loss of that dream of communication and decency and intimacy that we believe exists between ourselves and those we love. After we have forced ourselves to see what is true about our own beloved difficult child kids (and ourselves) to get to detachment, the intensity of emotion in the games our families of origin play seems like a cheap imitation. The transparency of the games we now allow ourselves to see and the paltriness of the power-over "win" seem so lame, so weirdly out of balance or out of context or something. (Remember the thread about our children, so troubled and rotten sometimes, being beloved, being truly cherished, despite it all?) That's love. Not the meanly cruel, power-over "win" that pinches and puzzles and passes for love in dysfunctional families. And you are right, Seeking. We cannot unsee what we see so clearly, now. I cannot unsee it, either. But here is a thought that drives me batty: they are the ones who blinded us to their shenanigans in the first place. They created perfect victims, and they either didn't know [I]or they didn't care[/I] that their behaviors would put us at a disadvantage in every arena of our lives. Grrr!!! Yay that we are talking about this. I did not know I still had such a head of steam going on around these issues. Here is a secret: I have been missing my mother and my sister, lately. [I]They even took that away from me. I don't even get to have a mother, or a sister, because they cannot help but play bad games.[/I] Where is my pirate skirt? I need to be stronger than this and stop pretending they have changed. They do not want to change. Too bad, for them. Being in love with each other is way more fun. And we do know how to do that. :O) But...though it can make us stronger? Recognizing we need to put on our pirate skirt is a lonely thing. I am going to sew bells on my pirate skirt. F you, mom. My mom has done that. We need to be wary, and we need to be wise Seeking, where our mothers and sibs are involved. They do not see the way we see. We are vulnerable to them, because we love and miss them, and we miss what could be. But just like it has been for us sometimes with our kids, what could be never was. We never had that. For them, for our dysfunctional family members, the win is in the power-over. That is the difference between us. Some of us get together and feel happy to see all those faces that somehow bear a resemblance to ours. Others of us see ~ I don't really know what they must see. I remember my sister having her children parade around singing songs and waving flags at family gatherings. And there were very few family gatherings to begin with. It stopped conversation, of course. Sort of left the gathering weirded out and off-balance and you know how that goes. Once the rhythm of a gathering has been broken, it is too much strain to have it back, easy and smooth like it was before the interruption. It was like that is what she wanted. It felt so put on and wrong. Everyone listened, of course, but each of us was there to see our own kids together with hers and everyone being all of ours, all of [I]us, [/I]of that mystical thing family is. Not just her kids, being outrageously talented or well taught or whatever it was she was trying to do with them instead of just letting things develop naturally. It has always been just so wrong. Looks like we never had a chance. To establish normal family, I mean. My sister does the same thing now with her grandchild. Just after she turned three, my sister had trained the child to salute the flag and say the Pledge of Allegiance. This would be performed in restaurants, at gatherings, on campgrounds and golf courses, anywhere there was a flag, [I]as though it were a surprise, and the child had come up with it herself.[/I] Though my sister would be right next to the child, smiling so big and proud. I know I sound petty and jealous. That is how feeling the way I feel about it made me feel in my secret heart, too. But it is a weirdness, for sure. And between the sister and the mother and the famous grandchild, my brother's grandchildren, who are the same age, have been relegated to non-status. Not only non-status, but only pics of the one grand ~ no pics of the brother's grands displayed at our mutual mother's house. Big, blown up pictures of sister's grand. That is not going over well with the wives of my brother's sons. They required my brother to stand up to my mother over that. I posted about what happened to my brother because he stood up to her. About the thing in the garage that my mother gave away on the condition that the person who took it could have it for free, but that it had to be moved that very day. The next day, she sent my brother into the garage for something to be sure he would see that the thing was gone. Like magic. Do not cross me. Do not complain. You will pay. Anything to shame him back into submission...and for what? I don't get the win. I used to feel so badly for thinking like this. Of course I love my nieces, I would think. Or my great-niece. But once my sister inserted herself between family members and whatever child was able to elicit our attention, it destroyed whatever relationship was being formed with the child. I am becoming angry about all that lost time, and about the nieces I never got to know and the family time we never got to have. How dare they have wasted my time, the time that was [I]my life[/I], in this way. (Whoa. Someone get that pirate skirt away from Cedar! Who told her it was okay to cover her pirate skirt with doorbells, not tiny silver bells? There she sits, defiantly gonging away on the doorbell from the Adams Family. And what is that?!? The tower bell from Quasimodo? For Pete's sake Cedar, get a grip.) :talkhand: :hangin: :9-07tears: Oh, for Heaven's sake. I finally recognize your incognito self, Somewhere. :O) Did you ever think, incognito detective friend of the heart, that you may never have had an illness, at all? You were raised, like I was, in such a twisted environment that every symptom could be a response to that. Given this last business your sib has done, I would say she is heavily invested in proving your instability. I have actually wondered about this before. Your basic nature is so truthful. You don't seem heavily invested in hiding who you are in any sense, or in presenting yourself as more than you are. Your sibling's behavior is not normal ~ to be so heavily invested in identifying you as ill. That is not normal. Normal would be to celebrate the sister's (your) hard work and recovery. You know this is true. We have all spent so much time and energy ferreting out what has really been going on with our family of origin relationships that I think we are seeing true things. Incident after incident, we are seeing what really happened, not what we wish happened [I]or what they told us happened.[/I] Could it be true that sister and mother were engaged in gaslighting you and the brother? Could this have been happening for so long that you both grew into who you were taught to be? That whole calling the police thing ~ there was a smacking wrongness, there. Torture the sister, make her feel guilty so she comes crawling, crying, demanding to make sense of what has happened...and condemn her, roundly and repeatedly and publicly, when she does. It may have been the other sister who has been harboring Borderline tendencies, all along. And that thing about the brother being too unattractive to attend a wedding. That is way out of line thinking. I have wondered about this for awhile, now. Could it be true? Even the stalking issue. I am not stalking my sister. I feel badly but I am angry at the way she treated daughter after the beating and I see what kind of person would do that and I don't like it at all. [I] But my sister is stalking me.[/I] Those unpredictable phone calls. The pretending our mutual mother was failing to get me to call back [I]and having it turn out to be that she wants me to know they are all going to vacation at the seaside, and I should put my hostilities aside for the sake of our failing mother and what kind of person am I, anyway. [/I]There is more complexity to it than that, even, but I cannot believe it myself. I don't want to come away looking like the villain here. The more deeply I try to figure it out, the more I feel like I am being a poop. [I] And that is the intention. To make me look like someone I am not. And once I do look like that? That is the win, for the sibling. [/I] It is a deadly game, and they never miss their marks. (Cedar rings the Adams Family doorbell on her pirate skirt. Laughing like Lurch, she rolls her eyes toward the ceiling, where a giggling Uncle Festus hangs upside down, like a bat.) *** [I] [/I] Like mistreated puppies or kittens, mistreated human babies can believe all kinds of terrible things about themselves. But what if it isn't entirely true, about you and the Borderline? Even depression could be attributed to the way you were brought up and then, viewed by a family not above torturing you to get a reaction. It ~ you are so kind, here on the site. You answer immediately and you answer so many posts. This means you are not crafting them, editing them, presenting yourself as someone other than you are here for us. So, that must be true about you in real life, too. Which sister is actually displaying borderline tendencies? Which sister is teasing and taunting and stalking the other? Your sister's behaviors are abnormal. Here is a key: Which sister [I]were you taught to believe [/I]was the more popular, or normal, or whatever the primary but unattained value [I]for the mother[/I] in your family of origin was? Case in point. Cedar For whatever reason, certain members of our families of origin do not experience compassion. They do not experience trust. They do not experience heart to heart fullness. They experience loneliness. They are deeply lonely. As wounded as we are, ourselves, they take their pain out on others instead of trying to make room for others. We cannot help them. They have no real place inside from which to see us. We really do need to be wise, and we need to be wary. Kind, when we can do it, but that is for our own sakes. [/QUOTE]
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