When you take the place of the real abuser in your abusers life

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
I was thinking about this during a bored moment, sitting in the car and waiting for my son to finish shopping. That's when I often do my *deep thinking* ;)

Sis started out being on the borderline board because of her boyfriend who she told me she is convinced is borderline. When I used to cheat, she even had a few posts about him. Then she realized, I guess, that I saw them and stopped posting about him and turned to ME being her abuser.

She never ever talked about me abusing her before I finally told her that she could not talk to me about her abusive boyfriend (and she named him as such plus called him borderline and I believe he is also an alcoholic). She really got angry about that and that's when the snub began and suddenly I was abusive to her all of her life.

I'm not validating or invalidating her mindset. I certainly did tease her when we were children and mother, of course, never stopped me so it went on. That's a fact. Other than that, there was no actual abuse and I think she knows that. So I wonder if she'd LIKE to vent about her boyfriend, but feels she can't a nymore because he could actually find out s he was putting their relationship out there on the internet and calling HIM borderline. Now I have not been reading her stuff but she is likely still with him, but can't post about him.

I wonder if she is doing it to me because she's afraid to toss it at her real abuser, the boyfriend. He was so mean to her, cruel even, controlling, jealous, drunk most of the time, dismissive of her, and only was nice to her when she actually threatened to leave. Then he'd turn on the charm and she'd go back. This cycle is why I stopped allowing her to talk about him. I felt he was extremely unstable and did not want to enable her attachment to him. Plus frankly it was repetitious and boring and a bit scary.

So do they sometimes use us as a proxy for the true abuser? I have never never in my worst moment (and I have them) done the things to her that this man has done. Ever. He has been at it for five years. Or more.

Does this happen with people who have personality disorders? I have no doubt that she has some sort of disorder, just as I know I have issues as well. But I'm more forthcoming as in I calls it as I sees it and I am not passive aggressive.

I am not upset at the thought of this. It is simply a question I asked myself yesterday and thought I'd throw it out to my healing chatmates. Answer here or PM.

This just makes so much sense to me. Of course, as always, I know I could be wrong.
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
Maybe this theory could explain why it would be that the more time my mom and my sister worked through their issues, the more they required a focus for the hostility toward the other that each normally would have vented to me, or for my sister, to her D H. Now, the sister's D H will be unified with mom and sister in whatever the rules are for their interaction.

Not a safe person to vent to, or to vent against.

I had always thought the escalation experienced after my father's death had to do with his absence. I had thought that my mom's hostility toward my father behind his back while he was alive ~ well, I didn't know what to think of that. But it could be something like what you are thinking this morning, Serenity. That some of us need a villain to focus hostility against ~ that we need someone to be the bad guy so we can see the person we are currently in closest relationship to as good.

That makes sense.

Great insight, Serenity.

Thank you.

Cedar

Copa, the luncheon for your sister and her new husband. Could that be the underlying dynamic for your sister? That for her to see her husband as an ally, you needed, or someone needed, to be the villain she focused hostility on?

I have come to believe my sister really does feel hatred for me.

I don't know why, but I do know the intensity of it has increased over the time since my father's death. I had thought mom and my sister had created this imaginary circle where they believed whatever they told themselves about me. But what if Serenity's observation is valid?

That explains everything that is happening to all of us, and to all of our sisters.

For Heaven's sake. At least we would like to love our people. What would the world look like if it had to be managed through focusing unbearable feelings of hostility at the target least likely to leave you. Or at least, toward the target whose leaving will not matter, because what you need is a target for hostility.

We don't have to be in their lives, for them to hate us.

It is probably easier for them to focus those negative feelings onto us if we aren't there.

That would explain the seeming escalation of negativity over time.

And I do see everything that used to be bothersome escalating into actions I cannot excuse.

Huh.
 
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Copabanana

Well-Known Member
we need someone to be the bad guy so we can see the person we are currently in closest relationship to as good.
If your sister, Serenity, puts you in the villain role, and herself as the victim, her boyfriend can be golden. She may have only changed the names. She dispels all of the negative energy that arises in relation to him, using you as the bad guy. In that way she punishes you for putting up boundaries and leaving the circle. It also means that by posting with you she can be with you...because she misses you.
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
That some of us need a villain to focus hostility against ~ that we need someone to be the bad guy so we can see the person we are currently in closest relationship to as good.

That makes sense.
But, Cedar and Copa, although she claimed she loved him (God only knows how), she DID have hostility against him. Yet I'm sure he is still in her life, abusing her, playing with her emotions, giving her absolutely nothing back for all five years, not making her first in his life, etc. SHE knew he was abusive and called him borderline. She even said I was not borderline (which is true) but HE was. That was many of the gist of our conversations about him. Him and his borderline traits. Trust me, if I had done even one of the things he'd done to her, she would have cut me off that minute, but she c an't cut him off. She is unable to lose him, although she does know he abuses her. Even her friendsd, who I think are pretty crazy and tend to have nutty relationships themselves, know he is a bad boyfriend and abusive and mean to her. Maybe they don't want to hear it either.

But she can't really talk to our brother or father about him. I was the only one who would "get it." They are men, my father is not good at understanding realtionships, and my brother has never had a relationship in his life and would never know first hand about one. She just has her anon. people. But there is always a very slight chance he will find her posts about him. After all, she found mine about FOO and I certainly didn't lead her here. She went looking. And he is a jealous man with no reason to be jealous because he does not treat her well. But I'm sure she is afraid to post about him. Maybe then she has to focus it on somebody so it's me.

These abuse allegations of hers came out of left field. Most of our "fighting" which caused cut offs were about the incident where I told my mother what she had done, e-mails, Facebook posts she didn't like, me getting mad and friending her FB friends (I still think that's funny...she had been so nasty to me on the phone before I did that), etc. Then she'd call the cops if I sent her one e-mail. Or two. That was it. And we both were guilty there and we talked about our guilt and even laughed about it afterward. (I never did think the cops was funny though). At any rate, this just popped up after I told her I won't listen to her talk about her boyfriend anymore because it was too hard for me to hear what he does to her.

Suddenly I went from her best companion to evil, and to having abused her all her life.

I was just sitting there in the car yesterday, with nothing to do, and this popped into my head: "She's using you as a proxy because s he can't talk about HIM and she's angry at you AND him." That's what she does when she is angry and has no control over me. She gets mean. But she also has to deal with a total asshat for a boyfriend too.

Again, I have no idea if I'm right, but something triggered something and it is tied into him.

OH, well. Back to my own life.
 
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Copabanana

Well-Known Member
Serenity,

1.Your sister may be disturbed to a point where nothing she does makes sense from your perspective.

2. She may seek out abuse, and not be able to tolerate any other kind of attention.

3. You have changed. She may never.

4. Yes, she might be using you as proxy, fair or not.

5. You were her "best companion" contingent upon certain requirements. See #3.

6. Everything your sister does is fueled by her own psychology and her needs at that moment. There is nothing here that is tethered to right or wrong or fair or unfair.

7. The only true and dependable thing is that you deserve good treatment, respect and love.

8. The only way it seems you can have her in your life is if you allow her to manipulate you and treat you as she needs to based upon her psychology. See #3.

9. You did nothing wrong. Unless you are willing to do #8, there is no way she will tolerate a relationship with you, I think.

10. You did nothing wrong. You deserve better. She either does not want to do what she has to do to get better or is unable to, or both. I think.

I think, also, you miss her, just like I miss my sister, and Cedar, her own. I do not think the answer lies with them. The answer is to recognize the longing for what it is. And to find a way to address the feelings...and fill longing for our sisters with someone or something else--that will not hurt us.

Our sisters are toxic to us. They may always be.
 
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BusynMember

Well-Known Member
No, it's just to bait me.She is quite aware that my therapists said I don't have it. And I did ask about it and I was told bpds lack empathy and I'm too empathetic. Anyway, I know her games. It's just to get me going, but it can't if I don't read it.

Of course, she also tries to place herself in the sane position, but do the really personality disorders individuals ever admit anything is wrong with them? No, they don't go for help because they are normal to them. She even admitted she had anorexia and she never went for help for that and there. Frankly, she still has all the symptoms of a serious eating disorder, but doubt she'd address it. The really mentally disturbed are split in half. Some desperately want to get better. Some desperately are in denial that they are sick. She is the latter. To her, she is cured now, in spite of ongoing eating issues, over-excersing issues and irrational fear of being more than 100 lbs., and fixating on it. Yes, even later in life.

Not that many years ago, my ex saw her, as they live near each other, and he asked me if she had a deadly desease like HIV because she was so skinny. But she doesn't know how skinny she is and thinks men like anorexic women (her words, not mine). And life without a man is inconceivable to her, which is also sad. She often tried to convince me that if something God forbid happens to hubby I will want another man. I will never want another man after that for more than a coffee friend, but she insists I don't know. Her own fear of living alone is being transferred to me. I would not mind a room mate of either sex, but no more love relationship. This man can not be replaced.

Blah. This tires me out thinking about it sometimes and tonight is one of those nights that I think hubby and I can settle down to a good movie, holding hands on the couch. Jumper just took off to see her boyfriend and will not be home tonight. Could turn into a romantic evening!!!

Yeah, sounds good. Being with the one I know loves me.

Copa, I hope it works for you and M. He is a special man. But that is between you two.

I wish you are wonderful, serene night. Cedar, when your daughter leaves, I hope you have some pictures for us. She looks like my definition of Sunshine. I know her life has not been sunshine, but she is very golden looking and so beautiful. Love to see more of the grands too.

Good night, friends.
 
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Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
Suddenly I went from her best companion to evil, and to having abused her all her life.

I was just sitting there in the car yesterday, with nothing to do, and this popped into my head: "She's using you as a proxy because s he can't talk about HIM and she's angry at you AND him." That's what she does when she is angry and has no control over me. She gets mean. But she also has to deal with a total asshat for a boyfriend too.

Again, I have no idea if I'm right, but something triggered something and it is tied into him.

OH, well. Back to my own life

This morning, I am seeing our sisters differently.

As we have come through this, as I admitted that the awful things my sister has said or done were awful, and were intentional, I went through a kind of disbelief that the things I remembered could be motivated by dislike or even, hatred; that sense of disbelief turned into blaming, and a kind of centering rage. This morning, I am so deeply sad for our sisters. And for us; for me.

But for our sisters, too.

It could be that their wounds are so much deeper than our own.

Like always, I will leave the parts about how I got here in, in case it helps the others of us. The gist of it is this:

Each of us is the eldest. Could it be that those very senses of responsibility for our younger sibs centered and guided us and gave us a sense of destination or control in the chaotic nightmare that was the environment the witch mother created for all her children?

Could it be that, while I came out of it with "coward" and "fraud" firmly emblazoned on my psyche, my sister came through it without even that small comfort, that sort of map of responsibility we each had, of getting us all through it somehow?

That is how I came out of my childhood: I can try. I will find out. We can do this.

I have specific memories, traumatic places I can touch and relive. They have to do with times I could not protect. What if I had not had that internal mandate, that way to be real aside from what was happening to all of us? What if all I had to guide me was a need to be seen, to be cherished, and an equally desperate need to please and to hide from, the ever changeable witch mother?

What if our sisters never learned to rely on themselves in the ways we had to because we had them to protect?

When daughter was so troubled and broken, it was that her kids needed her that brought her back.

Each of us has been so horribly affected by whatever was the matter with our moms, and by the culture of scarcity our moms created of our families.

It sickens me, to think what this may have been like for our sisters.

***

That's the kernel of what I am thinking, this morning. The rest of this post is chain of consciousness stuff.

***

I feel angry at the mess of it, but angrier still about the hopeless way we all can never get free of it.

It may be true, as D H believes, that with the death of the primary abuser, some of this can heal and heal over time. (What wound did ever heal, but by degrees, right?)

It's just such an awful lot of like, a confused, centerless kind of pain, for all of us.

This morning, I understand, I think I do, why our sisters focus on us the way they do and hate our guts at the same time. I think my sister would love me, if she could. I think she has tried harder to love me than I have ever had to try to love her.

How rotten a place would that be to live from?

Not that we are any different than any person in the world. The us they want to believe they can be is the us we were, is whatever safety or sanity we came to represent for them, in the hellish worlds witch mother was determined to create of her family.

And even witch mother surely could not have intended to act out her own woundings as she did.

Except that she is still doing it, now.

But you know...she must be responding to things so scary I have no frame of reference to even glimpse. Read again, the reality of those who cannot love, who have no empathy.

That would be a hopeless place, a worse place than any of us have been.

***

I think the sadness we feel around having lost our sisters is ~ it has a sweeter taste to it, a tinged with real sorrow place to it, than what's happened with our moms. Sisters (and brothers, too) are meant to be part of our adult lives; are meant to be our witnesses and our allies through our long lives.

We will not have that.

We have never had those good things.

Understanding the probable why behind it does not take the pain away. It takes away that sense of outraged personal resentment at having been targeted or intentionally treated unfairly.

That is what is gone for me, now.

That outraged sense of personal resentment.

What is left then, for me, is that it is all so sad. It is like we are trying to clean the Augean stables without the river. (And the river is water, and water represents things of the spirit, like love. So maybe, as we come through this....) I don't think anyone set out to create what is. We all want those good things family represents. All humans do, or family would not have come into existence in every civilization and throughout time.

I watched a video yesterday about two swans. One of them fell ill and was taken to the vet. His recovery was a long one, but the day came when he was released into the pond where his mate of ten years had been living alone. They recognized one another immediately. They went face to face, cheek to cheek, just the way I like to feel my own D H face right up next to mine.

Or like when we see our kids or grands, and it just feels so good to be right up close to them, to have our faces near theirs.

That little flash of joy, of rightness, that is not like any other feeling. Even in the middle of whatever crappy thing we were in the middle of, there is always that moment out of time feeling when we come face to face with someone we love.

It can be a friend, too.

It can be anyone or even, coming home sometimes has that feeling to it.

Like a flash of unadulterated joy, right out of time, before we start fighting about whatever it is, or realize the carpet flooded somehow during the winter and the guest bedroom is covered in the strangest, most colorful growths of fuzzy green and white...fungus of some sort. (That actually happened to me this year.)

Do our moms and sisters not have that?

The research pieces we have been reading describe internal realities without that little ping of joy or love or whatever that feeling is. That would explain grandiosity. Grandiosity is a kind of taking control. Grandiosity would fill the void fear creates, when the world seems like a chaotic, senseless thing because that little ping of joy does not happen. Really, that little ping of joy is what directs and motivates our lives, if you think about it.

What if they are too afraid to have it?

Daughter and her ex D H left us this morning. And I am just so happy they were here. There is lots of brightness around, because they were here.

Gratitude is a big piece of that, but that face to face joy feeling is there, too.

We had not seen ex D H for something like eight years. It felt so right for him to be here with us again.

Whatever. I am going off into flights of fancy not related to what we are trying to pin down, here.

For Heaven's sake.

***

If theirs (our sisters and maybe, our mothers, though I think the realities our moms are coming from are different, exponentially more hateful and more frightening places)...could it be that our sisters live in scary worlds, worlds where envy that never changes to pleasure for the other guy reigns and grows and cannot be addressed or escaped or turned around somehow and turns into jealousy?

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), I hate it when I am jealous.

It's a horrible, terrible, helpless feeling.

Jealous is a terrible, terrible feeling.

That little prayer I found: Pray for their peace and therein, find our own ~ that works very well for jealous feelings, too.

What if we were trapped in worlds where we literally could not feel pleasure for the good things that happen to others? Where we could not say: Well then, I had best get busy on creating something wonderful for myself, too. I see now that it really can be done. So I can do it, too. What if, because we could never have that little ping of joy, we could never feel safe enough, better enough? Sort of a lonely pinnacle of existence with nothing left to do but keep chasing a chimera-like external validation, something to fill that terrible emptiness where we are never, ever safe?

I do have the sense that my sister is always "on". She is forever really, really tired, but seems never to be able to rest. I have posted about the dinners we have had, or the times we have come together, and her determined disruption of everything that mattered about those times by parading and re-parading her children, by having them perform patriotic songs.

That is the feel of my sister: Look at me.

Or her giving to me to keep safe, her first oil painting.

Or when D H and I came to visit her in her new home with her new husband. I have posted before about the strangeness of that visit. My sister sent me a framed, 8 x 10 picture taken of the four of us. I thought that was very nice except that strangely enough, sister's house in the background takes well over half the photo. It's a fine house. I have always believed the house was just sort of accidentally in there, because the picture of the four of us is actually very nice. The thing is, my sister set the frame and took the picture with a timer. So, she had to know the house was in there, right? As we have come through this though, after receiving the plaque about the house having fallen on the sister and the way everything has escalated since my father's death, I have come to believe that the thing my sister sent the picture for was that her house is in it.

Why would that matter?

Why have that picture of she and I in her bathroom?

Back to the performing nieces.

Sister even brought little flags for the kids to wave.

Why would a person ~ what would be met, what need would be met, for a mother to do that? What were her children acquiring for her in her insistence, not only that they perform and perform, but in her knowledge that it would be inappropriate for anyone to declare enough is enough, kids. Go play with the other cousins. This is your time to do that.

The limelight, of course...but what I am wondering is why? Why did my sister need to do that? Given that she brought the flags and rehearsed the kids, these actions were taken with intention.

What...why?

The same kinds of performance-geared behaviors are happening with sister's grand. She is a beautiful little kid, too. But at the end of the day? All I can remember feeling is a kind of dislike for the kids. Like man, I hope they haven't learned any new songs.

I know. I sound awful. But here is the difference: In D H family, the kids are just there with everyone, mostly with one another but there with everyone just doing nothing in particular. For my kids, those times when everyone was together (like in that litter of puppies feeling I describe in D H family) are some of the best memories of their lives.

I like those kids. And they grow up, and they visit, and it's cool. One time, I said something about how much one of them had changed ~ that the physical changes from little boy to adolescent to man seemed to have happened so fast. And his reply? Was that he felt that way too, about us.

Ew.

Because it is undeniably true that we are changing rapidly too. Just in the other direction.

***

Back to having children trained to parade around and around like that, disrupting everything. Don't get me wrong, here. My sister's kids are cute kids. But the only times of cuteness and kidness that happened were when my sister was not making them freaking perform.

Like, she would put herself between the cuteness all little kids just are, and every other child or adult at the gathering.

But why? What does she get out of doing that?

I swear, it got to be a kind of a blessing if sister and her kids were not at something important, like Christmas.

Everyone's eyes always had to be on sister's kids. And they were forever performing things.

And nothing was ever just let to happen as it would.

Real. Nothing felt real. It felt like, "Oh, no. Not the flag songs, again!"

There would be nothing to remember about having seen the kids except that feeling that you hoped they would be done, soon. I mean, one performance would have been okay. But this stuff went on and on. Or, a performance all the little kids took part in, like when the cousins play dress up or something.

But this thing with my sister and the way her kids were taught to perform ~ I don't know. It just felt wrong then and it still does.

Here is another story. So, Baklava grand and I went to my mother's to visit my sister, her husband, sister's daughter and grand. And Baklava grand would have been like, seventeen or eighteen. So we were all just talking the way you do in families and here comes my sister with her grand. Whatever the performance was, it had to do with the grand learning sign language and the inevitable patriotic performance, this time having to do with the grand holding her hand over her heart and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. It was remarkable. I am not saying that it wasn't. The grand would have been like, two and a half. But the conversation was changed to how sister had taught grand to do those things. And how often the strangest things would happen as the grand would stand, say, on a golf course happening to put her hand over her heart and recite the Pledge of Allegiance when golfers just happened to be happening by.

Or, at restaurants.

And then, when even sister was pretty much out of things to say about that, she threw the grand onto the husband and started tickling the grand.

And that is how the rest of that visit went.

At one point, sister was chasing the baby around hollering about how we needed to watch how she could catch the ball.

No visit.

It was the strangest thing. But that is always how it is. That is the flavor of my sister.

But...why?

Why does she need to do that?

Needless to say, all I know about the grand is that she is a cute little thing and that's all.

Usually, we get to know that so and so is a cute little thing and remember when they did this or that.

With my sister's kids, everybody just gets so darn tired.

***

That's a terrible thing.

Are our moms and sisters looking through eyes that literally cannot see the things we take so for granted? Are their worlds joyless places, places without forgiveness or mercy? I sound foolish here in one way, I know that. But what else could explain what they do? In a world of blacks and whites, the only things that matter would be things that, ultimately, don't matter, at all. Stuff. Accumulations of things with brand names: Rolex watches, say. Pictures representing happiness or satisfaction so we can see them and know we are happy, because we certainly do look it. More and more stuff, so we can know we are wealthy to counter the feeling of abject poverty within.

Maybe. I seem to know everything this morning, again.

But there is something here, I just know it. Like always being on a really hard journey and never, ever being able to rest along the way.

I think they do love us.

To the degree they are able, they love us very much. I am thinking about the picture of the two of us that my sister kept in her bathroom. It may not be necessary for her to keep it there, anymore. I have been dethroned. But the horrible thing is that, if the picture of she and I has been replaced...another picture, another person, will have taken my place.

She should have Maya in there, or my newest mom, Dr. Ben Carson. Now, that would be a very nice face to see every morning.

I should put him in my bathroom.

Such a nice face.



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Here's the thing: Had the picture been one of my sister beautifully dressed or dusted with sand on some beautiful beach, that would be one thing. Why would she have a picture of she and I in that place no one would see it but her? It should have been a beach picture of my sister, alone. Some beautiful memory, some sweetness, some moment in her own life, captured and relived every time she got dressed or fixed her hair or put on her makeup.

But it was a picture of she and I.

Maybe they love us so much that they hate us for it. Maybe, they hate us because we aren't their moms.

Why would my sister have hurt my child?

That stalking feeling; that obsession feeling. We felt it as hate. In fact, the things we see from our sisters may be a desperate attempt to learn how we see because they cannot see for themselves. The more they cannot find content, the more desperately they try to figure out how to do a life and cannot find rest, the more harshly they condemn themselves and then, maybe, they focus those feelings onto us.

Onto pseudo mom, who was never enough; who never could protect them, but was all they had.

***

Each of us has noted that she went on to create her full, rich life without paying too much attention to the clanging wrongnesses in our families of origin. Each of us has noted that it is not safe to be vulnerable to our families of origin. It is as though the challenges that came to us in our lives, as challenge comes for all of us ~ it's almost as though there is a sense of personal betrayal for them, for our moms and our sisters, in that. Could it be that, in the families we all grew up in, we have always appeared to them as the mark they had to meet or exceed just to be enough? Maybe because of that core of rebellion we all seem to have had? Even to the mother, that may have been a form of safe harbor. Like a rule that never changes, or like a witness, like someone watching who is not totally broken and will remember. So, the inappropriate behaviors are curbed. Not through anything we did. Not through any special thing about us, but only because, in a chaotic world where nothing was safe, we were the older sisters. Scared half to death ourselves, we may have represented something like safety or sanity or comfort when the abusive witch mother howled threats that were all, essentially, the terrible threat of abandonment.

If these things are true, I feel badly for my sister.

How confusing for a little girl, to love and hate and resent both witch mother and pseudo mom, and to never, ever feel safe.

Our sisters may well hate us, but that may be a reflection ~ and a pale one, at that ~ of what they feel for themselves and their lives. I do feel that my sister ~ I feel the triumph of power-over for her, through extermination of me. That would account for the way she seems to pursue me, on one hand, and revel in my losses, on the other.

In that place where a sister would have our backs, our sisters destroy us.

Now, why would that be?

I believed my sister's more blatant ~ everything, I guess ~ since my father's death had something to do with my mother. What if the thing it has to do with is that without my father, she feels very afraid. There is no safe harbor.

For all of us, my father represented safety.

Witch mother did not come out when he was home the way she did when he was gone.

Is that what is driving my sister?

Could it be that in superceeding us, our sisters feel they are somehow safe, in the same ways they believe we feel ourselves safe, because they thought we felt safer than they did when we all were little kids?

I do believe my sister would want things to be different than they are between us. Why else would she even think about me at all? We have all mentioned that feeling too, from our sisters. It's like we think we are going to dinner, and find ourselves across the table from that little girl in the Exorcist.

We keep getting trapped in that feeling, somehow. It's like some horrible jack-in-the-box keeps popping up. And even though you know it's coming?
And it does and it's really shocking and horrible and smacks of some kind of betrayal you can't really put a finger on?

Beneath the horror is the pain of the loss.

I think our sisters cannot change. But then, I am certain, positive, that they can.

We did.

If they cannot change, if there is some genetic something at work here, then they cannot be blamed, either.

But I am pretty scared of my sister.

I cannot feel trust.

Everything always gets all messed up when we are together.

Maybe when I am more real ~ I don't know. I don't know how she sees me, or what she would have to say about our relationship from her perspective.

I don't know. I do know she seems to have turned her family against me or some feeling like that. I do know she chose to stalk my child when she was so hurt and confused and brain injured, and that my sister dropped her and hurt her again.

Roar. A helpless one, this time.

And I don't understand all of that, except that there is a wall there now, between me and what I feel for my sister.

She should never have done what she did.

Daughter says I should not feel this way.

***

The regret I feel now that I am not enraged at mom or sister or brothers is a palpable thing. We have lost so much that is good and strengthening and kind, in our lives. Understanding the why behind it ~ I don't know. Maybe, if we can get that piece, we will not feel dirtied or resentful or really mad about the things that happen. I mean, why would the sisters be calling and calling us to talk about, pretty much, how to see a thing differently if they did not respect us enough to listen.

I posted once that my sister said she knew, but could not help, what she does.

Maybe that was true.

How awful for all of us.

So, looks like we are right back where we started.

Only the definition of our sisters' intentions is different. As seems always to be true in any abusive situation, nothing about any of it is real, and everything about all of it hurts. Before, I would say I had been a fool for lesser things, and keep trying. Now, I don't know what to say.

So maybe, that is a more honest place.

(Remember my recent understanding regarding the way I was seeing my son. That way I was seeing him was abusive. Though he has changed, I was still seeing him through my own shame at how his actions and drug use and etc affected me, and how I needed to see myself, as a "successful" mother. I didn't even know I was doing that. But I was. What a mess. I don't know how to change that, but I believe that, having seen I was doing that, I won't do that one little piece of it I am aware of, anymore. It had to do with cheering him on, like he was six, instead of really getting it that he is a man. He doesn't need or not need, me to cheer him on; to try to control him through mommy's pleasure. It had that flavor to it, that abusive thing I was doing to my son.)

Maybe, it's the same thing, with our sisters. That we are seeing them somehow through filters of toxic shame having to do with who we all were in our childhoods. Maybe, we are erecting barriers too, that we don't know anything about, in how we see them. For sure, I was not taking my sister seriously in anything she did, until she hurt my child. So, that is not how we treat someone we respect. That is how we treat someone who does not matter.

If I ever do talk to my sister again, I am going to start saying: "What do you mean. Why are you doing that."

Like that time my father was in the hospital and she was so determined suckers were what he needed.

I wish, when we were like, running through the facility to the gift shop, that instead of keeping up with her I'd said: "What are you doing? You don't have to do that. You are enough. I am enough. We can walk. We could even have coffee. There is time, for you and for us both."

I wish that is what I said.

I think she would have responded with some version of "Buzz off, Cedar."

I do.

Cedar
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
I think the sadness we feel around having lost our sisters is ~ it has a sweeter taste to it, a tinged with real sorrow place to it, than what's happened with our moms. Sisters (and brothers, too) are meant to be part of our adult lives; are meant to be our witnesses and our allies through our long lives.
Yes, very true. I have no doubt...none...that my sister, as well as myself, was deeply damaged due to her childhood, leaving her unable to accept the love of a man who can give it and, for some reason, picking on me all the time too. Now I'm no angel, Cedar. You were. Copa was. I wasn't. I fought back. So we did this tit for tat our entire relationship. In my mind, she was far more vicious, not just to myself but to others...my grandma, my brother, and possibly others. But I was no angel. My mom had one of the meanest tongues this side of the pond, if not all over the universe, and she taught both of her girls, quite well, how to bait, dig, harass, tease, just plain be mean and we used those skills mostly on each other. Again, I don't know why or what motivated my sister's attacks. I did it when she hurt me. That's not an excuse, but it's true. I feel she was usually the aggressor. She is actually passive-agressive, but I'm smart enough to know what she is doing that is passive-aggressive. That is a sneaky way of trying to look innocent and being guiltier than sin. She also fudges the truth. I won't say she lies. I will say she, for example, probably did not fess up to bro about how she really felt about him, talked about him, and thought about him for most of his life. I doubt she came out and told him he was not invited to her wedding because he was ugly, in her eyes. So be deleting or fudging information, she sort of skims around the truth. But certainly she was damaged by both of my parents. I don't doubt that at all.

Her biggest problem is she doesn't really feel she needs any fixing. She thinks the ONLY one in the family who did was me...lol. That is classic personality disorder, really. I'm sure my mother felt she was normal too. She was nothing near normal. I'm sure my uncle thought he was a swell guy, even while cheating on his three girlfriends at the same time and telling my dateless brother his dating stories, which I think is a form of meanness and stick-it-to-you-ness. You don't tell the ugly duckling, so to speak, how popular and desirable you are. It's just in my opinion wrong.

So this is where I stand, where I will always stand. You can not take an honest look at your l ife or your family if you can't take an honest look at yourself. My sister had one absolutely indisputable mental illness and still suffers from it...a serious eating disorder. I almost never saw her eat as an adult. Cook, yes. Eat, no. Very seldom. The thing is, she does not eat much and she exercises like she's way overweight and trying to crash diet for a wedding, far beyond what health alone demands. She has never gotten help for it. I think she believes she is a normal weight now and is cured.

My ex saw her in a grocery store and asked if she were seriously ill.

That's about the size of it. She will admit she HAD an eating disorder, but not that she is still in the throes of one.

My mother treated her like she didn't even exist. That is as harmful as verbal abuse.
 

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
It could be that their wounds are so much deeper than our own.
I think so.
Could it be that those very senses of responsibility for our younger sibs centered and guided us and gave us a sense of destination or control in the chaotic nightmare that was the environment the witch mother created for all her children?
Yes, I think so.
my sister came through it without even that small comfort, that sort of map of responsibility we each had, of getting us all through it somehow?
Yes.
What if all I had to guide me was a need to be seen, to be cherished, and an equally desperate need to please and to hide from, the ever changeable witch mother?
Yes.
I think my sister would love me, if she could. I think she has tried harder to love me than I have ever had to try to love her.

How rotten a place would that be to live from?
I know.
I think the sadness we feel around having lost our sisters is ~ it has a sweeter taste to it, a tinged with real sorrow place to it, than what's happened with our moms.
Not for me. I have a great deal of fear and mistrust of my sister, that I was not conscious of having for my mother. My mother was direct and cruel when she wanted to be. Not passive aggressive. You could get out of her way and be safe.

When my mother was OK, she was warm, interesting and fun to be around.

My sister was subtle, contemptuous and typically indirectly cruel. There was never a safe time around her, for me.
could it be that our sisters live in scary worlds, worlds where envy that never changes to pleasure for the other guy reigns and grows and cannot be addressed or escaped or turned around somehow and turns into jealousy?
Yes. If it is this Cedar, do you believe there would ever be hope? They would not be conscious of such a pervasive orientation towards life, toward us.
Back to the performing nieces.

Sister even brought little flags for the kids to wave.
Cedar, I posted a new thread on narcissistic parents invested in their children's/grandchildren performance.
Maybe because of that core of rebellion we all seem to have had? Even to the mother, that may have been a form of safe harbor. Like a rule that never changes, or like a witness, like someone watching who is not totally broken and will remember. So, the inappropriate behaviors are curbed.
Yes. Until you are dying and then you pull out all the stops.
I think our sisters cannot change. But then, I am certain, positive, that they can.

We did.

If they cannot change, if there is some genetic something at work here, then they cannot be blamed, either.
I do not think it is genetic. I think it is a pervasive personality disorder. These are hard to change, because those afflict do not suffer as much as the people in their orbit.
Maybe when I am more real ~ I don't know. I don't know how she sees me, or what she would have to say about our relationship from her perspective.
I wish I had asked my sister. I wish I had engaged in conversation with her. But I always feared that given an opportunity she would pull out her knife from her purse and show her fangs. To use it as an opportunity to kill me. I was afraid. I may still be.
I posted once that my sister said she knew, but could not help, what she does.

Maybe that was true.

How awful for all of us.
I believe my sister knows, does not feel guilt, can cannot help it. It is her, like her hips.
Maybe, it's the same thing, with our sisters. That we are seeing them somehow through filters of toxic shame having to do with who we all were in our childhoods.
Yes.
I wish, when we were like, running through the facility to the gift shop, that instead of keeping up with her I'd said: "What are you doing? You don't have to do that. You are enough. I am enough. We can walk. We could even have coffee. There is time, for you and for us both."

I wish that is what I said.

I think she would have responded with some version of "Buzz off, Cedar."
I know. Eye rolling again. I do not think for me it will ever be different.

Partly is that my sister is very controlling. She is not gracious. She is competitive. She is false. She does not play well.

I am exactly the opposite. Do you think she would ever cede anything? I do not think so. Maybe I am wrong.

Very sad post, Cedar.

COPA
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
Now I'm no angel, Cedar. You were. Copa was. I wasn't. I fought back.

I think it was that need to assess and respond to and change the other's emotional state. That way of being that left us forever focusing on the other guy's emotional state and believing we were responsible for what they felt. Not even in the sense of having caused it. For us, in our childhoods, there was no traceable cause and effect. There was the living horror of the moment. How to survive it if the mother never did come back, and you were there, with siblings to protect and only the way bigger than you, empty eyed mother.

Scary.

Grown up people get scared in those situations.

That's how we grew up. That (I think) is why we are like, terminally empathetic to this day.

For us, that was the most important survival skill.

That is why it feels so dangerous to just let things be real. But real listening honors the pain. In the adult world, I mean. Good things and bad things happen to us all.

But I was no angel. My mom had one of the meanest tongues this side of the pond, if not all over the universe, and she taught both of her girls, quite well, how to bait, dig, harass, tease, just plain be mean and we used those skills mostly on each other

Ha! Good for you. This is a condition to which I aspire. Temper these abilities with compassion and honor and care, and we realize the wonder of our humanness.

And we never have to be responsible for every smallest thing, any more.

Only for ourselves, and for the choice to be kind, and to have the courage to do the right thing as we see it.

And not beat ourselves up forever when we've made a mistake, or performed poorly, or didn't know what to do.

I did it when she hurt me. That's not an excuse, but it's true. I feel she was usually the aggressor.

Well, but you had to. Seriously, you had to. Especially given what we have learned about FOO dynamics Serenity, your choices were only to fight back or disappear to yourself.

I am glad you fought for yourself.

If you hadn't learned how to do that Serenity, you might still be locked in a relationship with a sister whose definition of relationship is: We both agree that I get to define you, and the terms of relationship, in ways that glorify my intention that you to continue to function as scapegoat.

passive-aggressive. That is a sneaky way of trying to look innocent and being guiltier than sin.

I love this definition.

She also fudges the truth. I won't say she lies. I will say she, for example, probably did not fess up to bro about how she really felt about him, talked about him, and thought about him for most of his life. I doubt she came out and told him he was not invited to her wedding because he was ugly, in her eyes.

These things are lies, though. To denigrate someone behind their backs, that is lying and justifying to rationalize scapegoating. That is "What would Cedar do." and is the first step in ridiculing and then, victimizing to justify what the initial intent was all along: Eradication of those qualities in another person that leave us feeling smaller than.

It becomes a question of integrity. In dysfunctional families, that might be the prize we are all fighting for. A sense of integrity, of self reliance through understanding that we recognize right thinking from wrong.

That could be.

You can not take an honest look at your l ife or your family if you can't take an honest look at yourself.

Yes. The problem for us is that we have trouble discriminating between who we are and who we were required to be in our FOO. Like, I am always feeling responsible for how people feel. That was important in my growing up, but it does not serve me well when that feeling of responsibility turns into defining myself in accusatory terms. I keep referring to the article you posted about role flexibility. It's a matter of degree. Real boats rock. We hold a certain measure of responsibility for everything that happens to us, but we are not solely responsible.

I think that's the difference for all of us in the ways we are seeing, now.

That is how we could see the wrongnesses in the behaviors our families of origin insist on.

Maybe, this is true.

I am not so clear on this part, yet.

My mother treated her like she didn't even exist. That is as harmful as verbal abuse.

That makes me sad for your sister. I wonder if that is the crux of the issue for my sister, too. It could be that they always felt overshadowed by us, when the heart of the matter is that we were, all of us, floundering around trying to make sense of things. Maybe that explains why they come to us for advice. They think we know because, in our abusive childhoods, they had to believe, like we did, that someone knew what was going on.

And all they had was us.

Pseudo mom.

I feel so badly for all of us.

My sister was subtle, contemptuous and typically indirectly cruel. There was never a safe time around her, for me.

That's how I feel about both my mom and my sister. That they focus on or target me, somehow. It is scary.

Before, I would tell myself I could handle it. I was so sure everyone wants to be family. Now, I acknowledge that I can't handle it. I am vulnerable to what they think in ways I don't understand.

I think this will never change.

So the right thing to do is choose what is healthy for me, and for my family.

This is a huge change for me, too.

That is the changed thing, between believing in someone and believing them.

Like Maya writes: Believe them the first time they tell you who they are.

It's pretty scary? But I don't even care if that makes me a coward, anymore.

Feets, don't fail me now.

:O)

So, I was looking for something funny to go with that. I found this instead, which is so much more the feeling it is.

BeNHUqcCMAAA8Lf.png


Because under everything, I do love them. I love them very, very much.

So maybe the way to see this is that way I saw daughter when we thought we were losing her. Just the laughter and the good things and the gratitude for what we had. We are taking responsibility for ourselves because, for reasons we have no connection to or responsibility for, our moms and sisters are where they are regarding relationship to us and to themselves and to each other.

I posted about the way people healthy in their cores view emotionally or verbally abusive relationship. For them, and for us too as we come through this time, we will see that it is the relationship that has been affected, and not us.

And in a way, this is the truth of the thing. How can I be sad to lose a relationship whose intention is...I don't know. I just know that as I become healthier, I am acknowledging fear that was always there, and that I refused to respond to because it did not fit with the picture of what I wanted my relationship to my mom or my sister to be. That is why we have excused so much that was wrong. That is why we feel responsible when things do go so wrong between ourselves and those we do, under everything, love. It gave us a sense of control in something that somehow turned chaotic. If we could name it, if we could name what we did, we were oh so willing to address it.

It wasn't us.

We cannot address the intentions they choose and insist on.

Thanks, mom.

:mcsmiley1:

Yes. If it is this Cedar, do you believe there would ever be hope? They would not be conscious of such a pervasive orientation towards life, toward us.

D H says: Your fear has always been that you would lose them. So, you allowed things that should have been addressed. Had you addressed them, you may have lost them anyway but at least you would know why. As it is, we beat ourselves up for their actions when, as was their intention all along, they label and leave us.

I don't know whether this can change. I do know the change would have to begin with our sister's seeing us for more than the role they believe we are. That would involve becoming healthier themselves.

I don't know, Copa.

I only know I want to be healthier. I know I don't want to hate or blame people, I wish, and am working toward, trying to see their behaviors as separate things from me. If I have the opportunity to see either my sister or my mom again, it isn't going to be from a starting position of how much we all love one another, because that is not true. There are serious dysfunctions to be addressed, I do know that much. So, it follows then that my position must be to say what I see. to require immediate clarification the first time something is clangingly wrong.

Not to be afraid of losing them, but to require of myself that if I do lose them, this time, I will know why.

That's been the theme with each of us I think, Copa and Serenity. We find ourselves in places with our families that we never saw coming and try to make sense of it from there. The wrongnesses that might have been addressed at the start were excused. We believed ourselves into accepting that not enough was enough.

We cannot do that.

Just like we cannot enable our kids, we cannot enable our sibs or, in my case, our mothers. Whatever enabling we do in any facet of our lives spirals into the ugliness enabling always spirals into.

That was the part I played. I didn't actively engage in behaviors I knew were harmful, but neither did I take the stand against them that I should have.

I was afraid I would lose them.

I did, anyway.

How does that saying go? Something about, "What of him who has nothing?"

"He shall lose what he has."

It turns out to be less about fighting for the good things than it does about kicking people in the pants for the bad things.

And if they leave us, accepting that they would have left us anyway, instead of beating ourselves up for what they do that is wrong, that is disrespectful of us on any level.

But before we can do that, we have to respect ourselves.

And that is coming in us, now.

Yes. Until you are dying and then you pull out all the stops.

Yes, Copa.

But you stood for her in that, too.

She was not alone.

That is testament to your integrity.

This point is crucial, Copa.

I do not think it is genetic. I think it is a pervasive personality disorder. These are hard to change, because those afflict do not suffer as much as the people in their orbit.

I think both my mom and my sister suffer. I have the sense that they cannot put the pieces together, either. If everyone would only accept that it is what it is and that what is, is best for everyone.

There is a story about a town where life was perfect. A visitor to the town was enchanted with everything about the town, until he learned that there was a child in a dungeon in the center of the city whose purpose was to carry hatred and illness and pain.

And when the child died, a new one was chosen, from the townspeople's own children.

I wish I had asked my sister. I wish I had engaged in conversation with her. But I always feared that given an opportunity she would pull out her knife from her purse and show her fangs. To use it as an opportunity to kill me. I was afraid. I may still be.

I'm scared to death of my sister.

And of my mom, too.

:916wildone:



:916blusher:



:9-07tears:



:919Mad:


:bag:


I believe my sister knows, does not feel guilt, can cannot help it. It is her, like her hips.

I never know, when I think about my mom or my sister, what is real. I think my sister tries really hard, like I do too, to have family. D H says that is her manipulation of me; that this is how she gets in, because I see her that way and she knows it. That is why D H says I will need to be very careful if anything happens to him.

I know. Eye rolling again. I do not think for me it will ever be different.

Partly is that my sister is very controlling. She is not gracious. She is competitive. She is false. She does not play well.

I am exactly the opposite. Do you think she would ever cede anything? I do not think so. Maybe I am wrong.

Very sad post, Cedar.

Yes! Eye rolling. Exactly. I had not seen it that exact way. But that is it, Copa. That was my sister bare naked. That was me, taking responsibility again.

I need to stop doing that.

She was exactly rolling her eyes at me, and at everything about me!

Huh.

I always like to think she doesn't know what she's doing, or can't help it somehow.

Thank you, Copa.

That was an eye rolling thing and my sister was in grandiosity mode about those suckers because of course I told her someone fresh out of surgery should not have suckers yet, and that we needed was those glycerin mouth swabs and had she asked the nurse.

Which I did do, after my father got a little sick from that stupid sucker.

And you know what else they did to my poor father? I was telling everyone (including my father) that he needed an albuterol inhaler. He had been having such problems with shortness of breath, even before the surgery. I spelled it out for my mother, once.

But somehow, he never did get an inhaler.

When he'd had his stroke, and was finally transferred from intensive care in a local hospital to a facility in a big city, albuterol inhalants were included in the admissions orders.

Of course.

But they would not listen to me because even though I had some pretty fancy medical training (not that recognizing the need for an inhaler requires medical training, but I am just saying) they needed to not believe I could know more than they did about what my father might need.

Isn't that something.

I wish I'd said: Stop being so jerky. You can be superior to me in some other way and in the meantime, Dad will breathe easier. But I told my father about the inhaler, too. And he didn't do what I said, either.

:hangin:
Partly is that my sister is very controlling. She is not gracious. She is competitive. She is false. She does not play well.

This is probably true about my sister, too.

I just don't like to say so. But for heaven's sake you two, my own sister prayed a ring of fire around me and my family. Who does that kind of thing!?! And all those other bratty things my sister did, too. Do you hear the term: bratty.

That is what a child is when they are rotten kids.

Adults are something worse than bratty.

I have to stop seeing my sister as a child.

Or maybe, I have to stop seeing myself as an adult, in relation to her. I should be protected and cherished and taught, too.

I merit that.

:choir:

I think it was not a sad post too much, Copa. These are sad things that we are choosing to face. But the prize at the end is ourselves, freed from the dungeon in the depths of the Witch Mother's terribly foreboding castle.

We need to save those little girls we were.

They are the ones who matter, now.

Otherwise, how will they ever be strong role models and mentors for their own children.

Cedar

I always did like my kids better than my mom and my sister, put together.

:hugs:
 

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
They went face to face, cheek to cheek
Last night M said that this coming week NO MATTER WHAT he wants to bring the divorce papers to the Court House and happen what happens he wants to commence his divorce.

I had been telling him about my son's phone call yesterday. My son is very frightened because he feels this is the month that worldwide calamity will lead to chaos and the dissolution of the financial system and martial law.

My son called to tell me he loved me very much.

I told him I loved him too.

He apparently felt a hanging back from me (or a lingering sense of undeserving in himself) and noted it.

I said: I can only state what is true for me. I love you. I have always loved you. In these years that have been hard, I could have done better. Way better. I forgive myself. The only thing we have is now. If a calamity is coming I do not want to give up my now, with anxiety and fear.

He said he did not either, but I know it is hard for him.

I mentioned to him that I want to go to the beach on the Pacific near where he is to disburse my mother's remains and would he want to meet M and I to honor the memory of grandma? We could go to lunch or dinner afterwards. He said yes. (He had said he wanted to come here to see each other before the collapse. I suggested this as an alternative.)

I have a problem with envy, too. It is when I am thinking from a zero sum game and feel: if somebody else has that...they are taking away the possibility of my having it. Like it was in my family. Then I remember. I can have it if I want.

Like when I cheated last week and saw online that my sister is probably buying a mansion. I do not want a mansion. But if I decided to move to a place where housing is inexpensive or work all of the rest of my life I could probably have one.

I do not want to.
sister's house in the background takes well over half the photo. It's a fine house.
But my sister needs to have a mansion. She has always wanted one. Or to live in the most prestigious neighborhoods of prestigious areas.

So, I am thinking here of the rigidity of roles. And how our sisters are trapped into feeding their own desire to be best, most, special, even through their kids.

I must say in fairness that my sister has tried to parent her twins with perfect equality...in affection, gifts, opportunities...and I read yesterday that that too...the rigid and deliberate attempt to counteract and balance out the competitive dog eat dog family of origin environment is itself a function of the very same toxicity from whence it came.

My sister's first born twin is accomplished, independent, confident and capable. The other is timid, gentle and dependent. When it came time for college, the fist twin got into a large urban University (the very one that I went to. Interesting, huh? ) This twin is also the one that went to study in the same foreign big city where I had lived and to study in the same University where I had studied.)

The 2nd timid twin, who did not gain entry into a university? My sister sent her to a community 2 year college in a beach town 3 or 4 hours away, paid for an apartment, etc....so that she could have equal to her sister. (Had she stayed home she would have been in a prettier beach town, with her friends and her mother.)

The child ended up a binge alcoholic...and totaled her stepfather's car.
I do have the sense that my sister is always "on".
What if, because we could never have that little ping of joy, we could never feel safe enough, better enough?
My sister does feel comfortable at home with her family. She is relaxed. She could be comfortable at my mother's too.
for a mother to do that? What were her children acquiring for her in her insistence, not only that they perform and perform, but in her knowledge that it would be inappropriate for anyone to declare enough is enough, kids.
But why? What does she get out of doing that?
After reading the articles on parents who focus on their children...to perform...so that they can bask in the reflected glory, do you see, Cedar, a parallel in your sister?
parading and re-parading her children, by having them perform patriotic songs.
That is the feel of my sister: Look at me.
Back to the performing nieces.

Sister even brought little flags for the kids to wave.
Why did my sister need to do that? Given that she brought the flags and rehearsed the kids, these actions were taken with intention.
The same kinds of performance-geared behaviors are happening with sister's grand.
Like, she would put herself between the cuteness all little kids just are, and every other child or adult at the gathering.
Everyone's eyes always had to be on sister's kids. And they were forever performing things.
Real. Nothing felt real. It felt like, "Oh, no. Not the flag songs, again!"
Pledge of Allegiance. It was remarkable. I am not saying that it wasn't. The grand would have been like, two and a half. But the conversation was changed to how sister had taught grand to do those things.
chasing the baby around hollering about how we needed to watch how she could catch the ball.
I am filled with sadness for us.

At this moment I feel only compassion for my sister and for yours Cedar. I believe that my sister, given what she got as a child, lived as well as she could.

I could have given her love and acceptance as she was. I chose not to.

My Mother in the last few years of her life begged me to accept my sister as she was and to love her. Over and over again my mother would say, you have to accept people as they are. Flaws or not. Because nobody is without flaws. We will all be alone if we demand perfection.

While I could understand my mother's words...I would not accept them in my heart.

I felt I needed and wanted to punish my sister's transgressions. There was a moral superiority in me. That I felt but did not at the time question.

A feeling like I had the right to punish and to withhold love...conditionally. As I write this I recognize that this is what the narcissistic mother does. She withholds affection and approval to control and to manipulate in the family. I feel ashamed. I do not know what to do now. I will put this aside.

This is enough, for now.

COPA
 
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Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
Because under everything, I do love them. I love them very, very much.

Okay. But in loving them very much, I am thinking about Neiztsche with his name that is impossible to remember how to spell. And that quote: We love life because we love, not because we are alive. Or however that went. The choice to love is intrinsic, and that most of us just love whatever we run across because we already do love.

That could be a difference too, if they don't have that little ping of joy feeling.

Cedar
 

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
I want to say here (not speaking as a professional, but at the same time, how do I not speak from who I am) that we are in our personality, a mix of things. We have narcissistic traits, we have obsessive traits, we have antisocial traits. It does not mean we are those labels. They are descriptors of certain tendencies, which can be modified, by recognizing them and taking responsibility.

Unless we are very damaged we are not fixed into unchangeable patterns. I do not want each of us to start thinking we are witch mothers, too. Because although I can be, I can and have been more.
 

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
The choice to love is intrinsic, and that most of us just love whatever we run across because we already do love.
I believe my sister loves her children. She may or may not love her husband. She loved my mother. Yes, I believe she did.

I do not think my sister loves in her life except where she feels she is reflected by the object. My sister needs to own and feel she has control over the reflected glory.

If she feels she does not she feels diminished by it. If glory is given to another, there is less for her. Zero sum game.

I am seeing differently now the Incident with the pinch.

My sister felt threatened by the loss of esteem from my uncle's wife...by the words of my son...stop pinching m. She was afraid. She was compelled to make it right by apologizing. She needed to abandon and throw under the bus my son and I.

To her, we are not in her affective sphere. We threaten it, only. She is not enhanced by our good fortune...or by our safety. She is diminished when we look weak or dangerous. She seeks to distance herself.

And the car seat. She did not see either me or my son. She did not see anything at all inappropriate by asking a 2 year old for his car seat. In front of his mother. She saw the car seat and the need of her child to have it. It was not personal to me. We do not exist to her, except for when we threaten her. Or as an audience in front of which to parade her successes.

So, I am back to my mother's wanting me to love my sister. My mother did not want to die fearing my sister was alone. My mother knew my sister needed me. My sister knew...after everything was said and done...that I was the stronger and that I had the capacity to protect and love my sister. No matter what.

The thing is. I think my mother was right. I think I want to get stronger to reach out to my sister.

COPA
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
I said: I can only state what is true for me. I love you. I have always loved you. In these years that have been hard, I could have done better. Way better. I forgive myself. The only thing we have is now. If a calamity is coming I do not want to give up my now, with anxiety and fear.

I love this for you both, Copa.

That is what D H says about everything. If it happens, we will respond in ways that are appropriate, then. If it happens, plans made in a time of plenty are going to fail.

Flexibility.

Trust in ourselves to do what then needs to be done.

Pleasure, taken in the now, to guide us, then.

I mentioned to him that I want to go to the beach on the Pacific near where he is to disburse my mother's remains and would he want to meet M and I to honor the memory of grandma? We could go to lunch or dinner afterwards. He said yes. (He had said he wanted to come hear to see each other before the collapse. I suggested this as an alternative.)

What more compelling way of celebrating family could there ever be. This is lovely, Copa.

I have a problem with envy, too. It is when I am thinking from a zero sum game and feel: if somebody else has that...they are taking away the possibility of my having it. Like it was in my family. Then I remember. I can have it if I want.

Like when I cheated last week and saw online that my sister is probably buying a mansion. I do not want a mansion. But if I decided to move to a place where housing is inexpensive or work all of the rest of my life I could probably have one.

I do not want to.

I am thinking this has to do with how we were taught to beat ourselves up in our families of origin. It is good to look at these patterns, and takes much courage.

At the end of this, there will be us, come real, come out from under those wrong ways we were taught to see ourselves and everyone and every thing.

I have been doing looking into eyes of pictures of people, lately. Or reading Humans of New York ~ man that is an amazing creation. Very real things about what it is, human.

Or in my new mom Dr. Ben Carson's eyes, of course.

Yes. I like his eyes and his mouth too, very much.

I could have given her love and acceptance as she was. I chose not to.

My Mother in the last few years of her life begged me to accept my sister as she was and to love her. Over and over again my mother would say, you have to accept people as they are. Flaws or not. Because nobody is without flaws. We will all be alone if we demand perfection.

Copa.

Our sisters don't love us.

They would eat us alive.

Maybe your mom was trying to be sure you never escaped. They do things like that.

The best thing you have done for yourself Copa, is to separate from those patterns. It was in going back that you began to question yourself, and lost the flow of your life.

Me, too.

Serenity, too.

When we are fully healed, then we can think about these things in this way. We are so freshly into our healing now. We cannot see clearly yet. Like when I called my sister's toxic adult behavior "bratty". My sister is a sixty year old woman fixated on seeing me broken, abandoned, destroyed.

I need to get that.

And let her go.

She is not that little girl. Maybe, she never was. Remember that Nietschze quote. (Cedar says, freely spelling Neitzsche any way she wants.)

Over and over again my mother would say, you have to accept people as they are. Flaws or not. Because nobody is without flaws. We will all be alone if we demand perfection.

Copa...did you see this behavior in your mother? Was she accepting?

Our sisters are out to get us.

Feets, don't fail me, now.

I felt I needed and wanted to punish my sister's transgressions. There was a moral superiority in me. That I felt but did not at the time question.

A feeling like I had the right to punish and to withhold love...conditionally.

Well hello, Copa. Our sisters do not love us. I believe my sister really does hate me. The problem I have is that I feel defending myself by telling myself what is really going on here is cruel. I wish I'd punished my sisters freaking multiple transgressions. Oh, boy, do I.

Then, like D H says, I would know why everything fell apart.

That is not moral superiority, Copa.

Our sisters are snake mean. We don't accept that because we are the older sisters. Raised in oppressive, abusive, forever screwed up to the maximum environments, we did the best we could, for them and for us. Each of our sisters feels the same way about us. In that they each seem to hate us, I mean. That has to do with FOO issues.

Pray for their peace and therein, find our own.

Feets, don't fail me now.

That is how to remember to feel, whenever we feel protective of our mean as snakes, determined to see us broken and poverty struck and bereft, sisters.

And if we cannot remember to say that prayer? Then "Feets, don't fail me now." will be just fine.

Our sisters are really mean, Copa.

If your sister was comfortable at your mom's Copa...what were they both doing, to you?

"What would Cedar do."

That's what.

As I write this I recognize that this is what the narcissistic mother does. She withholds affection and approval to control and to manipulate in the family. I feel ashamed. I do not know what to do now. I will put this aside.

I feel that way too, Copa. It is an artifact of FOO dysfunction. Copa, we were never their mothers. We were just little girls, too.

We were just little girls, Copa.

However much older you were than your sister, you got walloped, like I did too, with this whole responsibility to protect. However much older you were than your sister then Copa you were still just a scared little girl doing the best anyone could ever do in our situations. Some little girls in our situations abused the sisters and brothers. This is what our sisters learned to do, to us.

You are not responsible for your sister's inability to come to a sense of integrity in her adult relationships. She does it to everyone in her life, as does my sister, as does Serenity's.

That is how we can know whether we are dealing with a predator: What do they do in the rest of their lives. If they are coming out of everything smelling like a rose? You can be pretty sure they are standing in some pretty bad...potting medium.

Organic, right from the cow potting medium.

:O)

Copa, this pattern of guilt and sadness is an artifact. You merit so much more than their recycled abuse, Copa.

Who cares what our sisters do. They can address their shortcomings or stay away from us forever.

Feets. Do not fail me, now.

Don't let me fall into toxic love with my mom, with my sister.

Pray for their peace and therein, find our own.

No more toxic artifact love for me, or for Copa, or for Serenity.

No more.

Cedar


Whatever happened to our sisters (and I do think it is genetic), none of this is our responsibility. You cannot have a relationship with someone whose intention, whose fondest wish, is to see you obliterated.
 
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Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
The thing is. I think my mother was right. I think I want to get stronger to reach out to my sister.

That's okay, Copa. But we need to be stronger, for a time, first. Like anyone coming out of dysfunctional relationship.

Remember what D H says: "You have never seen your sister or your mom for who they are. If you did, you would not have their pictures in our home."

And he was right, Copa.

And he is correct too, when he says I will be very much at a disadvantage should my sister come after me once D H is gone. She will say whatever it takes. As empathic as I am myself, she will use what she knows about how I am put together to destroy and obliterate and degrade.

I am sorry, Copa.

You will come through this.

We are right here.

Cedar
 

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
Feets, don't fail me, now.
Cedar, where did you find this quote? I love it.

"Humans of New York." And this the photo blog to which you are referring? I do not know it, either.

Thank you Cedar.

Happy Birthday, Serenity (Right now I am going to sing Happy Birthday to Serenity with Dolly and Romy. M is not home.)

Have a great day.
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
Our sisters are snake mean. We don't accept that because we are the older sisters. Raised in oppressive, abusive, forever screwed up to the maximum environments, we did the best we could, for them and for us. Each of our sisters feels the same way about us. In that they each seem to hate us, I mean. That has to do with FOO issues.

Pray for their peace and therein, find our own.
I like this very much.

One day, I hope we can all be mellow with this issue enough to realize that we were all damaged in our homes, including our siblings, and just accept it, but continue to let them go. Due to the dynamics of our FOO, nothing will change, 60, 70 or 80.

Do either of you notice that your sisters can tolerate severe abuse from other sources, but act as though we are the most offensive people on earth? Honestly, this fact puzzles and saddens me the most. But it is what it is.
 
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