Author: Skipper

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My Truth Is Not the Problem

Aging Out of Fucks: The Neuroscience of Why You Suddenly Can’t Pretend Anymore

Note:  I was 43 at that last sibling reunion.  

“Here’s the part that makes this transition so uncomfortable: other people don’t like it.

“When you stop performing emotional labor, systems that relied on that labor start breaking down. And instead of examining why the system needed your performance to function, people blame you for withdrawing it.

“This backlash is proof of concept. It confirms that your people-pleasing wasn’t optional. It was required labor that kept everything running smoothly. And when you stop providing it for free, people notice.

“The discomfort you’re causing? That’s not your problem to fix. That’s information about a system that was always exploiting you.”

“… some relationships won’t survive your refusal to keep pretending.

“… Family dynamics where you played mediator, peacemaker, or emotional manager.

“When you stop playing these roles, one of two things happens:  The relationship evolves into something more authentic, or it dissolves because it was never based on authentic connection in the first place.

“Both outcomes are information.

“Losing relationships because you stopped performing isn’t actually loss. It’s clarity about what was never really there.”

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How many days did I spend
Thinkin’ ’bout how you did me wrong, wrong, wrong?
Lived in the shade you were throwin’
‘Til all of my sunshine was gone, gone, gone

And I couldn’t get away from ya
In my feelings more than Drake, so yeah
Your name on my lips, tongue tied
Free rent, livin’ in my mind

But then something happened one magical night

I forgot that you existed
And I thought that it would kill me, but it didn’t
And it was so nice
So peaceful and quiet
I forgot that you existed
It isn’t love, it isn’t hate
It’s just indifference

I forgot that you
Got out some popcorn
As soon as my rep starting going down, down, down
Laughed on the schoolyard
As soon as I tripped up and hit the ground, ground, ground

And I would’ve stuck around for ya
Would’ve fought the whole town, so yeah
Would’ve been right there, front row
Even if nobody came to your show

But you showed who you are, then one magical night

I forgot that you existed
And I thought that it would kill me, but it didn’t
And it was so nice
So peaceful and quiet
I forgot that you existed
It isn’t love, it isn’t hate
It’s just indifference

I forgot that you
Sent me a clear message
Taught me some hard lessons
I just forget what they were
It’s all just a blur

I forgot that you existed
And I thought that it would kill me, but it didn’t
And it was so nice
So peaceful and quiet
I forgot that you existed
I did, I did, I did
It isn’t hate, it’s just indifference
It isn’t love, it isn’t hate
It’s just indifference (so yeah)

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It’s hard to imagine it now, but there was once a time when I thought:

“My siblings are intelligent people with good intentions towards me.  Surely once they are aware that there are systemic family issues that are causing pain to me, they will want to resolve them, no matter how difficult that might be.  I can educate them with facts and references that explain how our family dysfunction is actually a well-understood psychological phenomenon,  and surely they will want to overcome those issues and be a better, healthier, loving family for all.”

How wrong can one person be?  Instead I have learned:

“My siblings grew up with our unhealthy Mom, which was “normal”.  Repercussions only occurred when Dad came home, because that was the set-up.   Since Dad was the “bad guy”, and I was raised by him after The Divorce, which was precipitated by my birth, and also “bad”, I was supposed to suffer, and should have had it worse than they did.  Instead, I had it better, which to them was completely wrong & unfair.  They are mad and resentful because growing up with Dad, I didn’t suffer as much as they did growing up with Mom.”

And now, my cancer has become a kind of equalizer.  It is what is supposed to finally make me come crawling back, begging for their acceptance.

Finally, something bad enough has happened to me to make things “fair”.  I will die much too young, long before any of them do — and that will not be a tragedy to them, but a reckoning, some kind of justice, an evening up of the scales.

And that’s just fucking sick.

(Side note:  I wonder how mad any of them were when I saved my husband’s life, against incredible odds.  I would place some money on Susan, who lost her father suddenly around age 8, as being resentful that I didn’t suffer a similar loss as she did.)

Our mother refused to take responsibility for anything, let alone her own choices in life.  “Our mothers may never take full responsibility for the pain they unconsciously placed in us in order to relieve themselves of the responsibility for their own lives.”  I can remember her talking many times about how a fortune teller once told her she could “be on the stage” which our mother interpreted to mean she could have been a professional pianist — IF IT WEREN’T FOR US KIDS being in the way of her dream.

Everything was Dad’s fault.  Nothing was her responsibility.  Even her own horrible words and specific rotten behavior towards me on the occasion of Joe & Susan’s wedding was excused by her to my future husband with, “You don’t know what their father did to me.”

I can remember how every year, on our birthdays, she would recount in detail what she went through in order to give birth to us.  WTF.  I guess we were supposed to feel guilty for putting her through it?

As I grew, and learned, and wasn’t afraid to face the truth, that’s when I developed that first theory, that my siblings would also want to learn and grow and make things better. And I found explanations of how family dysfunction works and tried to show them:

“Families are complicated systems. When one person stops playing their usual role in the family, the system will usually experience some degree of disequilibrium or chaos. Conflict can serve to transform the system to a higher level if the family members are willing and open to grow and learn. Unfortunately, sometimes, in an attempt to resist change, the family attacks the person who is wanting to grow. That person has the choice to stay and suffer the toxicity or to heal and leave the unhealthy system. The choice to terminate contact is often made when it’s clear that it’s impossible to heal while remaining in that family system.

“[When someone] wishes to evolve beyond her typical role in the family, (perhaps by… being less tolerant of poor treatment…) the degree of chaos that ensues is indicative of how dysfunctional the family system is as a whole.

“If the family members are each relatively healthy, stable, and open, the family may be able to find a new equilibrium without much chaos. However, if the family members are deeply wounded or traumatized themselves... evolution can be perceived as deeply threatening to the family system.

“In an unconscious attempt to maintain equilibrium and resist change, family members may launch attacks… The message is, “Your unwillingness to continue in the family system in your established role indicates that there is something deeply wrong with you.” This shame-based narrative abdicates… other family members from honestly examining their own behavior and taking responsibility… The daughter’s level of mental stability, her sexual activity, her past mistakes, everything about her may be openly questioned, everything, that is, except the role of the mother in the conflict. 

“It’s amazing how vehemently people resist looking at their stuff and the lengths they will go to remain in denial of it, including ostracizing their own [sister]. This is actually an unconscious attempt to resist change by projecting all the conflict or “badness” onto the person initiating the transformation of the family system. Ultimately, this is not personal at all.

This is what happens when people who have not been dealing with their inner life become confronted with their disowned pain through a catalyzing event,

like a woman in the family growing beyond the predominant dynamics that have kept the family in a stable state for generations.”

From Psychology Today:

The identified patient is part of a family’s collective, unconscious psychological projection process in which they essentially defer and outsource the pain, tension, and anxiety felt within their dysfunctional system onto one person who then psychologically, and sometimes physically, “holds” the emotional energy of the family, manifesting it in symptoms and behaviors that the other members of the group can point to and say, “There’s the problem! It’s her, not us!”

In this way, the identified patient could be seen as the family scapegoat, serving as a “protective function” for its larger dysfunctional patterning.

So that’s it in a nutshell.  That’s what happened, all summed up on other people’s blogs and articles — AGAIN.

Our mother created so much pain within our FOO, among me and my siblings; that pain was disowned and projected onto Dad and onto me, the supposed sources of all the problems; when upon Dad’s and Mom’s deaths I began to realize the truth, I tried to learn and grow beyond my assigned role; and instead of joining me, everyone else refused to deal with any of it, or more probably were completely incapable of dealing with it.  It was probably way too much to ask, even of intelligent, good Catholics such as they are:

“No matter how much you explain or how many attempts to convince them of where you’re coming from, it goes nowhere… They may be unconsciously invested in NOT understanding you because it poses too much of a threat to their deeply held beliefs and values. Understanding you may cause a seismic shift to the very foundation upon which they’ve built their identities and worldview.”

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Fantasyland

I had an actual fantasy about my family of origin, in the sense of “remote from reality”:

Next on the Hallmark Channel:  when a woman’s major house remodeling project gets stalled halfway through by an unexpected diagnosis of aggressive cancer, her five older siblings pool their resources and abilities to help their little sister finish fixing up her home before she dies.

It really might have happened, in a normal, healthy family.

Over the years, I have stated repeatedly, in writing, ON THIS BLOG, for my siblings to leave me alone, UNLESS anyone is prepared to acknowledge their behavior, sincerely apologize for it, and treat me respectfully going forward.

Leaving out the part where apparently none of them think they did anything wrong (!), at least half of them also don’t seem to understand that me having terminal cancer DOESN’T CHANGE ANY OF THOSE REQUIREMENTS.

I have no need to go crawling back to them, begging to be forgiven for being blamed for everything, before I die — no matter how much that might fit their preferred narrative.  I am not about to pretend for their comfort and convenience that the past dozen years of them ignoring my absence from the family didn’t happen; or to pretend that I didn’t start to see the reality of their situational ethics and scapegoating of me when our parents died; or to be understanding about how they all said I needed therapy, and then decidedly didn’t like the outcome when I got it.

They, OTOH, seem to have a definite need for me to do something of that nature.  I guess that would make a nice ending to the story.  FOR THEM.

See the above for a very different, loving, healthy, respectful ending to that movie.

I am done with doing, or trying to assist with, their emotional work.  I tried for many years, and +200 posts on this blog are proof of that.  I no longer think they are actually capable of doing their own emotional work, but it’s not mine to do, either.  Especially not with my limited time.

But not only will they not leave me alone; what I am getting instead is not to be believed.  DARVO from my sister.  Hoovering ** from brothers.  I have now had contact from multiple siblings, through various unblockable channels (US mail, new phone numbers) graciously offering to pick up just exactly where we left off.

And that answer is still no.

** Lack of accountability:  If the narcissist has treated you badly, hoovering might be a strategy to avoid taking responsibility for their actions. By focusing on reconciliation, they divert attention away from the issues that led to the separation.

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Guilty

So, I got a letter from my oldest brother a couple weeks ago.

In it, he offered to resume our relationship more or less on the previous basis.

I wrote a reply in which, once again, I tried to explain that if NOTHING HAS CHANGED, why would I do that?

And today I had kind of a brainwave.  And with it, maybe, just maybe, I can explain, in a way that just might get through, the situation as it stands for me, now, 2025, a full THIRTEEN YEARS after I told them what the problems were, and everyone refused to listen, or do anything about it, or even admit that there were problems — other than the obvious one, ME.

It was pretty clear from the letter that my brother is starting to worry that he just might feel a little guilty about all this after I die.  AS HE SHOULD.

Okay, here goes nothing.  I’ve tried to write kind of an elevator pitch for each person:

When I say, “We have a problem in this family” — what I mean by that is, there are systemic issues going back 50+ years, involving our mother’s mental illness, impacting every single one of us six siblings, that although having more than adequate information & resources to do so, no one else will talk about or even admit, much less work on, neither directly with each other, nor in therapy.

While they affect us all, these issues negatively impact me more than anyone else.  And by “we” I mean that ALL SIX OF US are involved in the problem, and therefore ALL SIX OF US need to agree to work on solutions.

When Bob says, “We have a problem in this family” — what I believe he means by that is, “The problem in this family is that the FIVE OF US think things are fine and the problem is YOU, and if you would just go back to the way things were and we don’t have to change anything or take any action, well, we could probably find it in our good Catholic hearts to forgive you for your disruptive behavior.”

(This is known as the “identified patient” bias.)

When Bets says “We have a problem in this family” — well, she’s apparently said out loud that “I ruined her senior year of high school” and for her, MY VERY EXISTENCE IS THE PROBLEM.  Needless to say, this is fucked up in a whole lot of ways, but the most basic is that she simply prefers not to have me as a sister.

I mean think about that.  Really think about that for a minute.  She wants me not to be part of the family, and her reason for that is something I had absolutely no agency in.

In fact, I have no agency about it EVEN NOW.  What am I supposed to do, apologize to her for having been born?

When Joe & Susan say “We have a problem in this family” — their version is probably something like, when our father died, I grievously wronged Susan when I asked her to leave the room that night for her inappropriate laughing, and again when I brought up her refusal to do so the next day, and I’ve never apologized for having thus made it necessary for them to yell and spit in my face.  Also that I won’t just “let it go” but instead made sure everyone at least knew about it.  (Which I only did after I made that disastrous attempt to work it out with them.)

When Henry says “We have a problem in this family” — my best guess is that his definition is kind of an amalgam of the above.  He dislikes my existence because with me not there, he gets to be the baby of the family, with all the attention that gets him from the older siblings.  He hates that I go “digging up the past” because of course that threatens the status quo, which again he likes because of his special position.  Again, the five of them are fine; it’s me that is the problem.

I don’t honestly have enough knowledge of my brother Charley to know where he stands on any of this.

Now.  Let’s talk about what COULD have happened, over a decade ago.

1) Someone could have told Joe & Susan that they were WAY WAY OUT OF LINE, that Susan’s thoughtless and egregious behavior, plus her refusal to take responsibility for it, had created a huge family rift; that they both needed to apologize to me sincerely and publicly, for what she did the night Dad died, and for what they both did the next day; and never act like that towards me, or any other sibling, ever again.  AND MEAN IT.

2) Someone could have talked to Bets about her cold behavior towards me at the reunions — which I have to figure if my husband could notice it, others could too.

She once emailed me a laundry list of 9 or 10 items, I think, explaining why it was impossible for us to have any kind of relationship.  Things like the age difference between us, our different views of our parents, of politics, of religion.  (One of them was downright hilarious — she insisted that as a child, I would not have understood that Dad was “brainwashing me”.  Um.  Exactly the same argument goes for her and Mom, but she truly can’t see that side of her own argument.  And she’s supposed to be MENSA smart.)

Maybe they could have suggested that for the next reunion, Bets could come up with a plan for some activity that she & I could do together, go out for lunch or something.  Or maybe they could have suggested that Bets could call me, on the same frequency that she probably called other siblings, and we could start to build a better relationship that way.  The point is, there are lots of constructive ways to build a relationship — if you want to.  SHE DOES NOT WANT TO.

3) Someone could have talked to Henry about the lecture he felt entitled to give me at the last reunion I went to, and the disrespectful conversation we had later that same weekend about sexual harassment in the workplace, where he said the whole idea was stupid and I countered with examples that I personally had experienced, which made him mad and he started telling me not to say what I was saying… Seriously, that happened.

And to be fair, Bob & Joe tried to do something about that one — but it wasn’t to make him apologize to me for it.  It was, once again, to try to get me to “be reasonable” and “let it go”.

At one point Joe was trying to explain to me that a person ought to “get one chance” to hit on someone at work, because what if she was really hot like the sales rep Francesca? **  And I was too flabbergasted at the time but I dearly wish I’d had the wits to ask him, “So it would be okay if the guy in the next cube said you had a hot ass and he’d like you to suck his dick?”

But the one person who could have done all those things would have had to have a very different mindset.

Instead of

The five of us are fine, it’s you who is the problem

It should have been

There are big problems in this family with the way everyone treats Tess like a second class citizen, and if Tess has a problem in this family, then WE ALL HAVE A PROBLEM AND WE NEED TO FIX IT.

Otherwise, we’re not a family.

It should be clear that the very fact that this line of thinking apparently did not ever occur to my brother Bob means that indeed, he too treats me as a second class citizen.

But even if he had thought this way, what would have happened had he done any of those things?

1) If he had held Joe & Susan’s feet to the fire, Susan would have thrown an almighty fit, refused to apologize, and would have insisted that Joe back her up.  She would probably have refused for either of them to come to a reunion as long as that expectation was being upheld.  And we can’t possibly let JOE go out of the family, now can we?  Not when keeping Tess in the family is the reason.  Keeping Joe, and even keeping Susan (not an actual sibling) is more important than losing Tess and Don.

2) If he had tried to talk to Bets about constructive ways to improve our relationship, I am pretty sure she too would have thrown an almighty fit, and then simply refused to discuss it.  She might have gone so far as to threaten to not host the reunions any more.

She PREFERS to hate me.  She LIKES IT THIS WAY.  That’s clear from the fact that she’s never once tried ANYTHING constructive to improve the relationship, in the past decade plus.

I say “constructive” because, for example, there was one occasion where she sent me copies of some letters written by Mom to her when she was in college — and I reacted badly, because my experience of communicating with our mother when I was in college was that my OWN MOTHER refused to speak to me for a year and a half over something I said that she didn’t like (she complained about my “tone”).

And my sister apparently shared my response to the rest of the family, without my knowledge or consent, and made herself out to be the wronged party because she was “just trying to show me a side of Mom that I probably never knew” — i.e., she was trying to show me how wrong I was about her — and sighed, “but I guess no good deed goes unpunished.”

Poor Bets.

Did you know that when someone wants to manipulate you, one of the first things they do is get you to feel sorry for them?  Our mother was a pro at being the martyr, and I suspect that means my sister is too, because she’s so enmeshed with Mom (I won’t say “brainwashed”) that she’s basically a carbon copy.

(But in a way, she’s right.  I never knew our mother when she was mentally healthy.

Of course, I’m not sure any of them ever did, either.)

But this negative attitude of hers towards me is what trickles down to everyone else’s view of me, so it most certainly IS everyone else’s business what she has done, or refuses to do, with our relationship.

At the very least, what could have happened is some kind of agreement brokered between her and me about what our relationship would be like, perhaps polite but distant, or whatever — not her unilateral decision, based on nothing I ever did.

3)  If he had tried to tell Henry that he was out of line to lecture me, that it was my right to try to understand our family history if I thought it would help me, and that maybe he should have tried to understand my experiences of sexual harassment over a dozen years of engineering?

Henry might not have thrown a fit, but he would have cracked some jokes about sexual harassment, and made Bob laugh, as the baby of the family does, and then Bob would have been unable to hold him accountable for any of it.

What Henry did instead  — when I finally had had enough and left the industry which incidentally was quite a painful decision to throw that hard-earned degree in the trash, but the alternative of staying was WORSE — was to double down and tell me that “you gave up too easily” and “our father would be disappointed in you”.

Obviously, none of THAT happened when it should have happened.

And Bob is smart enough to make the same predictions I did about how any of it would have turned out.

BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN HE WAS OFF THE HOOK TO TRY.

Doing the right thing, taking the side of your LITTLE SISTER when you know she’s right, and the alternative is losing her from the family completely — it’s not something you just blow off and make excuses for not doing, because you don’t think it’s going to work.

At least, not if you have any integrity.

And no one in this so-called family EVER TOOK MY SIDE, on ANY OF IT.

And you know what?  It’s too late to do it now.

There was a time when people could possibly have changed, if the right actions had been taken.

But it’s way past that time, and it’s too late to be worried about what you should have done then, and try to make up for it now, ONLY BECAUSE I’M DYING OF CANCER.

What that is, is SELFISH.

They all should have felt guilty for over a decade — the minute I said “there’s a problem, and it’s not me”, and they refused to do anything about it.

And to be completely honest, I hope they all feel guilty for the rest of their longer-than-mine-by-a-long-shot lives. *

* I’m going to guess that anyone reading this far will now seize upon this single sentence and say, “well this here shows that she’s really not a good, forgiving, Catholic person” WHICH IS BLAMESHIFTING SO FUCK YOU

** this woman ended up marrying Mike Judge, the creator of Beavis and Butt-head and King of the Hill — so like my brother would have had a chance in hell, BUT HEY GOOD NEWS JOE THEY ARE DIVORCED NOW

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Explanatory Notes

“We seem to prefer a comfortable lie to the uncomfortable truth. We punish those who point out reality, and reward those who provide us with the comfort of illusion. Reality is fearsome … but experience tells us that more fearsome yet is evading it.” ~~ Bill Moyers

“Your mind will believe comforting lies while also knowing the painful truths that make those lies necessary. And your mind will punish you for believing both.”

― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

And of course, the header for this blog.  What it’s always been about.
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So Not Normal

It would be funny, if it were not so sad, to reflect on the fact that my siblings have — through their actions, as well as their inaction — proven me to be right about all this shit.  Inadvertently, I’m sure, but they have.

If you think about what might have happened instead, in a normal, healthy, functional family, it’s obvious.

Just for starters, take how this all started — or rather, the crisis that precipitated me figuring out what was really going on in this dysfunctional collection of siblings:

Upon finding out that I was upset about the disrespectful way Susan acted towards me when my/our dad died — specifically, her ignoring my reasonable request that, if she and the hospice nurse were going to continue their casual, shop-talk, LAUGHING conversation, could they please do it in a room other than the one with his still-warm body shoved in the corner? — well, the normal thing to do at that point would have been for Susan to apologize — and, in the event that she resisted doing so, for my siblings, especially Joe, to make sure that happened.

The hospice nurse did apologize.  She wrote me a sincere, heartfelt card.  This is the appropriate level of contact for someone who is virtually a stranger.  It’s simple, basic politeness.

Susan also wrote me a card.  That in itself is telling.  She didn’t talk to me the next day, nor did Joe (they yelled AT me, but they sure as hell didn’t talk, let alone LISTEN).  Nor did they call me later.  There were emails between Joe and me (and probably shared beyond that, without my knowledge, but that’s just par-for-the-course disrespect for me, hardly worth mentioning) — but as for Susan and me, we’ve actually never talked about it.

I assume that is because it would be far harder to avoid apologizing in an actual conversation than in a very carefully written piece of bullshit that attempted to pretend that she didn’t know how upset I was, and to share the blame for the incident equally, claiming that I didn’t know how upset SHE was.

Well, no, I didn’t.  That’s because 1) she had only known him a few years, as opposed to her whole entire life; and 2) SHE WAS LAUGHING.

The next abnormal thing that would not have happened in a normal family was everyone blaming me for being upset about it.  Because what she did was SO FUCKING EGREGIOUSLY AWFUL THOUGHTLESS RUDE BEHAVIOR that it’s kind of insane that anyone can say that Susan’s behavior was fine, and mine was not:  for politely asking her to leave the room, which she and Joe graciously agreed that night to “overlook”, bless them — and for the apparently truly unforgivable sin of bringing it up the next day, just to Joe — not knowing that Susan was around the corner, and came into the room like a screaming banshee.

This isn’t even taking into account that she was clearly not invited to be part of that conversation, and she should have not have been eavesdropping, nor should she have butted in, even if she overheard accidentally.  The adult, respectful thing to do would have been to go away, where she could not overhear, and let Joe and me talk.

Or just possibly, apologize for eavesdropping, acknowledge that I was clearly still upset by her behavior the night before, apologize for that, and then either go away, or join the conversation if invited to do so.

Or for Joe to tell her to please leave the room, or for him to drag me and our conversation outside or elsewhere in order to have some privacy, or… the point is made, the possibilities are numerous.  And none of them happened.

Because it was ME confronting JOE — like we were equals, can you imagine the NERVE! — it became okay, probably imperative, for her to attack me for it.  Screaming inches from my face, just hours after my father died.  This was not only allowed to happen, in front of my brother — he joined in.  Until, with my husband, I finally fled the house.

To my knowledge, no one has ever held her or them accountable for that bullshit behavior, either.

The next normal thing that should have happened is that when my oldest brother tried to talk to me about what happened, he should probably have figured out that he was getting an earful of only one side of the story — because he started telling me how I should have approached that next-day discussion (I should have approached Joe on his own) and I remember yelling at him THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT I DID.

But beyond that, what I realized later was that he was only “listening” to me because he was desperately looking for a way to interpret my actions in a way that would allow him to BLAME ME, in order to avoid holding Susan responsible, and by extension, Joe.

And this was really, really difficult, because my actions were in fact not the issue, and again, it’s pretty insane for anyone to try to justify what Susan did.  Hell, the best even Susan herself could do was to imply the blame should be equal.

But, this is classic behavior for a dysfunctional family with a handy scapegoat.  Find a way to blame them, and it doesn’t actually have to make sense.

Another normal thing that might have happened, but didn’t:  the secondary black sheep brother once told me that he too was upset and annoyed at Susan’s behavior that night, and he was almost ready to speak up himself, but I beat him to the punch.  He could have spoken up as well, and backed me up, that night.  That would have been normal.

But he decided to stay silent, at that point and apparently forever after, rather than voice his agreement with me.  In all the ugly aftermath, he just let me take the fall.

Such is the very strong taboo against sticking up for me, in this collection of wounded, dysfunctional siblings.

More normal family behavior:  if, at any time over the past dozen years, any sibling, or even in-law, had felt sorrow over my estrangement from them, they could have expressed it as such.  They could have called or emailed or texted or sent a card that said they missed me.  That they were sorry about all that had happened when Dad died.  That they would like to talk, or even more appropriately, listen.  That they were willing to start over, as adults, and try to build a new relationship, on whatever terms I could accept.

Needless to say, the calls, texts, emails, and cards that I did receive were not of this nature.

I ended up blocking just about every mode of communication I could — which of course was seen not as a failure of theirs to meet my relatively basic conditions to have a relationship with them, not as their refusal to treat me at least as well as they would treat a stranger — but as proof that I was unreasonably rejecting them.

As has been stated before, I was not rejecting them — I was rejecting the way they treated me.  I was always willing to have a relationship with anyone who had the guts to reach out in an adult, respectful, honest way.

No one ever tried that.  Maybe once or twice, early on, but the one person I can think of who did, probably got pressured into quitting that radical behavior in order to be allowed to fully join the club.

They will claim, as an excuse, that I “told them not to contact me”.  Which is, technically, true, but only as far as it goes.  What is more accurate — the whole truth — is that I told them not to contact me unless they were willing to treat me differently.  With respect, as an equal.  And clearly, they aren’t.

Another abnormal thing that happened was that my sister FORBADE ANYONE IN HER FAMILY TO DO THAT, and possibly that prohibition extends to all the siblings.  I realized that when her husband tried to meet with us once, but he said it would have to be in another city because he couldn’t fly to our location, and I realized this was because my sister must have actively forbidden any contact with us.

I appreciated his willingness to try to resolve things between us, but unfortunately I believe he was hoping to work with the reasonable person, because of the impossibility of working with the unreasonable one.

The last abnormal thing I’m going to write about — far from the last one that’s happened — is that when the news of my diagnosis of terminal, stage IV triple negative breast cancer reached them, it might well have caused some people to re-evaluate their actions and inaction and reactions, what they’ve done, how they think about me, what they blame me for, and maybe try to make amends before it’s too late — but that’s clearly not the case, either.

Word has gotten back to me that my sister’s response to the news of my TERMINAL CANCER DIAGNOSIS was something like,

“That’s HER problem.  She ruined my senior year.”

OF HIGH SCHOOL.

Pathologically, not to say pathetically, abnormal.

And I hate to break it to you, sis, but you’re wrong.

It’s Mom & Dad who did that — not me.  They failed you — not me.

Hope you’re happy having lived your whole life taking all that out on me.

I know I’m not.  And I know that doesn’t bother you in the slightest, good Catholic girl though you are, or pretend to be.

I didn’t deserve that.  None of us deserved the trauma and dysfunction we got, but boy, you really put your heart into punishing me for it all.

If only she had gotten some therapy after that stressful year…
If only she had been able to vent her rage and frustration appropriately…

But the damage is done.

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Weddings and Funerals

“Weddings and funerals.”  Those are the two important events in families, according to both my mother and my sister.

My sister referred to them when she replied with a histrionic email to the prospect that my husband and I were not coming to the sibling reunion one year.  She took it as a permanent abdication, which it wasn’t at that point, but that was probably wishful thinking on her part.  And she wrote, “What are we supposed to do about weddings?  And funerals?”

My mother referred to them when she was staying with me in Texas, when Joe & Susan were getting married.  My then-boyfriend, now-husband of 27+ years had to ask me why, whenever I went somewhere with my mother, I came back crying.

It was because of the awful, hurtful things she kept saying to me.  One was, “I like Susan better than you, because she’s nicer to me.”

Naturally this has been excused by my siblings — as “that’s probably when she was starting to get sick.”  No, she was already sick for a long time before that.  What kind of a mother says that to her actual daughter, about a woman who was practically a stranger?

But two other things she said during that visit were so revealing.

One was when he picked her up from church, and then had a talk with her about her horrible, destructive behavior towards me.  She offered a few excuses, one of which was something like, “Well it’s only [when we’re all together] at things like weddings and funerals.”

Clearly, these were the most important events in families.

At another point she grumbled to me that “if she never set foot in Texas again, it would be too soon.”  I said, “What about if [BF] and I get married?”

She replied that she wouldn’t come to my wedding.

And that right there shows that I was never “in the club”, never really a part of my mother’s family, and where that idea came from.

Weddings and funerals are IMPORTANT FAMILY EVENTS — yet here she was saying that she would not come to mine.

It’s shorthand for saying, “YOU DON’T COUNT IN MY FAMILY.”

Her attitude towards me — and statements like this one giving it away — gave my siblings Mom’s permission, maybe even Mom’s encouragement to treat me as a second-class member of the group.
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Well, I have been told by my oncologist that — while no one knows for sure, of course — her best guess is that I now have one “good” year left, before I get really sick and die.

One funeral, coming up fast.  Way too fast.

And will any of my siblings do anything about that?  I mean, it should be IMPORTANT, right?

hahahahahahahahahahahaha

Of course not.  It’s ME, so it’s totally NOT important.  In fact I am pretty certain it will be a relief to at least half of them.

They will say that I rejected them, of course.  Which is not true:  I rejected their TREATMENT OF ME.  I have always said that I would be happy to have a respectful, two-way relationship with any of them.

“Set the boundaries… and leave it to the toxic person to decide which side of that boundary they want to stand on… If the relationship ends, it’s not because of your lack of love or loyalty, but because the toxic person chose not to treat you in the way you deserve. Their choice.

“…The choice to trample over what you need means they are choosing not to be with you.  It doesn’t mean you are excluding them from your life.”

That’s exactly what I did, clearly stated even in the very first thing I ever wrote to them about this whole fucked-up mess.

And they made their choice:  not to treat me in the way I deserve, as an actual member of the family, on an equal footing with any of them.

I asked my husband what he thought would happen now if I had not broken up with my siblings.  He imagined that my BIL would probably cajole my sister into visiting me ONCE, in order to forestall any guilt on her part.  She would drag the two brothers of The Triumvirate with her, for backup.  The three of them would do their familial duty as perfunctorily as possible, probably for a weekend.  And that would be that.

I think he’s pretty spot on.  And if he is, clearly I’m not missing much in actuality.

But oh, how my heart aches for the reality of a healthy, unbroken, loving family that could, that should have been.

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Black Sheep

Almost a perfect, 1-minute summation. The only thing that doesn’t fit is that I was never the “peacemaker”.  Also, fortunately or unfortunately, I didn’t “break the pattern” except for myself.  Future generations of this “family” will have to do that for themselves.

The black sheep of the family has felt alone or misunderstood their entire lives.

They can also see dysfunction most clearly and want to heal from the past.

They’re curious, sensitive, and willing to self reflect which makes them stand out from other family members.

The black sheep becomes the scapegoat of the family.  Family members project their unwanted traits, or the issues of the family onto the black sheep. This allows them to blame the toxic dynamics on one person, and avoid looking at the true deeper issues within themselves.

Sometimes, the black sheep plays the peacemaker role. They’re expected to step in and “fix” family issues, even if those issues don’t directly involve them.

Some black sheep know from a young age that the adults in their homes can’t be trusted and begin taking care of themselves.

Many black sheep are “deep feelers” who are curious and open. This is a stark contrast to other family members who are emotionally shut down, rigid, black and white thinkers.

As the years go on, the black sheep feels the deep rage, regret, and disappointment within the family unit. They live within the chaos until they go out onto their own.

The black sheep tend to be extremely interesting, engaged, creative people who have been stifled as children. Their humor, independence, and sensitive nature can allow them to thrive as adults.

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My Sister’s Revenge — But For What?

Why is it that my sister hates me so much?  For over 50 years, she has resented the fact that I even exist.  Talk about a champion grudge-holder.  I’m told my FOO considers me to be pretty good at it (projection much?) but I’m no match for this woman.

For starters, she doesn’t really know me at all — she and I only lived together for about a year, my first year.  When she left for college in Chicago, she practically never came home again that I can remember, except for a few holidays.  So it’s not likely that we had a difficult history, or clash of personalities.  If I somehow did something to annoy her, well, I would have been less than 5 years old at the time.

Later, it became clear to me that her dislike of me was well-established by the time I was college age.  She and I rarely conversed, almost never wrote letters (I can think of exactly one of mine that she answered) and it was my husband who noted that she has to this day never once called me on the phone.

If she blames me for the whole stressful, traumatic year after I was born, I had zero to do with that, either.  Bad things happened, but it’s not like I had any agency in them.  Blame the adults!  Blame our parents!  Blame Mom for not having the hysterectomy, blame Dad for wanting sex, blame them both for not using birth control, blame Mom for failing to “accept children lovingly from God”, blame whoever for not hiring someone to take care of the younger kids — but for the love of Christ, don’t blame an innocent, helpless baby.

Blaming a baby for being born, and wrecking a family because of that, is truly vile, not to mention unhinged.  I can understand our mentally ill mother doing that, because she couldn’t do any better — but my genius sister can and ought to do better than that.

Did I ruin “her” place as the only girl?

Or did I become Daddy’s favorite, a spot she secretly coveted?

Was she mad that I got the red hair?

All of those ideas just seem so freaking petty — probably because they ARE petty.

I can think of only two things that are “big enough”, that she might “reasonably” hold against me (“reasonable” in this case meaning by the standards of this dysfunctional FOO):

1) Holding me responsible for “what I did to Mom” by being born — in other words, because my birth pushed Mom over the cliff into full-blown post-partum depression — which becomes “I caused Mom’s mental illness”, and by extension the Divorce.

This might also include guilt at her not being able to “save” Mom — she was no longer able to cover up for Mom’s dysfunction, because not only did it get a lot worse after my birth, but now Dad was also home all the time, and then she left for college.

If I hadn’t been born, Mom wouldn’t have lost her marbles, Dad wouldn’t have been told things by Mom’s psychologist (“she hates your guts”), and my sister could have headed off to college with a clear conscience.

(I was told that Mom stood at the door and watched her leave, possibly crying, but as I recall it was described as Mom was feeling sorry for herself and the loss of her indentured servant, rather than that she was going to miss her older daughter.)

I feel like this is a fairly long chain of “logic” though, and it’s just not quite simple enough to drive a lifetime of irrational hatred.  Which is why I lean towards something a little more specific:

2) Holding me responsible for her suicide attempt, and the blot on her otherwise pristine, holier-than-thou-by-a-long-shot soul.  Suicide is a mortal sin, and I can easily imagine that my sister would be seriously pissed (not to mention terrified) about having one of those on her record.

Blame-shifting would be instant psychological relief.  I made her do it, simple as that, not her fault at all.

Next, cue a lifetime of cultivating an “I’m a better Catholic than you’ll ever be” reputation beyond reproach, as insurance — a way to tell yourself that YOU couldn’t really have done that awful, sinful thing… unless, of course, some other EVEN MORE AWFUL PERSON (baby!!) MADE YOU DO IT.

If this were to be true, it’s one of the saddest things ever.  Not only did she not get any help for this that I ever heard of — it would have probably been viewed with Old-Testament judginess, rather than New-Testament love & concern.  Did no one stop to think for a minute that hey, if someone actually tried suicide — maybe things are REALLY REALLY BAD??  Maybe the adults involved are making terrible decisions under stress?

But probably the stigma of mental health issues — first Mom’s and then my sister’s — kept everything under wraps and within the family as much as possible.

It’s admittedly a lot of conjecture — but whatever it really was that my sister unfairly blames on me, effectively wrecked my family for me.  I was always wrong, always the scapegoat, never in the club.  My other siblings, and presumably her children, followed her lead.

I wish I could not care, as she does.  But there’s some people I still miss.