So far the past 7 months have been a thoroughly good mixture of complete shit and payoffs.
The biggest pile of shit is focused on my relationship with my younger sister. I've grown a lot in the past ten years but it's been a hard road and I've been walking uphill - with the road littered with sharp pieces of my nurtured instincts and behavior. I am proud of the man that I have become through the self-awareness I have achieved. Because of my growth, I have sought to help my sister come with me because I didn't want her to end up with the same patterns as my parents. I've wanted her to escape these genetic and learned chains along with me. I mean, it's only fair. It's what a parent is supposed to do and ours failed us in many ways.
My sister is a lot like my dad - willful, intense, stubborn, relentless, unapologetic, self-centered, and self-sabotaging. Granted, none of Dad's friends have ever seen or heard what I have. Apparently Dad gave them his best and changed their lives because of it. I could only wish that I was a friend of his instead of his son. To have experienced what they did would be a nice change from the silence I endured. But that's another conversation.
Regarding my sister, everything with her is a fight unless she is game for the situation. If her mind is made up a certain way about something, forget it. That is, unless you want to have a four-hour discussion and can resist being manipulated and made to feel as if you are abusing her in some way. So, a fight. Even when I'm not trying to communicate important things - if she has a way she looks at something, no matter how obtuse, she won't see your way of looking at things. It's something that I have always felt challenged by since we were kids. My parents called her Oppositional-Defiant and Bipolar, which was a mistake, I think.
It looks like we had two Narcissistic parents growing up. A little research will allude to the idea that Andrea is the sibling in the household who was made to feel insignificant. And she was. Many of the beefs that she has regarding her childhood are legitimate. However, when I made it clear that I was getting rid of my family baggage, after Izzy was born, she didn't get on that bandwagon. She just listened to my irritation and frustration of Mom and Dad and their refusal to address their twilight years. She didn't bother to intervene since she never found her voice prior to. I had found mine at that time and continued pushing hard until my Dad stood me up for a beer. Then I was done. Andrea just did her own thing as she is accustomed to. Andrea, like the former me, has a hard time seeing into the future. It means that she can make choices or decisions that can negatively effect her in the long-term. When this happens, and she experiences the fallout of her choices, she blames luck or other people for her problems and either forces them to comply to her or she omits them from her life. I've seen it happen with a really good friend of hers. And when her mind is made up, she doesn't move. She doesn't trust anyone - it's something that I work through every day and it's hard, so I know where she is. However, those that she is supposed to trust, she lashes out at the most. Namely me. She hates her mother so her behavior with her is expected. With me, though, it is unacceptable. I've always taken the high road with her. Never made her feel guilty about who she is, I don't talk about how she is abrasive and that her self-centeredness effects her role in my family, etc...I don't talk about the hard stuff cause she can't handle anything except positive reinforcement. Even when the situation doesn't call for it.
So I had my mind made up when Dad was diagnosed. I knew how I was going to handle the chaos internally. I was completely wrong about that, though, as I really didn't know my Dad. I don't know if anyone did, really. This being said, one thing that hasn't changed has been my refusal to step into his patriarchal shoes and try to hold this family together. It's not my job and no one prepared me for it. Most importantly, my sister wants to keep acting as she always has and expect nothing to change in the family. She expects that I will fix things for her as Dad always did and that hating her mother will be tolerated or accepted. I think that she doesn't have an identity unless she is arguing about something, but that's just an opinion.
I can't make plans with her. I can't count on her for anything. I can't have any expectations of her except for those that she sets herself. It's frustrating because she is capable of being something much greater than she is now but she bucks it and bucks it hard. I wonder if it's so she can maintain the idea that the world is against her and she is a victim of other people's choices? She doesn't care about my daughter or what her impact is. She doesn't understand that a family is not about endless love on the surface - that a family's love is the bottom level of the house that holds it up. It is not the fan that cools the air and makes it more comfortable. Unconditional love is like the slab of a home's foundation. You never see it but it is always there through storms, through floods, through power outages...your house will always stand. The irony, I think, is that the foundation on our family's home is literally cracked - a representation of our intangible foundation...and I am not fixing it. I have my own family, whom I have worked hard to be better for and to. In response, they have risen to meet me. We work together and are a family. We have always included my original family but communicated our boundaries: there have always been expectations. We always communicate which dysfunctions we will not allow.
Despite all of my communications, my first family reacted to me as if I hated them. It's hilarious. They confused the role of the family. It is not being 100% accepting of all things under the sun. If I don't make room for my own dysfunction, don't ever assume that you can store yours in my hall closet. By not understanding the meaning of drawing and communicating boundaries, a person alienates themselves from those who are trying to earnestly share their feelings. Because when you communicate your boundaries to someone else, it has nothing to do with them. It has to do with you and what you will not put up with. If I don't yell in my own house, check yourself. If I don't drink myself into a coma during a family gathering, you better check yourself. If you never hear me say the word "nigger" in front of my daughter, you had better check yourself, motherfucker. Don't come to my house and expect to take a bunch of pills and pass out by 6:30pm. Don't bring your negatively charged energy into my home. Don't be the poison in my well. If this bothers you, then you either are the poison or you are self-centered. It's simple - JUST RESPECT MY FUCKING BOUNDARIES, BITCHES.
Since I am the only one in my family capable of understanding this concept, it causes our family to be in a constant state of flux. I felt very deeply about it for a long time. But since Dad has died and my sister has turned into a complete ass over her own problems, as she always does, I am becoming burned out and ambivalent. I can't change people who won't change themselves. I learned about this during group discussions about addicts and addictive behavior. No one quits anything unless they want to. Period. This applies to everything. Gambling, being a jerk. watching football all Sunday, drinking directly out of the milk carton, reading the NASDAQ reports, you name it.
My sister doesn't respect me. I've come to the realization that she resents and hates me for things that I haven't done to her and there is no way for me to address it. It's like Mom and Dad: She has made me the source of her problems. Not her own choices. Her choices are sound and do not need scrutiny. She doesn't need objectivity or opinions - unless they match her desires. So I am now in the same place as my Mom or Dad because I do not accept the things she says, (or doesn't say) or does (or doesn't do) to/for me, Mom, my friends, or my wife or daughter. I am not helpful the way she wants it. However, unlike my parents, I don't resort to hateful words or manipulative tactics in order to get her to yield. I have always reasoned, or tried to, with her. It's a tactic that has worked with my mom, amazingly so. My sister just doesn't want to say or do anything unless she wants to.
I am tired of it. I love my sister but I won't be a part of a system that she deconstructs or disrespects. She's going to have a lot of harder choices as she gets older, and she's already 31. I want my focus to be on the family I chose. At least they are here to share life with me. I'm learning about selfishness everyday and am wishing that I had started learning earlier in my life. It would have smoothed out some of my wrinkles.
But I am tired of feeling like I am oppressive and non-supportive. I am tired of being the best person I can, in the position that I am, to be shit on constantly. I have a family that supports me enough so that I no longer need it from my first family. How fucked is that? And I have responsibilities to consider. I have to keep a roof over our heads, food on the table, put my child through schools, save for college, have a savings at all, leave my daughter better opportunities than I had...My parents had almost everything provided for them because Dad worked in the family business...and they did nothing to help me do the same for my daughter. It angers me to a level that I have a hard time accepting. I feel robbed and cheated. For all the bloviating that my mom and dad did about our family and this big inheritance we were supposed to get, there was nothing. They alienated themselves from all of my extended family because of delusions and self-centeredness - they robbed me of so many things in my life...I have no comprehension of what an extended family is supposed to be like, aside from holiday meals. I had to learn what makes a family the hard way and accept that alcoholism, narcissism, pride, laziness, selfishness, and resentment do not have a place in the home.
I refuse to do that to my daughter, but we are not fixing my first family. We are starting over. I'm not fixing the things that my mom, dad, and sister have been breaking. And I am putting my chosen family over the one I was born in. And why shouldn't I? My first family chose themselves this whole time and now expect for me to choose them because Dad is dead. Well, to hell with that. Maybe if somebody listened a little more closely when I said I needed parents. Maybe if someone paid a little more attention when I never came out of my room. Maybe if someone thought to pick up a phone and ask how MY life was going. Maybe if I had a family that worked together instead of fighting with each other. Maybe if they were there for me a FRACTION of the times that I was there for them. Whatever.
I just re-read this to see that I started off talking about my sister and all this other complicated crap came out of it. It's not that I can't focus. This is really how convoluted this shit is. It's a mess.
Either way, I am over holding people's hands and I am over this bullshit. As soon as I complete the duties that I took upon myself, I am done. And I can say this without a shred of guilt because I have been working for 25 years to keep this family together. I am over it.
