So I both did it because I knew mommy thought good girls didn't drug, have sex or drink, but I did it more because I wanted to be good and I adapted her belief system.
This is so interesting to me SWOT. When I left home I had no idea how to act. My Mother was completely indifferent to my behavior that did not affect her. What affected her, she controlled 100 percent. She was a savage taskmaster.
When I left home I was no longer her slave, in the house. And there was a long time that I would not do much in the house, even though I loved and valued a clean and beautiful home.
As far as sex, drinking, drugs, nobody had cared one bit what I did. But I was timid and afraid and did nothing untoward at all.
Once I left home, I had no idea how to value myself, much less insist that others do the same. Especially men. It took years and years to be able to hold myself as having any value worth saying no to anybody about anything. Luckily I had an intrinsic sense of modesty and decorum and did not crave to do anything that bad. But I had a very hard time controlling what others did bad to me because nobody ever cared either to protect me or to teach me to protect myself. I did not know enough to protect myself from anybody or anything. I had no voice at all to protect myself. No sense of my worth to others. Just to myself.
I really had no hope that my family would ever be normal.
I agree with you, SWOT. I knew that there was nothing in my family for me. I knew it very, very early. But still until my mid twenties I craved my Mother and was very dependent upon being with her.
She thought they were "stuck up" and didn't watch their daughter closely enough.
My Mother was indifferent where I went or with who. As much as I was out of the house after my chores, the better for her. With who, mattered little or at all.
So, once my mother was gone, I made D H leave.
Why did you make your husband leave, Cedar? Did you know then? Do you know now?
Addressing the issues is the one thing not allowed between she and I.
My sister is that way, too. The only thing that can be said is that I am 100 percent bad and wrong. And everything I have ever done in my life is bad too.
If one cannot look down on the sibling, then one can hate them.
I think this is so. As long as you have less or are in dire straits you can be included. If your relative position improves you become someone to be destroyed.
I think my sister thinks I do not understand my place. That I should be entering through the servants' door, and really have lost sight of my true position and value. Which to her is very small. Or nothing at all.
My mother and I used to joke that my sister wanted to think of herself as a matriarch, a very powerful woman not just in the world but in her family. I had thought until now that her role as matriarch she assumed within her own family. I now see that in her mind she had assumed that role in her FOO as well.
My mother used to say that my sister was envious of me, that in her secret heart she felt that I had been advantaged, had lived a life more content and complete, and that she was even jealous. My mother said that she thought my sister felt insecure compared to me. With my mother I always discounted that this could be so. (Frequently my mother would ask me to be kinder, more accepting, more embracing of my sister. To forgive her. Which I would never do.)
Sometimes, I thought to myself, this: How could my sister envy me, when I have had or asked for so little. Have deferred to her, given over her the place, the space of having it all?
But this is what I really thought about what my sister might feel about me: That I had tried to live a life of integrity, responsibility and intention. And that my sister had not. I did not accept that she might be envious because these things were not important to her. To her the important things were power over, money, things, status and control. I dismissed that she felt that anything I had was was worth having.
I think my Mother felt that my sister's envy was of attributes I had, whether it was looks or intelligence or a certain intrinsic confidence in and trust of myself, I guess what you would call authenticity. No matter how beaten down I did not lose that.
Being in touch with who I am I was able to do brave things
that I wanted to do, that other people could do, but usually did not, because they would not make the sacrifice or take the risk. So I ended up doing audacious things. I believed that she did in fact envy this. Looking at this now, this way, I can see why her daughter ended up going to the exact city and college in Brazil, where I had gone, and learned Portuguese, the same language.
But back to the question of hatred. From whence did it come?
I think it came from betrayal of self. My sister betrayed not just others she betrayed herself.
The question is this: Does she know it, does she know she betrayed herself? I do not know.
M has said, your sister, when she gets old and is dying, will be in monstrous agony. She will try to do horrible things. I cannot remember why he said it, but I think it was about the way she has treated me and my mother, and others as well.
Copa, I was thinking of your sister's behavior in the hospital when your mother was sick. That same overwhelming sense of "I am the important one, here."
For my sister she was the
only one there. Think about what she did in the hospital trying mightily to dehumanize M.
To my sister I had no legitimacy or entitlement in any way. And I do not know why.
M and I were talking about my sister a little while ago. His mother wants all of the children to accept the decision by their father to give the house to the evil daughter who plotted and pressured him to get it. Without fighting and without rancor.
I thought about this and was incredulous. I said, you mean she wants you to accept that this evil sister did this evil thing and will keep doing evil things? Including putting your mother at risk, and her disabled son?
Yes, he replied. She believes that family loyalty is more important than everything, and that if we are unified we will be better able to work out whatever problem may come in the future. And I will respect her wish.
I said, you mean, kiss the evil sister and forgive her and do nothing? He said, yes.
And, just accept everything? All the wrong things she does? And will do? Yes.
And I thought about it for a minute. And I said, in a way, that is what I did with my mother and sister. Very early I left the field to my sister. She could have of my mother what she wanted and needed.
I believed that nothing was worth participating in their mess. Nothing that I could gain or get, whether emotional or financial or family or anything was worth it.
Underlying that belief was the sense that my sister and my mother would suffer from their own hand; that no denunciation or vengeful act by me or attempt to equalize things, would ever come close, to that which they would bring down upon themselves.
My sister herself would suffer by what she would do and how she would act and how she would be. That was the belief I had and still do.
So I just left. For years and years and years. Until my Mom got sick.
My sister I think believed that I had capitulated out of weakness. Because I would not be her adversary. To her I folded. To me, I yielded, in the martial arts sense. And if I thought about it all I believed that her own misdeeds and negative attitudes would double back on her. That I needed only to walk away.
And she believed me to be not worthy of a thought. And with this sense of arrogance and underestimation of a silent adversary, she ended up the vulnerable one. And hence her rage. Because I was supposed to know my place. And enter through the servants door.
After my Mother died my sister wrote to me her sense that my mother had chosen me at the end. That I had forced her to.
Why? I had said nothing. Except in front of her girls I said, maybe your mother is saying something so important to the doctor, that I need to go and listen.
All my mother said was this: Do not take over my care. Do not go behind my back. Copa and I have a plan in place and I do not want you to go behind my back to change it unilaterally.
My sister thought she was the only one present that deserved a voice, not just the important voice. The only one. To her I did not have any legitimacy at all, even to say in front of her children and my mother, I want to be present when L asks important questions, was beyond my right to do.
But she did not voice this while my mother still lived, she just said no contact. Why she waited I am not sure.
already feeling so rejected that nothing good could have come of it even if my sister had told her obnoxious little girls to sit down for once.
I know. When I am less tired I will tell you about my sister and her two girls.
D H increasing financial success. Competition has been intense to outdo whatever it is we have.
I wonder Cedar if this is the main thing. All of it. Everything. That it is all about money and success and the relative position it confers. In your sister's way of thinking about things.
