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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Scent of Cedar *" data-source="post: 659374" data-attributes="member: 17461">I think it has to do with believing they know us better than we know ourselves.  It could be that we see other families and take on the blame that our families are as wicked as they are. Just like I believed there was some value to that first therapist's condemnation.  I didn't know exactly what it meant, but it slipped right exactly into what my mother (and my own little sister) seemed ~ into that feeling of hope, somehow.  I was a beggar.  I had so little; I created loving family.  Then, when the family D H and I had created fell apart, I felt I'd lost it, that I'd messed up in some way that was so glaringly obvious but that I could not see.  I felt I must have been lying, that the badness in me had been poured into my children and was destroying them.  In my mind and my heart, I fell back into the toxicity of the way I was brought up.  And that was a very sad thing, that this happened.  I had nothing to counter the living, virulent toxicity at the heart of my family of origin.  I was so desperate to figure out how I'd lost what I'd won.  All I had to counter any of it was that whatever it was my mother tried to kill me for, that she hated about me, was it.  It was that thing, somehow.  But as we have established here through all the things we have shared, my mother was always who she is today, or she never would have done what she did to her little girls, or to her little boys, in the first place.  It is still a circle for me in a way.  But I have this, now:  "What do you mean?"That is the best question, ever.I was filling in blanks all over the place when another person ~ any person ~ seemed not to be pleased with me.  I need to stop filling in blanks.  If something seems wrong, I need to say there is a wrong thing going on and let the pieces fall where they may.  That is really all I am doing, here when I post all those terrible things that I know about my own mother or about my own sister.  When I said what was wrong to my sister in that last phone conversation, she pulled out every tool that had always worked for her to put me back in that place where I blamed myself for what she was doing.We are our own worst enemies, in the way that we do that.I think this is true.My own mother does hold me in contempt.  The difference for me now is that I no longer believe her.  My own little sister holds me in contempt, too.  Like always, I am so surprised.  But once we see them for who they are?  We realize they don't matter.  It was our hope for that family dinner, or for that time we would all be cooking in one of our kitchens ~ that was the reason what they believed mattered.  Once I see them, once I see the hatred and contempt and etc ~ once I see that this is what they do in their lives to everyone in their lives ~ I can see so clearly that what they do had nothing to do with me, with who I was and have always been.We were brought up to believe their take on things mattered more than our own.  We were brought up afraid to focus on anything but our mothers.And our mothers focused back with contempt.And our sisters focused back with that strange mix of dependency and ridicule and questioning and listening.There is a mixed up kind of protectiveness where our sisters are concerned.  Until my sister hurt my child when she was already so hurt, I was looking at my sister as one of my children.  They do things that are wrong all the time, too.  But when we do dinner?  We have so much fun, and the food is good and everyone laughs or cries or rages about everything we did or didn't do for them and that's okay, because D H and I know now, thanks to everyone on the site who has helped us figure it out, how to parent adult kids who are addicted or ill.I don't see determined contempt.  With everything we have all been through, there is like, a palpable joy just in hearing their voices or seeing those faces we love so much after all of it.  I was thinking about Buddha baby, SWOT.  Thinking about that whole concept of naming a grand Buddha baby.  I really love that.  Baklava grand is still here with us.  It has been such a lovely thing to have her here alone with us as an adult.  A grown up Buddha baby of my own.That is how family is supposed to feel.Our moms, or our sisters or both, cannot feel that.  That they are who they are has nothing to do with us SWOT and Copa.  Nothing at all.  You will love them too SWOT because that is who you already are.  We only need to make that separation between taking them seriously and letting them think whatever they want.They get to think whatever they want.I don't know why they stalk us.That has nothing to do with us, either.These younger sisters of ours are not our children.  How they see us doesn't need to matter.  We are not their mothers.  However they put the hurts of their childhoods away, it is not our responsibility to help them or fix them or nurture them.  They are adults now, too.You are like me and Copa, SWOT.  You are blaming yourself for the way your sister feels about you.  I did that, too.  I kept dancing faster.  I kept defending myself regarding how often I beat my wife.I am the wife.I was beating her.  For the sake of some win I don't get, I was beating myself for the sake of my mom, for the sake of my sister.I feel so sad that I did that.Maybe that is why I kept posting that I did not get the win in what they were doing.  Like if I could see where I was going wrong, I would fix it, somehow.It would be so simple to create family with us, SWOT and Copa.  Our sisters and our moms don't want that.  They like the way they set it up in the beginning of their time with us, and they don't want to see those patterns changed.That's okay.But I am going to stop beating my wife.  That is the core of the thing, for me.  I was beating my wife.  So were they.  Now that I have stopped beating my wife, their attempts to beat her too seem like mean, small minded things.  Especially given the reason I was taking them seriously, was beating my wife for their sakes, their mean small mindedness in insisting that we switch the players around but continue playing the same pointless game ~ I find that offensive, now.I can love them, and I do.  There are places in me where I loved my mom.  there are places in me where I loved my sister ~ or where that was my intent.Good for me.  I love that I did that.  That is who I am.  That was the hope in it.  The difference now is that since I am no longer beating my wife, she is not available to them for beating anymore.  Neither are my children or my pets or my grass in front of my house or my husband or any of those things that are my things.I like all my things very much.They don't have to.  They can hate me with impunity and they do.Oh, well.The thing is that they never had any power over me that I hadn't given them.  Even that was based in hope, for me.  I wanted to love them.  I still do.  They don't get to tell me anything about me ever again.I see you.I see you back.CedarI have been hating them this whole time I have been posting all those terrible secret things about them right here on this site.  That you would know is one thing.  That I would know what they did ~ that changed everything.***Here is another way to see it.  Love is not a competition.  Love is this limitless thing, this sound of generous laughter.  What we were taught of love, just like it says in Leonard Cohen's "Halleluiah" is how to shoot down someone who outdrew us.  Our children taught us all the ways love is so different a thing than we'd ever tasted.  To go back to Buddha baby for a minute, SWOT.  How is it that our mothers had grands and did not love them, did not automatically create Buddha babies?How could that be?I have six.  They are all Buddha babies, or they will be, when I see them again.  That heartspace is there for them.  All they need to do is be here in the world.That is the difference between them and us.  That is the difference between the way my sister sees and uses her children and her grand and the way I see mine.  I have posted before about the performance aspect in my sister's relationship to her people.  You should see how she treats her third husband.The day they were here making the four generation picture?  My sister snapped at her husband to just go sit down.  And he did it.  He sat right on the sofa and he never moved until it was time for dinner.They are in marriage counseling all the time.  She names him all kinds of pseudo scientific bad names and he is never going to win.  This last marriage for her is a fundamentalist Christian marriage.  She found him on a fundamentalist Christian dating to get married site.  Very efficient.  There is no divorce and she knew that going in.  He knew it too, but not in the same way.   He has told her she ruins everything.  He is correct.  Like you and me and Copa too, he will never quite be able to figure out what it is he is doing, but he will be very sure he needs to try harder to do whatever it is that will make my sister stop crying and be happy.  That is what I meant when I said we needed to see how our moms' or our sisters' other relationships are structured.They just are who they are.They are different than us.CedarRemember when I posted about crying?  And figured out that real crying is when you don't even care how you look or that you are crying?  And that my sister keeps you eyes on while those beautiful eyes fill with tears.That is manipulation.That is who they are.Eyes watching you, straight on, while the tears rise and flow over.  Eyes watching your heart respond.Chilling, really.Once you see it, I mean.Here again, if we are not someone who uses tears as a weapon?  We never once suspect the other guy could be doing that to us.</blockquote>

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