Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Copabanana" data-source="post: 659411" data-attributes="member: 18958">Cedar, what I am trying to get across with the concept of power, or empowering, is that the minute I choose to look at her house on Zillow,  I am choosing to allow her to flaunt her things at me (as if this point, she does not have appreciably less or more than I do, but she needs this to be so.)And the second that I see what she does to me that is cruel, betraying, belittling or whatever and choose to invalidate it, kind of disbelieving my reactions while believing my perceptions...I see this as making myself smaller than I am, and giving her more power.I am choosing to belittle my own perceptions and myself, in order to protect the relationship. I do not think I only do it with her. I think I have done it a lot. To not name an abuser for who or she is, while seeing and feeling the abuse, and knowing it happened, while blaming oneself for having been attacked, is a power relation that has been internalized in me.  This is what I want to eradicate. And to keep doing it is to cheat. Yes, she was. She was mean to me any time she could be, until the end. She denounced me and my mother's attorney of crimes in distributing my mother's estate, when we behaved impeccably and she behaved what could be considered almost criminally. She would be very mean to be now, if she could be.So, we are together up to here if I do not put the word power in this, to describe the dynamic.I am trying to say that I always know who she is, what she does, and I know it is wrong, bad, mean, cruel, whatever.  And I know to stay away.From what I understand with your sister, you did not always see it. I did.The thing I am trying to figure out is this.  I saw it. I felt it. I knew it. For almost 50 years I have run from her. But, I still let myself be defined by her. I keep scratching my head, confused, asking  why questions.  Feeling guilty as if I am the bad one. The lesser one.And yes, I miss her. I miss my Mother. Initially I go to Zillow to look at a picture of her house, where I have never been. Because I have nothing else.  Nowhere else to go when I miss her or my Mother. (As of yet my Mother in her urn does not answer.)But that does not explain why I keep going back and back.  I step into her system of value and let her dazzle me, be superior to me, and tower above me, in everything, when I know and she knows that none of that deception is true.What is true is she wishes it were so. And I fear that I give that to her. And I do not know why I still do this, after so many years.Absolutely true. In fact the opposite is true. She has done whatever she could to betray me or to hurt me.I am not perplexed about who my sister is. I do not expect that she ever change. I believe she feels our relationship's brokenness is my fault. I believe she thinks that I am the betrayer and the hurtful one. In fact, I am certain of it.There is no illusion that anything could ever be redeemed or talked through, because how can you have a conversation that begins with: 100 percent of the fault of everything is your's. And that is the only conversation my sister will ever be able to have with me, to blame me and to hurt me. And why would I ever participate in such?What I want is the same thing as you do and does SWOT. To be free of them, so they are no longer in my head, dictating how I feel and what I do. How I see the world and what is possible for me.  No longer in any way determine what is my place at the table. That still goes on and I do not know why.Even though I have known for 50 years what my sister is and is not.</blockquote>

Verification