"I Am Not Responsible For My Family"

[Seraphim]

I just wanted to pick out this one point for now, though -- that as I mentioned in my OP (I know, there was a lot there to wade through, so maybe this got lost in the shuffle), my BIL's own father and mother are millionaires. They buy a new car every few months. The father is in the most lucrative and prestigious job you could have in this country, and his wife has never had to work (when I say work, I mean, go to a job that pays -- I don't consider full-time mothering less work than a paying job, but you do get to be your own boss more.) And, not parenthetically, it is still harder to have to go to work for a paycheck, full or part-time AND parent -- especially if you're a single parent.

 

So, my BIL's parents will age in the greatest of comforts. No financial black hole there. They are in their golden years and it's truly golden.

 

And, my BIL stands to get an equally golden inheritance, even split between 4 children. So in addition to my BIL's own financial security, he stands to get heaps more through inheritance. By the time it's all said and done, my sister will be a millionaire. My mother will be gone by then...but that is the track they are on.

 

And this brings up another part of my anger, and it's big: I don't believe that my BIL would for ONE SECOND withhold financial support to his parents if he saw even the slightest quiver of a need. No, he would not put his own mother in what is basically an institution. He would see to it that she got the very best of care, and I'm sure that if his siblings fell on hard times, that would also be considered.

 

So he is not treating his wife's family as he would treat his own, and that makes me feel sick to my stomach, especially when I am his son's favorite Aunt (sister has told me so), and I have invested myself deeply as her best friend, consultant, sounding board.

 

Side note: as I live many thousands of miles away from her (and my mom), physically being present to care for my mom is not an option. It is many hours by plane from where I live, and hundreds of dollars just to visit family.

I would dial back being her sounding board and confidante.

[tiredofvampires]

I would dial back being her sounding board and confidante.

 

And that is the part I am really struggling with at this moment. Because I am 50, and she is 48, and I have spent my whole life trying to protect and guide/console her in some viscerally instinctual big sisterly/mother-hen role. It's just how I am built. And I have pulled back because I feel so crushed and alienated, and this is her response: "I feel like I am being punished for setting my limits. You are passive aggressively taking your fear mentality out on me, for drawing my boundaries. I feel like I am losing my best friend, because you are too bitter to see that I have needs and a family I have to put first."

 

And then she of course conveys this to her husband, who has even more reason to think I'm not worthy a character in his reckoning.

 

I'm in a bind. I truly can't shut her out of my heart if I wanted to because I love her unconditionally, but when I have withdrawn (not just now, but in our conflicts in the past) to protect my heart and soul, she accuses me of "punishing" her and being passive aggressive, and that it's "my way or the highway." She talks to me in parental tones, saying things like, "You may not like my limits, but nonetheless, this is what I'm going to have to do" as if I am some bratty, entitled child having a tantrum.

 

I can't escape looking like the bad guy unless I completely acquiesced to her position. I'm supposed to do it all: stay her best friend just like before, AND be okay with dying in slow motion (that is not an over-statement, because my health and sustainance depends on things I am imminently about to lose) because I don't have the resources to keep afloat. And "that's just the way it has to be". While listening to her vent about her needs in her life that aren't being met, such as not being paid exactly what she's worth, and so forth.

[Seraphim]

And that is the part I am really struggling with at this moment. Because I am 50, and she is 48, and I have spent my whole life trying to protect and guide/console her in some viscerally instinctual big sisterly/mother-hen role. It's just how I am built. And I have pulled back because I feel so crushed and alienated, and this is her response: "I feel like I am being punished for setting my limits. You are passive aggressively taking your fear mentality out on me, for drawing my boundaries. I feel like I am losing my best friend, because you are too bitter to see that I have needs and a family I have to put first."

 

And then she of course conveys this to her husband, who has even more reason to think I'm not worthy a character in his reckoning.

 

I'm in a bind. I truly can't shut her out of my heart if I wanted to because I love her unconditionally, but when I have withdrawn (not just now, but in our conflicts in the past) to protect my heart and soul, she accuses me of "punishing" her and being passive aggressive, and that it's "my way or the highway." She talks to me in parental tones, saying things like, "You may not like my limits, but nonetheless, this is what I'm going to have to do" as if I am some bratty, entitled child having a tantrum.

 

I can't escape looking like the bad guy unless I completely acquiesced to her position. I'm supposed to do it all: stay her best friend just like before, AND be okay with dying in slow motion (that is not an over-statement, because my health and sustainance depends on things I am imminently about to lose) because I don't have the resources to keep afloat. And "that's just the way it has to be". While listening to her vent about her needs in her life that aren't being met, such as not being paid exactly what she's worth, and so forth.

 

I would just tell her you have your boundaries as well. That is the way it is. And if she can’t appreciate you are below subsistence she needs to take the bag off her head.

 

I am sorry for you. Hugs. I understand. My husband’s sister got the lion’s share of everything never struggled a day in her life for any want or necessity even as an adult. She also stands to inherit everything from her parents as we were told we have no need to know what is in their will aka she is inheriting everything. And she is bitter when her parents carried her on their butts their whole lives but the past 3 years.

[tiredofvampires]

So, just to finish on the thoughts in my Post #24, about how my sister is beholden to my BIL, since it's really his money.

 

If my sister came to me and said, "You know, I really would want for us to be able to help out financially. But I know that hubby will deeply resent me for this. Even if he agreed, I think that deep down, he would feel taken advantage of, and he is not close to our mom, and honestly, she's just something on his radar that he feels he is obliged to contribute to. I feel deeply sorry about this and I don't agree, but in the end, I could ask him for this and it would eventually break us. As you know, sometimes I think my depression and anxiety get to him, and we have lost the spark. So I'm worried a demand on him like that, where his heart isn't in it, would be the last straw and I can't take that risk"....

 

...if she said that, I would say, "I understand. Say no more. Do what you have to do."

 

And she would be totally off the hook -- that would have been her out, if sincerely said. I understand the power of the pursestrings. And I know that losing this marriage and everything she has is something she couldn't live through.

 

But that's not what she's saying. She has blamed me and criticized me for my very modest expenditures for things that give me a semblance of normalcy, or pleasure, or anything not purely subsistence -- which are few and far in between, and things she could not fathom giving up herself. She has tried to present this as me having a "fear mindset" when in fact, destitution and slow, painful decline would make anyone fearful. She had defended him 100%, told me that I am unreasonable in my "expectations", and demanding, and so she has not presented this as a plight she is stuck in, but an initiative and choice she herself has firmly made.

 

These are HER priorities every bit as much as his, and that's what is horrifying to me. She is as "removed" and "separate" from her family of origin as he is from us.

[Seraphim]

So, just to finish on the thoughts in my Post #24, about how my sister is beholden to my BIL, since it's really his money.

 

If my sister came to me and said, "You know, I really would want for us to be able to help out financially. But I know that hubby will deeply resent me for this. Even if he agreed, I think that deep down, he would feel taken advantage of, and he is not close to our mom, and honestly, she's just something on his radar that he feels he is obliged to contribute to. I feel deeply sorry about this and I don't agree, but in the end, I could ask him for this and it would eventually break us. As you know, sometimes I think my depression and anxiety get to him, and we have lost the spark. So I'm worried a demand on him like that, where his heart isn't in it, would be the last straw and I can't take that risk"....

 

...if she said that, I would say, "I understand. Say no more. Do what you have to do."

 

And she would be totally off the hook -- that would have been her out, if sincerely said. I understand the power of the pursestrings. And I know that losing this marriage and everything she has is something she couldn't live through.

 

But that's not what she's saying. She has blamed me and criticized me for my very modest expenditures for things that give me a semblance of normalcy, or pleasure, or anything not purely subsistence -- which are few and far in between, and things she could not fathom giving up herself. She has tried to present this as me having a "fear mindset" when in fact, destitution and slow, painful decline would make anyone fearful. She had defended him 100%, told me that I am unreasonable in my "expectations", and demanding, and so she has not presented this as a plight she is stuck in, but an initiative and choice she herself has firmly made.

 

These are HER priorities every bit as much as his, and that's what is horrifying to me.

Truly she has no understanding of your situation and very limited empathy.

[Batya33]

From what you wrote I think it’s possible that she’s experienced your negative judgments of her marriage and lifestyle and spending habits and this is partly her way of sticking it to you in your time of need. Not “right “ but I bet that’s part of it. And no being with a baby 24/7 does NOT cause post part depression. If s person has it if can make it worse I guess - the sleep deprivation etc but just because it’s your 24/7 job (and it was mine for long periods of time when my husband traveled and we had no family or other help just me) doesn’t mean you get depressed. I was exhausted, overwhelmed at times and not taking good care of myself and mostly I knew I’d won the lottery and delighted in him and being his mom. And I’m not the most optimistic or cheerful person. I bring this up because your assumptions and judgments of her are cringe worthy. And yes she knows. Even if you never told her any of these things. So I wouldn’t be surprised if part of her pushback and attitude are based on this. Not fair to your mom of course I agree.

I’m sorry you’re going through this.

[tiredofvampires]

I am still catching up on previous posts, but I want to address this before too many other similar inferences are drawn:

 

I bring this up because your assumptions and judgments of her are cringe worthy. And yes she knows. Even if you never told her any of these things.

 

As I said, none of the things I'm saying are based on assumption, it's what I KNOW about her through direct observation, frank facts, and her telling me.

 

This is a longer story, and involves me as well, because I was there to bear witness to it, but 3 months after the birth of her son, who was constantly crying and colicky, I came to visit for an entire month to help her. My BIL happened to have a sabbatical overseas starting then, so he got a head start and the plan was I would help her for that month and then she would take the baby to join him. During the time I was there, I ignored every pain in my body, every ounce of fatigue, to be the best "surrogate helpmate" I could be. I lifted the baby hundreds of times when I thought my arms would break off (I have a muscular disorder as part of my diagnosis), I stayed up after she had gone to bead reading about colic and looking for remedies, researching caffeine in breastmilk, because she insisted that she would not give it up if she were to function, so I argued with her over that based on the literature, I cooked dinners for her/us, I took the baby in the afternoon as long as she needed to nap, and she was not just tired during this time, she was practically out of her mind with sleep loss, anxiety, panic, and frustration. At one point, she said she felt like breaking everything, and I told her to go out to the shed outside and find rocks and throw them. She was gone an hour doing that. I pushed past all the cues my body was giving me that I was way overextending my abilities, but I was undaunted in my mission to be at the helm, to keep her standing, and to relieve her. Near the end of this stay, a male friend of hers was due to come for a few days and drive her to the airport for the trip oversees. And because he has a special touch with children and early childhood care, she couldn't stop talking about how she couldn't wait for him to come, to "have a male presence." I will add, though it's only a footnote, that while I didn't need a "thank you", one was not given.

 

She was in quite a bad state where I needed to comfort her a lot during that month, but the problem escalated when she reached her destination in a country that was a culture shock, and she was alone all day with a continually crying baby. I was flown over, and when I got there, she had lost tremendous amounts of weight, looking like a stick figure, as she was already a thin woman. She gripped my arm and looked into my eyes in terror, saying she was losing it, that she couldn't sleep. She had developed a severe sleep disorder preventing her brain from shutting down. It was so bad she couldn't eat or do anything. I lay next to her in bed to be a comforting presence, I read her stories to distract her, hoping she would be put to sleep. She was like a child herself. But nothing worked and finally, we had to take a train as an emergency to a psychiatrist because none of the doctors we saw could help her, they were GP's. She was put on a medication, an anti-depressant with this diagnosis: Post-partum depression. And as her child grew into a toddler, and she was with him constantly, she was perpetually telling me about how the tedium, especially in the winter, was brutal, how her life was "nothing" and when I said, "You have a child! You have one, beautiful child, something I have always wanted as you know, and these years won't last forever -- " to which she said, "You have no idea what it's like to have to spend 24/7 with an infant who is utterly dependent upon you, and you can't do anything on your own, and you're stuck in a house all day!" She attributed her post-partum depression to all these events -- the infancy period, the breakdown that she said was her losing her sanity very literally, her dire medical need for medication, and the time she had to spend on this thing called motherhood.

 

So she is not you, or me. Maybe in your case, 24/7 childcare and exhaustion didn't cause depression, and I don't believe that would have happened to me, either. I also would have rejoiced upon finding out I was pregnant, as anyone who has followed my posts over the years would know. She was not, in fact she was mortified with the reality of it, even though kids were in their plans (but she was in her late 30's). So clearly, post-partum depression could be caused by what happened there, because it DID, and it has nothing to do with my assumptions and judgments. The pill bottle still on her night-stand and the medical notes tell the whole story.

 

What's cringeworthy to me is that she wanted a child in a conceptual way, but wasn't fully prepared for what it would involve, and though she is as devoted as a mother can be, the misery she's had where I would have found gratitude and joy, is huge.

 

I can't over-emphasize how close I am to this situation to know of what I speak.

[Seraphim]

I agree not everything we know about our families is an assumption or opinion.

[Batya33]

Thanks for sharing that additional information (and no I don't think any of that "caused" her depression since depression is a chemical imbalance but I think that what made it worse was that she wasn't 100% enthusiastic about being a mother). I never wrote above that everything about our families is an assumption or an opinion - I do not believe that in the least, I was responding to your specific post) and until you shared that information what you wrote seemed to be based on your spin on things, not facts or first-hand knowledge. I'm sorry she is treating you this way and certainly if you were there for her as you said then in my judgey opinion how dare she behave this way. And even if she can't help financially as much she can offer to contribute in other ways.

[tiredofvampires]

And you know...I asked her years later, what she remembers of that child-care intensive we went through together, that month.

 

She said, "Hmm. Um...I remember you cooking dinner." She said that was all she could come up with.

 

I think it's easier to imply that someone is unreasonably a "taker" if you have amnesia about all the times you were given to.

 

There is nothing I did for my sister with an ulterior motive, or out of quid pro quo, though. I want to make that clear. It's just that in the stark light of the situation as it is now, it's clear to me that we do not think alike in central ways. And I fear there will be no fixing that.

[Batya33]

It's funny -my sister who raised 4 children basically as a single parent says she has amnesia about those early years!

[tiredofvampires]

By your own account, your sister is essentially a 100% dependent on her husband and therefore, at his mercy. Her real success seems to be purely that she married a financially successful man. What you don't know is what kind of a man he is behind closed doors and what your sister really has to put up with and deal with in order to sustain her lifestyle. I think you are getting a small taste of it right now as he has rejected contributing anything to the care of his mother in law. Your sister doesn't have any option but to "support" his decision. This is her own survival mode. I'd realistically count her out. She doesn't make her own decisions.

 

This is a really great post, DF, and I think you've gotten really close to the truth of the matter, especially the part about her being in survival mode.

 

I have literally had nightmares where a life raft were are in was being weighted down, and she wrapped me up in towels and quietly pushed me over the side, and I've woken up gasping for air.

 

A friend said to me, adding a more humorous twist to this theme, "Yeah, it's like, if the zombies were after you both, she'd trip you."

 

But, I would be interested to know -- if you are still following the thread? -- if my most recent posts above, regarding the dynamics within her family, about who makes the financial decisions, her role in them, and the relationship between her and her husband as I've described it, changes your view here in any way?

 

My sister's husband is such a bland person, and I know he feels immensely responsible for (and proud of) his role as "provider", that I don't think he is in private lording things over her where she has no say. If anything, in their day-to-day lives, I've seen her be bossy enough that some would think she "wears the pants." This certainly doesn't amount to her being able to make her own decisions, money-wise, independently; and I do think if she pressed him hard for large expenditures that he has no stake in (like, my mom's life), she may run into trouble, but I don't know about that. If she loved my mom enough to tell him this was really vital to her, I think he would listen. But we won't ever know that, will we? Since she's taken that off the table. She evidently feels estranged enough from my mom that she hasn't sent any signal to him that they should prioritize this. It seems she really believes this to be the correct set of priorities, given how many times she has told me I am "unreasonable." To what extent she really believes that in her heart, vs. how much she's made herself believe it in order to be able to find peace/justification with the dilemma, I don't know.

 

You are right though, about successfully landing a man who could take care of her the way she needs. I do give her credit for the hard work she has put into her field and career, and for her devotional care as a mother. If you were to ask her, she's had a hard and thankless job since they were married, especially the years they've been raising a child. (She cites the book title, "All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood" by Jennifer Senior as emblematic of her life.) She's worked hard, I give her that. But he has paid for her ascent and the opportunities she has. I can't imagine what life would have looked like had she been like so many luckless people on this forum who marry, find out they are with the wrong person, divorce, and then find themselves out on the brutal and unforgiving dating market. With a degree in the performing arts, at best she'd have an low-level office job, no time to spend on her passions and creativity, and likely, no child.

 

So, a lot more like me, but without the health issue.

 

I don't resent her for being lucky, but it was largely luck. And privilege (how many kids have their parents pay their student loan debt off outright?)

[Wiseman2]

It sounds like your mother has excellent legal instruments in place and has her end of life affairs well in order. However, crises are hard in any family but they are much harder in divisive and dysfunctional families.

 

All the "hallmark" sentiments are out the window and amplify the pain and confusion. Instead of the support and pulling together one hopes for it becomes a painful awareness that family members all camp in their respective corners and the dark corners of family dysfunction come out even more so.

 

Keep in mind these type of sibling resentments did not emerge de novo. There is no such thing as "the black sheep" or the "golden child", this dynamic is most often from conflicted parents and overall poor family dynamics. Try to quietly think back and reflect on what the deal was with your parents, how they related to each other and how they related to each of you.

 

This may help you start to reframe some things and that in itself will help with some solutions and hopefully help find some peace. When the emotional pain and spin is more settled down, it's easier to think in a more dispassionate manner.

[Batya33]

I don't know about your sister - for me to find a successful marriage, a good match, was partly luck, partly timing and a ton of hard work both at the front lines of dating and internal work too. Having a baby was largely luck as far as fertility at the last minute. And it was my "fault" in a large way that it was last minute.

 

Oh and pick me- I chose a city university. Tuition for the total of 3.5 years was less than 5k but I also won a merit scholarship. I offered that to my parents (would have paid for 1/4 of it) and they wanted me to have it so I bought a VCR lol for our home. They let me live at home rent free. They also paid about 2-3k for my first semester which was at a different college. My family believed in paying for a child's college education and they were clear that private tuition likely would not be in the cards. I personally believe -with some exceptions -that parents should pay for college education if at all possible (and grad school -no, not so much but depends on the circumstances -for that I paid my own tuition). Am I privileged and do I appreciate it? Very much -i probably felt entitled to the college part back then as it was a typical value of the families I knew and knew of. I paid them back at least partially in other ways over the years (sent them on vacations/nice gifts, showed gratitude).

It's not always as it seems and comparisons will eat away at you. Please please for your own health don't. I've been there.

 

Also have you considered reaching out to your BIL personally? He knows you were there for them as you described.

[tiredofvampires]

To be honest, everything in me is repelled by what your sister is doing. It goes against everything I believe in.

I understand the feeling you have of betrayal.

 

I'm keeping this short for now, as I feel all these strong emotions reading your posts.

 

Here's what it boils down to. No, you can't count on her to step up. When poop hits the fan, that's when you really see what someone is made of. I believe Capricorn had it right. She's too dependent a personality to risk any thing that could upset her standard of living. She's not faced being truly on her own, so she can't put someone's else's needs first. She literally does not have it in her. It's her limitation,band maybe she will manage to go through life never facing it. Some people do.

 

Knowing that, doesn't stop the feelings. The pain. I need you. Sorry, no can do. That hurts. When you need someone you love, and they aren't there for you, it hurts no matter the reason or explanation. It's that intersection where your need meets their capabilities, or lack of.

Knowing that though can help in the letting go. Because they are just being who they are. You can't get blood from a stone. And you can't get acts of courage from those who are so worried of getting supply outside themself.

 

Thank you so much for this post, IAG. I was hoping you would show up, and you did, and I'm grateful for it, because I know you wouldn't blow smoke up my or anyone's butt just to make them feel better. And everything you said feels so dead on, I was going to bold a few portions that seem particularly incisive, but it all is.

 

Ha, yeah, I get DancingFool and Capricorn mixed up, too, sometimes, with the avatars. But both she and you said things that I believe are true about my sister, and although our years together, relying on eachother, have been speckled with little spikes of discord, we were able to diffuse situations over days or weeks and return to a baseline of warm, fuzzy sisterly BFF love...but this is different. As you said. It runs against everything I stand for and believe in, it's so fundamental.

 

And I now see the pieces of the other instances coming together to create a more crystallized picture of my sister's personality, and mine, and how the differences were more or less non-determining until now -- even though the writing was on the wall. I am not sure how much is inborn, and how much is "made" by a lifetime of not having to support herself with her own means (and therefore naturally having no lived experience of fending for herself, and that hustle), but I don't feel she can even start to comprehend the nightmare that I am facing, that she WOULD be facing, were she not sitting on the high and mighty throne of disconnection she's sitting on now, drawing a line in the sand between, "me and my family" and "you, mom, other sister, and our shared past." I do understand, and have compassion and empathy, for her wanting to protect herself and in a sense, "create a new life". Even wanting to run. But I also think that her maker didn't infuse her with the same sense of interdependence that I have, and that my self-preservation is not worth much if it's not balanced with solidarity. This runs deep in my bones regardless of my status, or even familial duty. It is true, and I rarely feel like saying such things because they sound boastful, but when crap hits the fan, that is when I am MOST likely to be there, because that is when I feel I am most needed. She is the exact opposite. And I think this is the part that is inborn: that she feels anyone's dependency upon her is a burden. Why else would her face have become ashen when she found out she was pregnant? It's not like she was a teen with a whole life ahead to have ruined. It's not like they couldn't support a child. And it's not like she and they didn't plan on one! She said she knew that because they took no precautions, they expected it would happen at one point or another, so it's something she did want. Eventually. In the abstract, because that was just part of the grown-up, now-married, tenure-track Life Plan. But then when the prospect of all the things she would have to give up for another human being, how she would have to sacrifice herself and her own self-directed time in many ways (as that is the nature of parenting) was staring her in the face, all this fear and aversion arose.

 

Her pregnancy was miserable all the way through, her labor difficult and long, and then the launch into an infancy that went above and beyond normal weariness, sleep loss, and tedium. It was a crisis for her, a trial by fire. And I do have to wonder how much these deep roots of feeling, bonding, and emotion were transferred to her baby, now on the cusp of coming of age rites in our culture, and the fact that she says her husband is by far the preferred parent. This is a digression, of course...but not really, in the sense that I don't feel she was a "born mother", born to "take care" of anyone, and yet it has been fairly easy for her to accept that she has profited from being taken care of, including by me, when things were unbearable emotionally.

 

I am by no means suggesting that she is not grateful for what her husband has brought to her life, and now, she cherishes her son more than her own life. And I don't wish to paint a picture that she has been sitting around the house, being waited on. She has been active, aspiring, and devoted to the projects she's taken on, including motherhood. She has pulled her own weight in their marriage, in her own role.

 

But it is interesting to me that I got a few things so wrong. When she was pregnant and in my nephew's infancy, during that very rough period, through which I was present and 2 feet in, whether long-distance or in person...I thought to myself that the self-preserving, self-centered inclinations that had shown up over the years would now be shed. I thought, "As a mother, she will learn more about how to extend herself without feeling depleted, to widen her circle of what she thinks of as 'myself'".

 

I felt that it would change her in good ways, to be more nurturing in general. In fact, the opposite occurred. As it turns out, it was more like, what amount she had to give and offer to anyone else was reduced by that much that mothering took out of her. The circle of what she considered, "part of me" got even smaller, consolidated down to this child, her now sole focus and energy expenditure. Pouring everything into him, something else had to give, and that was me. And now MOM and the rest.

 

I know some will be saying, but it's normal for parents and families to have to focus their energies on their own children, and put that nuclear family first. I get it, got it. And sure. I accept that as normal in this culture. On the other hand, I live in a place where children are still raised in a more tribal manner, even in modern settings. Your aunties, your grandma, your siblings, everyone in the family matters in the raising of that child, and equally, all of those members when they are faltering are counted into the equation of where the collective energy and care goes. What hurts the most is feeling that I have carried that spirit with me for these last 12 years with her son, and before that, as I could, from a long distance, as her trusted ally, but with her world having shrunken into this currently small bandwidth, I am incidental in her life.

 

She has been writing to me that she feels I am punishing her for trying to draw "healthy boundaries", and saying our family had none. True, our family didn't have healthy boundaries. But I don't think this is a matter of my having unhealthy boundaries. This is a matter of her seeing my fate as unrelated to hers, and that my saying "I need you" is an affront to the separation that should be there -- and that separation isn't so much a healthy boundary as a mindstate of scarcity and territoriality.

 

It is so, so hard to say, "I need you". The most laughable irony about all this is that I was the first one to seek my independence, financially and otherwise, of us 3 kids. Because of that cultish upbringing, and the abuse that took place in it, it became my laser focus to imagine myself free of it, liberated to go about the world as I pleased, with my own resources, inner and outer. I stayed alive for this. I worked, worked many jobs, foregoing college for 2 years, for this (and then IN college) -- against the dictates of my upbringing that I would naturally just fall in line by going to college, which I was so groomed for. After my senior year in high school, the only thing that pulled me out of a suicidal depression was believing I could do this, save myself. And so it is the wickedest of turns that now, decades later, I am depending on forces outside myself and their generosity, having to say, "I need you", which is so terribly abhorrent to me; I never imagined the sister who pledged a lifelong commitment to our solidarity saying, "I'm not your savior", content for me to feel a beggar, as if I ever asked or wanted one, much less from her. I even am having trouble putting this out there, on this forum, to have to be this vulnerable.

 

I keep wondering, what if the roles were reversed. What if. I know. I know. I know, and I know, it would be different. Then again, I wouldn't have married a man who couldn't hug her and call her "sister", because now there is an inextricable linkage.

 

You are so right, here:

 

It's that intersection where your need meets their capabilities, or lack of.

Knowing that though can help in the letting go. Because they are just being who they are. You can't get blood from a stone. And you can't get acts of courage from those who are so worried of getting supply outside themself.

 

I have thought those exact words so many times, "You can't get blood from a stone." My sister has suggested we go to therapy to hash this out. What she really wants to do is set me straight about how unrealistic my expectations are, and how unfair I am to her, and how I have burdened her, and can't I see that at last? And my inclination is to just leave it alone. I know that people who care about their in-laws, do such things in this world. I have seen with my own eyes what I admire in families and this isn't it. And what good is it to try to impress values upon people who don't hold them? I might as well argue with people who don't hold my political views, trying to change them.

 

I believe you're right on that the work ahead of me is to be seeing this as a lack and a limit in her that is just there. And that maybe just seeing that as starkly as possible is the only way to move forward, and on. Maybe she can't help being who she is and I will just have to forgive her. Which is going to be hard with her knocking on my door asking for our friendship to be restored, as my life as I know it goes up in flames.

[Batya33]

"I believe you're right on that the work ahead of me is to be seeing this as a lack and a limit in her that is just there. And that maybe just seeing that as starkly as possible is the only way to move forward, and on. Maybe she can't help being who she is and I will just have to forgive her. Which is going to be hard with her knocking on my door asking for our friendship to be restored, as my life as I know it goes up in flames."

 

I hope for your sake and your family's sake that you can redirect your energies to figuring out what to do next to help your mother. I think you'll feel much more positive if you start the plans and that process. It's not easy but it will feel more accomplished I think.

 

On one aspect, I know many disagree but I don't think parenthood makes anyone more responsible or adult. I think it makes people use their skills and maturity in a different way, I think it tests limits and boundaries, etc. but I don't think it transforms anyone in that way. certainly there are many life changing experiences that happen with, for example, getting an education, travel, helping others during a difficult time, etc but I don't think that changes someone innately it just draws on whatever strengths are already there.

[Seraphim]

Your sister is just panicking because you might not view her in the same light.