By the time I thought it might be best for me to do some damage control, it was too late. It never entered my mind that one person could be so evil, let alone your own sister. The one you grew up with. The one that shares the same birth mark, in the same spot on her body. I thought there was a sister code.
Guess not. There is way too much to tell. I will try and just relate some of the stories, of the relationship of my sister and I.
I must first clarify that I was directed to never speak of her to anyone, ever!! Any information will be about my perspective in this relationship. There will be nothing about her personal life, unless it affected me personally or was an interaction between us.
The only snapshot of our childhood that continually comes to the surface of my memory, is the room we shared as teens. It was the master bedroom of a very big house. There was a zig zagged dividing wall down the middle, of 4' x 8' sheets of bulletin board, that were hinged together. She on one side of the wall and I on the other. It was like night and day. I could not believe how she could be so effortlessly tidy and she could not believe that I could be such a horrible slob. I seemed comfortable in my mess and she seemed happy in a pristine clean space. I guess that is when I first noticed there might be a radical difference between us.
I frequently wanted to follow her around. I looked up to her. She rarely wanted me there and usually tried to shoo me away like a pestering bug.
I am going to narrow down this lifetime of crap to the top 6 issues that we had. There are way more.
I got married in February of 1979. She could not find the time to come to the small wedding. She said she couldn't because she was in rehearsal for a play. I should have gotten some clue there.
She refused to ever watch my sons. Well, they did handcuff her to a chair the one and only time she stayed over to watch them. I guess I don't blame her for that. Still, she only had 3 nephews. I was the only sibling that had any children. She never remembered their birthdays, rarely got them something for Christmas, never took them anywhere and generally did not seem to care.
I spent my childhood learning how to sew by making clothing for my Barbie doll. When my Mom sold the home that we grew up in, shortly after I graduated, she went up in the attic and took (among other items) my Barbie doll. She still has it or maybe sold it. Not sure. She told me, "Possession is 9/10 of the law. It is mine now." It isn't really about a plastic doll, it is about the attitude of the person holding it.
She called my Mom, the week she passed away, and told her that I was trying to control her possessions and take over her life. Without time to sort out what she was told, my Mom passed away with feelings of mistrust about me. The real intent was to try and help her because she had gone through a few years of cancer treatment, mastectomy, chemo, etc. I had met with my two brothers to discuss what we might do to ease her responsibilities. My sister lived out of state. She was so out of the loop that when I told her how we planned on helping she flipped out and called Mom to tell her that we were getting greedy and wanted her money and property. She upset her pretty bad.
I figured out (by listening to her) that she had sabotaged all family relationships. She had never given me the "benefit of a doubt". She always thought I must be wrong and spun it that way. She kept talking smack about me to everyone.
She always did little stuff like I was sitting in her back yard talking to her and she went in and came back out with the classified ads. She sat there reading it (which seemed strange) until I asked her what she was looking for. Her answer was, "Thinking maybe you could look for an apartment in another part of town." I live, you see, across the street from her and she doesn't like it.
We used to go up North to a cottage on Bear Lake, when we were teens. It has been over 35 years since I had been there. I loved it there. One day I asked her if we could go back up and stay in the cottage for a bit. She got all snippy with me and said, "YOU, are no longer allowed to go there!" See a previous story about my Mom giving me the safe deposit key. She however, inherited a 4 unit apartment building because I had the key.
One Christmas instead of making plans to hang out for a bit, she saw me out shoveling the sidewalk and pulled up to the curb. She reached into her back seat and grabbed a gift bag and called me over to the open window of her car. I walked over there and she tried to hand me the gift bag. I wouldn't take it. I said hold on to that and when you have 20 minutes where we can sit down and have a cup of tea, bring it back. She asked me why I was being such a bitch about it. My only answer was, "I don't accept Drive By Christmas gifts." The gift that I had for her was up in my room. Was I supposed to run up real fast and hand it in through the open window?" She now just gathers up some old stuff in her house and puts it in a gift bag and drops it off at my front door and goes back home.
Which takes us to "The Conversation". I called her one day because I knew she had the flu. I asked her if there was anything that I could get for her. The answer was, "I don't want you to get me anything, EVER." Wow, jump back. Is there an issue? She answered....."Yes, there is. I have not liked you since the day you were born." Who would say that to anyone?? I felt like I should get to the bottom of this. She laid it on the table and I was going to help clear it off. "Let's talk about it", I said. I tried for two hours to come to some peaceful place but she wasn't having it. At one point, I asked what else was bugging her about me and she brought up that I borrowed a sweater of hers, when I was 12. That was about 40 years ago. That is the conversation that opened my eyes to all the damage she had done to family relationships. She pretty much explained it all to me, in detail. That conversation did not end well. She bitched me out that I better not meddle in telling Mike where his sperm donor lived. I had enough of her negativity and accusations of my wrongdoing.
I am sorry but there really isn't a way to sugar coat this relationship. I live across the street from her and we have not spoke in over 3 years unless she chooses to bitch at me (only when there is a porch full of my friends over) or says hi real sweet when someone is watching her. Other than that, nothing. I don't want to talk to her. I want to talk to a sister, just not that one.
She has never visited me at any place I ever worked. No one has ever taken a "happy time" photo of the two of us. I don't remember any good times. We went to St. Louis once on a trip to take my sons down to visit my nearly 100 year old Grandmother. The night before the planned trip she called me to say that she had to cancel the trip because she started her period. She ended up going but there was times when I wish she hadn't.
The issues here are beyond me being able to solve them. I tried for years to be the perfect sister so as not to upset her. I still can feel the statement that she has not liked me since the day I was born. When she said that, it all started to make sense to me. All the behavior that I could not figure out, all of a sudden seemed normal for someone feeling that way. I wish it was way different but it isn't. I wish there was something I could do, but I can't.
Life is too short for this crap!!
