I know when I’m closed off it means something intense is going on inside, something intense that I just don’t want to feel or deal with. I wasn’t sure what it was until I sat in therapy and it came to me that my neighbor I’m helping care for told me I’ve been different since last Wednesday. I asked Dr. D what we talked about. It seems the whole sister issue came up yet again. I really have trouble with that one. I’m not use to feeling so angry with her or let down by her. I’m just fine with being pissed at the mother. I can see her for who she is but I’ve always had a fantasy view of my sister. She’s always been my big sister, the one that hung the moon. The one that I brag about because she is such a great seamstress. She’s pretty and smart. I always looked up to her. Yes, I did her homework, I gave her my food rations, I fought for her when other kids beat up on her and all that jazz. I never hit her back when she hit me. I even tried to show her how to leave when the mother used the dowel rods on us. Still I looked up to her. I thought she was the best thing since sliced bread. But now, to look at her sexual abuse of me makes the face I painted for her turn ugly.
I stopped caring a very long time ago about my mother’s approval but I felt like I needed my sister’s. It hurts beyond belief to look at her as the person she is and catch a sharp resemblance of my mother. I feel like a fool for wasting my time trying so hard, taking her sexual abuse, serving her in so many ways all for it to mean nothing. And yes, her submission with the mother angers me more than I can say. My goodness it makes me mad, fighting mad. I can not stand submission. My stomach turns. I’m angry enough to become verbally abusive so I just walk away. It makes my skin crawl, the thought of bowing down like she did. But there’s more to it I guess than disdain for how she dealt with the abuse. It’s that she also abused and I feel tricked by it. I feel tricked that I actually thought I could win when there was no chance in hell of ever gaining her love or acceptance. Hell, I may have even settled for her calling me by my birth name when it was my name. She hardly ever even called me that. It was Fat and Nasty or Hey Whore or stupid this, stupid that or she just started talking to me and didn’t give me any identity at all. Like with my mother, I simply did not matter.
It feels like a rock has been thrown through a mirror and the image I thought I saw clearly is now on the floor in a million pieces. How am I to walk comfortably with shattered glass threatening every step? Right where the mirror hung, where my fantasy view of my sister hung, is a picture of the woman that raised me. That view is enough to shut anyone off.
Joan of Arc
A Million Pieces -Wednesday, April 30, 2008-9:07PM EST
Hi Austin, Joan and all
Sorry I hadn’t visited in awhile. Some health problems and being busy. I hope you’re all doing ok.
I haven’t experienced this with my own sister, but I have with my mother: the shattering of the image I once had of her, the sudden gut wrenching shock of seeing for the first time who she really is.
It’s hard to see past our own desires for the individual to be who we need them to be; hard to admit that they were never that good or noble or even, in many ways, human.
No wonder you’ve been shut down! A shock, the beginnings, perhaps, of grieving for what you’ve lost–or never really had to begin with. I know this terrain well and there is nothing I can say to make your rugged journey through it any easier. I can say only this, that I know it well.
Like Beauty, I’ve not experienced this with my sister. However, it was very difficult to let go of the “wonder mom” and “wonder dad” expectations I had. I kept thinking they would morph into these fabulous parents.
LIke Beauty said, there was a time of morning. That stunk. But it’s better on the other end.