LadyAmalthea
 Offline
What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Sibling
Posts: 3
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« Reply #2 on: April 13, 2018, 03:22:29 PM » |
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Hello! I want to start off by saying how grateful I am to find this forum and community of support. I am just beginning in my journey of recovering from growing up with a BPD sibling and personality-disordered father, and am finally ready to develop a healthy sense of myself and appropriate emotional boundaries and coping skills.
BACKGROUND: I can elaborate another time, but for the purposes of this inquiry, I will boil it down to the a little BG on my family dynamic. My family consists of my mother, older sister (the BPD), twin brother, myself, and 2 older half-siblings from my mother's first marriage. My father was terribly abusive, controlling, manipulative, and mentally ill. He showed clear signs of a personality disorder, but he passed away a few years ago after years of isolation and near total estrangement from everyone but me (parentified) and devolved into hoarding and depression at the end of his life. My older sister, the BPD was his namesake, and the apple of his eye until his son was born, my twin brother. I was kind of a bonus kid for my dad until later in life, when my sister stopped talking to him and my brother moved out of the area (BPD sis removed herself early on, never seeing him at custody visits or seeking him out unless she needed something like a car). When my parents divorced and we moved into a new house, BPD ruled the roost and controlled our lives, terrorizing me on the regular. I shared a room with my mother and, in order to "keep the peace", we constantly had to capitulate to her demands and needs (even though we were broke, she got name brand stuff; she would take and break things of mine for the fun of it, insult me daily as an ugly loser, put me down and complain about me until I snapped back --provoking her rage episodes where she would beat me senseless for infractions like trying to ride in the front seat of the car to school [that was HER seat, and for taking it, she ripped my hair out, leaving me with a bald spot] or trying to get in the shower first because she would use all the hot water up daily.) Things got better between when she graduated high school and moved into an apt. with her boyfriend. We went to the same college and had many of the same classes and friends (and I would let myself be conned by charm and guilt into completing a lot of her assignments). When I got married at age 20 (she is 2 years older) things went back to crazy, and she would spread rumors about my husband and I to our peers and coworkers. She is in her mod 30's now and lives back home with my mother. She works part time and, even though she lost her license and let her car fall into disrepair, she uses my mom's car, her bank card, and manipulates my mother to support her every whim. My BPD sister also has a drug addiction to opiates that culminated with heroine and now (she claims) she is self-medicating by buying suboxone off the street (she refuses to get into a suboxone clinic and, like all other matters where logical solutions are offered, provides a dozen excuses why she can't do this that or the other thing in order to get well and become a healthy, independent adult). My mother is like a battered woman in her own home, tip-toeing around and talking in whispers so as not to provoke a rage-assault or slew of criticisms--she retired, but had to go back to work to support my sister. She doesn't interact with her other children much except me (the other siblings have boundaries--if BPD sis doesn't get help, she is not welcome over to their house).
THE INCIDENT: So it all started when my oldest sister (age 45) developed cancer. My mom flew out to her home to take care of her, immediately resulting in my BPD sis acting out aggressively (telling my mom "why can't her kids take her to these appointments?" "if she's so 'sick', maybe she should quit her job instead of obsessing about making money" and at one point, BPD sis started insulting cancer-sis for "obsessing about getting her beach body" instead of, I dont know, reacting to the grief of brain tumors with whatever the BPD sister felt was appropriate?). So while my mother is out of state, she has a property she wants to sell that needs a LOT of work. The tenant that was living there was BPD sister's drug dealer, and for the majority of the time he lived there, BPD sis referred to him as "her tenant" and collected rent that was meant for my mom... .He ended up getting arrested, so mom finally got a judgement to take possession of his belongings and sell them to recoup the losses. My BPD sis has tasked herself with selling all of his belongings, while my job is to rehabilitate the house (which I offered to do because i am not currently working and am generally more reliable in getting projects like this completed). My mom wants to sell this property as quickly as possible, so the belongings need to be cleared out and sold and the repair work needs to be done. My BPD sis and I differ on the approach: she wants to wait until she has sold everything in the house before starting any work, I want to consolidate the items for sale into one room, empty the other rooms and start working on repairs (and move any furniture my mom wants to keep over to my moms primary residence or the basement of the house in question). Since my sister wants to sell everything, I offer to help her take pictures and post items on the internet. She refuses--that is out of the question. I mentioned on FB that if anyone needs furniture, message me because I have an house to empty. That drove her to rage at me. I tell her "okay, but if you want to wait until the house is empty and everything is sold... .you have to sell some of this stuff... .and if you don't want help selling this stuff, can I at least move it out of the way... " (Up until this point, she claims she has been "up all night" and "busy with a million things" getting messages from people asking about the stuff for sale... .but when I investigate later, I find out she hasn't posted anything on the websites she said. Instead, she is selling off shoes and clothing to her friends piecemeal and pocketing the cash).
For some reason, there is only one set of keys to the house, and my BPD sis is being extremely possessive with the keys--she won't allow me access to the house unless she opens it up. Well, there is a lot of work to be done, and I'm an early riser (she sleeps until noon usually) so I started off by asking her if she could let me into the house so I could clear out the old food and assess the work that needed done. I called too early and got an earful because I disturbed her sleep... .so I tried texting... .waiting around until noon until she was "ready" to finally go up to the house. We meet at the house and take out some garbage; I ask her if she can give me the keys so I can get into the house early the next day to start spackling and repairing the walls. She says no. I ask why not... .it seems like a logical solution: I'm up early, I'm available to do this work, and obviously she needs to sleep in later--so win-win situation right? She gets to sleep in, I get to start the work, and any progress made on the property now saves my mom time and money so she can get it on the market when she gets back home. "NO" Was the answer... .okay, how about I make a copy of the keys? "NO"... .when I ask "why not?" she distorts, says I am undermining her, makes accusations, and hangs up the phone. So I complain to my mom and bide my time... .the other night, she got called into work and needed someone to let her dog out, so naturally (needing something) she put the charm on and let me borrow the keys because I was going to walk her dog for her. Her rationale for with-holding the keys now is "well there's only one copy, so THATS why I've been so protective of them... ." (which again, doesn't fit with her rationale for refusing to just copy the keys). The next day, I go up early to work on the house, and, because it's filled with furniture, I have to move some stuff around in order to sand and spackle around it. I ended up stopping at the store and got supplies but also got a set keys cut because I figured she would resort back to the power-trip with-holding game she has been playing for the last week and a half.
When she arrives at the house, I'm in the middle of priming a bedroom. The first thing I hear is a complaint that Ive left paint cans in front of the door and how inconsiderate that is (really, they were at least 3 feet from the door with plenty of room to open the door and walk inside). Then she comes in the room and starts raging that I've made a mess of the place because I moved the mattresses into another room (have you ever tried to paint a tiny room and ceiling with a gigantic bed in the way? It's more work). She sees the bag from the hardware store and then picks up my car keys and starts raging "of what the heck is this? you sneaky sh**, you went and made a copy of the keys? Fine, I'll just get the locks changed again". I lost it. All I have been trying to do is work on this house to save my mom from having to do this all herself when I go back to work or pay a contractor to finish the work. I have put off going back to work until mom returns, again, so that this process can be as expedient as possible. And the entire time, my BPD sis is making this as difficult as possible, trying to control my time, my access and even what I post on facebook. I've had to deal with her excuses and lies and paranoia that I'm going to take something or someone will break in... .It all came to a head and I snapped back "You know what, this is f***ing ridiculous--you're being crazy about this house and I'm about sick of it. You need to get some help because clearly you have a mental illness and an addiction problem, and I'm done dealing with it." At this point she began insulting me louder and yelling over me, so I intensified and started insulting her right back even louder. I'm so used to her insulting and debasing me regularly that I don't even remember what she said about me (I'm "not a psychologist" and I'm a loser with no friends and how pathetic I am that working on this house is the only thing going on in my life blah blah) I fired back "I'm as much a psychologist as you are a drug and alcohol counselor!" (because she likes to tell people that she was a drug and alcohol counselor because she worked for 2 weeks at a pain management clinic collecting co-pays for the actual D&A therapist). She tells me "why are you even here, nobody wants you here", to which I reply "Mom, you know the person who owns all of this and supports your a**, asked me to do this work because I'm reliable. Why are YOU here? It's not like you're doing any work!"
Suddenly she got a call from her friend who is stopping by to look at the shoes for sale, and she morphs into sweet and charming on the phone, puts on the act for this guy, and then leaves with him. I leave window unlocked in case I have to sneak in the window again to finish working (in case she actually does change the locks) and get back to priming the rest of the room and cleaning up. I should mention that, after our first day of cleaning out garbage, I left a window unlocked so I wouldn't have to go through the drama of waking her up, getting criticized for that, and waiting around to work on the house (the fact that I found a work-around to her possessiveness of the house keys infuriated her).
I hear later from my mom that BPD sis already called to complain about how mean I was and what a phony I am because now she knows what I really think and how I hurt her feelings. Nevermind that I just have to eat my words all the time, constantly control my feelings in the face of her provocations and snide remarks, and ignore whatever insulting things she has said about me. I hurt HER feelings. So now I am no contact and trying to work on the house when I know she will be asleep, so I don't cross paths.
I feel conflicted now. Obviously I feel I was wrong to say those things and be so insulting; she's highly sensitive and, even though she only opens up to me or is kind when she needs something, she has let herself be vulnerable with me in fleeting moments and now I've shown her "my true feelings". It doesn't matter that I have been subjected to insults, rudeness, control games, distortions and all the rest--I've always been conditioned to be "the bigger person" and I let my guard down and finally just went off on her for a change. It doesn't matter that anything I've ever revealed in a sensitive moment of what i felt was bonding was later weaponized and used against ME to insult me--I am never to turn her tactics against her. I feel bad for my mom to have to run interference with her grown damn kids while she is away taking care of our sibling.
What do I do now? Wait a few days and apologize? She never offers up apologies to me when she has hurt me... .only "I'm sorry if you feel X but... [then rationalizes why she had to hurt me]" never "I'm sorry period." I always have to make the first move, and frankly, I'm kind of sick of it. I'm dreading encountering her at the house... .
Sorry for the SUUUPer long post... once I got going it was cathartic to let this all out. Any advice is helpful. Even if nobody reads this, it was therapeutic to just vent.
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