tourthelight
Fewer than 3 Posts
 Offline
What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Sibling
Posts: 1
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« on: March 01, 2019, 10:13:28 PM » |
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First post here.
A few years ago, my older sister moved to the city where I've lived since I started college and have continued to live after graduating, and we both thought that her moving here meant that we'd be spending lots of time together. But it became clear to me very early on that her lifestyle was much different from mine. I'm an introvert who likes to stay in most weeknights and who drinks only occasionally, since I've found from college times that I don't handle alcohol well--small amounts of it affect me much more than the average person, so I avoid having more than an occasional drink or two. I'd experienced my sister's over-the-top drinking a few times before she moved to my city, but I thought at the time that it was an occasional thing. But no--I found that she and her friends wanted to go out to get drunk every night possible, and in my sister's case, drinking soon trickled into areas of life where it hadn't been before. Now, nearly everything she does outside of work involves drinking; even when I used to meet her for non-drinking things (e.g., going to dinner and a movie), she would show up drunk, talking excessively loudly, slurring, repeating the same anecdotes and questions over and over again without realizing it.
Our schedules also didn't line up well from the beginning, and when she invited me to do something with her and her husband (usually a drinking-centric event), I often had to decline, and I would apologize and offer other options for when could meet or ask for alternative times that she'd be free. She would ignore this and badger me about my reason for saying no, before quickly turning very nasty and ultimately sending barrages of biting, offensive, sarcastic texts that attacked me and presented a very skewed portrait of my actions. Usually these texting sprees would arrive in the middle of the night when she was almost certainly drunk. I had already seen her do this all with my parents, who have agonized endlessly about how they can mend things with her and what they else can do to make her feel loved. She insists that none of us care about her, despite all evidence to the contrary and all of our attempts to improve our respective relationships with her.
Last year things came to a head in my relationship with my sister, and nearly all of our exchanges throughout the year involved her attacking and blaming me in her texts. Working with my therapist, I made various attempts to reach out to her in a more productive way--trying to meet in person for a real talk over our issues, writing and sending her a heartfelt letter to acknowledge my role in things and to explain what it is I need from her in order to feel safe, etc. Every time, she responded either by not responding or by upping the ante and attacking me still more. Eventually it became clear that there was a very low likelihood of us being able to improve our relationship, and I therefore decided to take a step back and not respond to all of her text-delivered attacks. That, sadly, was when I began to feel happy again instead of constantly feeling that I was struggling under a suffocating load of stress and fear. I was, perversely, so happy at the thought that we were probably heading toward estrangement. Even though we had been close when we were young and even mostly through college, she had become a terrifying person to me, someone that I dreaded and feared. I didn't recognize her anymore, and so it felt like the person I once knew and was close with had already been lost forever, and I was merely separating myself from this scary, monstrous person who had replaced her (though I know that that is not a generous view of a BP, given all that they experience on their end; it's just how I experienced it emotionally).
When I decided that I wouldn't be spending Christmas at home with my parents and my sister and her husband, there was finally some kind of "change"--she seemed to realize that estrangement was a real possibility, and for the first time ever, she actually apologized for some of her actions and seemed somewhat open to trying to make things better. We talked on the phone (something that was previously a truly terrifying prospect for me), and I was able to push back against her and say what I had needed to say to her without her immediately overriding me and belittling me like she had always done before. However, she asked several times what the plan was for the future and what I wanted our relationship to be like. I didn't have an answer to that (my therapist had said that we would worry about that later on), so I tried to keep it general and say, "I want us to be able to move forward and have clear communication and try to understand each other as much as we can" etc., but she wanted more than that. I felt backed into a wall, and ultimately I said that I would like us to be closer and talk more and see each other more (though I did not really feel that the latter part was true).
Now, it's been a couple of months since that conversation, and I feel pressure and stress increasing with every day that goes by. I have reached out via text a couple of times to try to establish just light and casual chatting again, and that seemed to go fine, but I know that she is probably waiting for me to start inviting her to things (I had said in our convo that I can try to initiate more for us meeting up). But I feel paralyzed, and I don't actually want to take that next step. Even though I fear that her anger is probably increasing back to rage-level again and that the potential progress we made during the phone call may be coming undone since I have not invited her to do something with me, I feel totally overwhelmed at the prospect of trying to set up something under conditions where it's hard for her to drink (and she can always show up drunk anyway). Once I start inviting her to things (assuming it goes well), she will probably start inviting me to her things again, and since her things are always centered around drinking, I have no idea how to handle it. I'm finding myself wishing that I could go back to the time when I thought we were heading toward estrangement, back when I was so happy because I finally felt free and able to live my life without this stifling heaviness and darkness pressed over me at all times. I wish so much that we didn't live in the same city, because the expectations of us hanging out are just too high.
That's about all for now. Sorry for the extremely long debut. Much appreciation if you made it this far!
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