Photo

This photo's at least 10 years old, but you can see something of the suspicion in her eyes.

I wish things were different. I wish it didn't have to come to this, but I can't see any other way around it. I want simply to dissolve the abuse, and deflect it from me. I think one of the best ways I can do that is just expose her manipulations. Just expose the dynamic to the universe, for what it is.

How else can I surrender, without feeling responsible for an abuser, and something that's out of my hands?

I'm tired of family shit. I was tired of it long ago, and I don't want it thrust upon me now.

The dynamic

The dynamic of the sister/brother thing.

My sister doesn't listen. She talks, and expects people to hear, but she doesn't listen, and doesn't care about people's needs or wishes. She demands attention, and needs to be needed. Everyone is expected to fall into line and obey her, or face her wrath.

An example of her "help"... I'd just bought a flat with a girlfriend, and Jacqueline insists on "helping" us move in. The flat was in Brighton, were were moving from London, and Jacqueline was living in Ipswich at the time. I said no, I didn't want her help. She'd always been insistent about such things, and this was another one of those times.

Now when I say insistent, I'll give you an idea of just how: when I was in my twenties and living at home, she would insist I didn't lock my bedroom door or lock the door when I was in the bathroom or toilet. Now how fucked up was that? She'd bang on the door, and tell me to undo the lock!

So this day she insists on helping me move into my flat with my girlfriend. I warn her to not come, and tell her that if she does I'll turn her away. But, of course, she turns up. So then when I tell her I don't want her, she throws a fit in the middle of OUR home, smokes right there in the living room, and ends up staying the night - the first night that my girlfriend and I have in our new home.

I wonder if she'd insist on coming on my honeymoon, if I was to get married?

But this is the person I'm trying to deal with. She's not a person who takes NO for an answer. Like the rapist, she doesn't recognise a person's needs at all.

Writing this, I'm realising just how abusive she's been in my life, and just how disempowering her attacks on me have been to me. I realise that these kinds of things have been so defeating, so draining, thoughout my whole life, and I realise now, too, just how much I want this person out of my life forever.

One of the main reasons I came to America was to escape this sister. To escape my whole family, really (with the exception of Janice, who died recently) but certainly to escape this sister, and her clutches.

The first post

I don't know how to deal with a sister who is alcoholic, who attacks me, has hated me my whole life (she's five years older than me, and 56 years old) and abuses me, just as she abuses everyone else.

Thing is, when faced with these kinds of things you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. If I defend myself (ie attack back) she'll say I'm "abusive too". If I say nothing I feel it drain me and diminish me - after all, it's abuse, and it's caused me to have to think and fret about a subject when there are other things I can use my mind for - like my own life.

But the fact is that she simply has no regard for my boundaries, and never has had, for my entire life. Her insecurities are imposed on others for the simple reason that she can do that. She's angry, rude, belligerent, and demanding. Every one else sees it but her. She is her own worst enemy.

So what can I do? What can I do when defending myself against her can be construed as betraying her? After all, there are so many expectations on families - duty and so forth - that mean we're expected to forgive and support other members of family.

But the truth of the matter is: why on Earth should a person accept abuse from another person just because they came from the same womb?

My family is emotionally incestuous, along with so many other families throughout the world. And I, for one, am fed up with the emotional incest. It affected me growing up ( I had all kinds of mental health problems, depressions, panic attacks, anxiety and so forth) and it's these kinds of behaviours that led to them. My father was the same: his rages were imposed on all of us. Was it any wonder I lacked confidence and self esteem, and grew up with such debilitating emotional processes, with such antics all around me?

All I feel I can do now is just put out my sister's emails and phone calls for anyone to see. Let the universe see them. And then, perhaps, they won't be occupying my mind, which I believe is her intention.

My other sister, Janice, died a few weeks ago. This sister, Jacqueline, was abusive to her over the last year - before she was diagnosed with brain cancer. When the diagnosis came, of course she was sorry, and felt shame and guilt. But that's the pattern of all abusers and alcoholics. They rage and abuse, then they're full of remorse. Then they try to make amends, then the resentment builds again, and so the abuse comes back.

Well I'm pretty determined to build my boundary from my sister, Jacqueline. So I'll just be posting future emails and phone calls here.

They may, at the end of the day, just be quite boring to hear. But they'll probably be full of attempts to manipulate, to control, to destroy my self respect and self esteem, and anything else that makes her feel more powerful, and control my life.

And that's the way it's always been.

I've always been terrified of this person, and she's my own sister. Terrified of her psychic energy: her rage, her abuse, her lies, her distortions and manipulations. But since the death of our sister, I'm realising just how dangerous she might actually be.

Hence this blog.