L
LuciaPacifici
Guest
Hello everyone, and thanks in advance for reading this long post. I have decided to reach out about this difficult thing I am experiencing and ask for thoughts and prayers.
The family story is very long and full of petty resentments, but basically as a result of many feuds and infighting, my dad is currently the only family member actively willing to have a relationship with me on any kind of regular basis. I am talking about my extended family as well as immediate.
I was finally getting closer to my younger sister again, who goes through periods, sometimes for years, where she won’t talk to me much and then pops up again. Last time it was a quick, “Oh yeah sorry I wasn’t talking to you I was just going through stuff and didn’t know what to think of you being Catholic” and some other vague excuses. I have always welcomed her back when she decides to return.
This time I had just visited her, and we were planning for me to move down to the city she lives in, in a state a few south of mine. I was very excited, and had been hoping for some time to get out of my hometown, because I don’t fit in here. But I’ve always been too scared to move, because I am really bad at making friends and didn’t want to move where I don’t know anyone. This was the perfect solution.
Last Monday she just sends me a one paragraph note on Facebook about how I wouldn’t be welcome among her friends because I’m a different religion…or maybe it was assuming I wouldn’t want to hang with them because of my faith, which is a terrible portrayal of me…and how it would be “emotionally hard on her.” Yes, this refers to me just being in the same city as her, I was not going to live with her in her house.
This was totally out of the blue and counter to all that had been happening between us. She said some more things about different paths and how I “put her” in a “dark emotional space” and quoted some things I had supposedly said in the past that hurt her feelings. For example, “You used to say this.” Not only were they kind of minor things, but also to my memory I never said any of those things.
She lives her life like this, believing herself entitled to drop any person or responsibility because it makes her feel a negative emotion. But, she has told me she does not feel guilty about using people for money before dropping them. She has been through some hard times and seems to think she is the only one who has, and therefore the rules don’t apply; that is why she quit her old job and the only reason she has a part time job of 10 hours a week is because I helped her get it, and lives rent-free at the house of a very charitable man.
Her accusations of me totally disregard all the times she has hurt me in many ways including cutting me off for years, which I never brought up and always welcomed her back and forgave. She openly stated that she knows I’m “in a different mindset” so basically acknowledging that any different mindset than hers is unacceptable and can’t be a part of her life.
When I visited her at the end of February, her drunk boyfriend assaulted me physically, saying he was going to kill me. She dumped him and defended me and I know she does love me. But she still talked to him and the next day spent more time talking with him than with me. He had also done heavy narcotics with her in the past year. I don’t think she is a regular user but it was scary that she had experimented. She seems to take pride in not getting addicted to dangerous drugs, as if she’s superior to people that do.
Also, she couldn’t stop talking about all the wonderful things her ex had supposedly also done for her, defending him. He used to say things like, he fantasized about killing family members that had wronged her, as a sign of “love.” She would also talk about such fantasies. He tried that on me earlier in the trip, when he was trying to get on my good side, saying there would be “three knives” in anyone who hurt me. Oh—he calls himself Christian.
Yet, in spite of her “wonderful” ex, she can dump her own sister at a moment’s notice. I had bought my own plane ticket there, had bought her gifts, and would buy food that they would eat without asking. I had to clean their kitchen for 5 hours because it was so dirty and I couldn’t even eat looking at it, then they just went back to messing it up.
She fails to see her choice of boyfriend and drug use and lifestyle may have put her in her “dark emotional space.” As usual, she finds some minor thing that may or may not have happened between us year ago, and scapegoats me for her entire life. She is on a very bad path and she rejected me because she thinks I’m not “healing” properly from our difficult childhood. She says that “her” way is “literally the only way to move forward,” although I’m unclear what her way is at it seems to constitute having a nervous breakdown and uncontrollably sobbing on a Saturday night because of some regret from 10 years ago, and then cutting out everyone who gets in the way of her “finding herself” or whatever she is supposed to be doing.
Some of her words remind me of psychobabble mind-trips her ex used to throw at me that would freak me out, and I wonder if she is talking to him again.
In my extended family, it is very common to make holding petty grudges some sort of hobby or competitive sport. I once spoke with my aunt about how I forgive one family member that hurt me, and she was shocked—on the phone she seemed taken aback and said “you forgive him?” She couldn’t believe it. I believe she is supposedly a Christian. Both extended families enjoy grouping together and holding shared resentments, and scapegoating individual family members.
The family story is very long and full of petty resentments, but basically as a result of many feuds and infighting, my dad is currently the only family member actively willing to have a relationship with me on any kind of regular basis. I am talking about my extended family as well as immediate.
I was finally getting closer to my younger sister again, who goes through periods, sometimes for years, where she won’t talk to me much and then pops up again. Last time it was a quick, “Oh yeah sorry I wasn’t talking to you I was just going through stuff and didn’t know what to think of you being Catholic” and some other vague excuses. I have always welcomed her back when she decides to return.
This time I had just visited her, and we were planning for me to move down to the city she lives in, in a state a few south of mine. I was very excited, and had been hoping for some time to get out of my hometown, because I don’t fit in here. But I’ve always been too scared to move, because I am really bad at making friends and didn’t want to move where I don’t know anyone. This was the perfect solution.
Last Monday she just sends me a one paragraph note on Facebook about how I wouldn’t be welcome among her friends because I’m a different religion…or maybe it was assuming I wouldn’t want to hang with them because of my faith, which is a terrible portrayal of me…and how it would be “emotionally hard on her.” Yes, this refers to me just being in the same city as her, I was not going to live with her in her house.
This was totally out of the blue and counter to all that had been happening between us. She said some more things about different paths and how I “put her” in a “dark emotional space” and quoted some things I had supposedly said in the past that hurt her feelings. For example, “You used to say this.” Not only were they kind of minor things, but also to my memory I never said any of those things.
She lives her life like this, believing herself entitled to drop any person or responsibility because it makes her feel a negative emotion. But, she has told me she does not feel guilty about using people for money before dropping them. She has been through some hard times and seems to think she is the only one who has, and therefore the rules don’t apply; that is why she quit her old job and the only reason she has a part time job of 10 hours a week is because I helped her get it, and lives rent-free at the house of a very charitable man.
Her accusations of me totally disregard all the times she has hurt me in many ways including cutting me off for years, which I never brought up and always welcomed her back and forgave. She openly stated that she knows I’m “in a different mindset” so basically acknowledging that any different mindset than hers is unacceptable and can’t be a part of her life.
When I visited her at the end of February, her drunk boyfriend assaulted me physically, saying he was going to kill me. She dumped him and defended me and I know she does love me. But she still talked to him and the next day spent more time talking with him than with me. He had also done heavy narcotics with her in the past year. I don’t think she is a regular user but it was scary that she had experimented. She seems to take pride in not getting addicted to dangerous drugs, as if she’s superior to people that do.
Also, she couldn’t stop talking about all the wonderful things her ex had supposedly also done for her, defending him. He used to say things like, he fantasized about killing family members that had wronged her, as a sign of “love.” She would also talk about such fantasies. He tried that on me earlier in the trip, when he was trying to get on my good side, saying there would be “three knives” in anyone who hurt me. Oh—he calls himself Christian.
Yet, in spite of her “wonderful” ex, she can dump her own sister at a moment’s notice. I had bought my own plane ticket there, had bought her gifts, and would buy food that they would eat without asking. I had to clean their kitchen for 5 hours because it was so dirty and I couldn’t even eat looking at it, then they just went back to messing it up.
She fails to see her choice of boyfriend and drug use and lifestyle may have put her in her “dark emotional space.” As usual, she finds some minor thing that may or may not have happened between us year ago, and scapegoats me for her entire life. She is on a very bad path and she rejected me because she thinks I’m not “healing” properly from our difficult childhood. She says that “her” way is “literally the only way to move forward,” although I’m unclear what her way is at it seems to constitute having a nervous breakdown and uncontrollably sobbing on a Saturday night because of some regret from 10 years ago, and then cutting out everyone who gets in the way of her “finding herself” or whatever she is supposed to be doing.
Some of her words remind me of psychobabble mind-trips her ex used to throw at me that would freak me out, and I wonder if she is talking to him again.
In my extended family, it is very common to make holding petty grudges some sort of hobby or competitive sport. I once spoke with my aunt about how I forgive one family member that hurt me, and she was shocked—on the phone she seemed taken aback and said “you forgive him?” She couldn’t believe it. I believe she is supposedly a Christian. Both extended families enjoy grouping together and holding shared resentments, and scapegoating individual family members.
By God’s mercy one group stayed here for Easter and opened their home.
