π Missing my Sister on her Birthday
Last Updated: 3Β months, 2Β weeks ago
And Sad about the Abuse that Tore us Apart
My little sister's birthday has been coming up, and now that it's here I really wish that I could wish her happy birthday.
I don't really care for birthdays myself, I was mostly happy to let mine slide by, but I know that in the culture she lives in and that we were both raised in it's a big deal, and so I really do wish I could wish her happy birthday.
Estrangement from one's family is difficult, especially as she's the only one who actually didn't oppose my coming out and doesn't seem to have a problem with LGBTQIA+ people at all.
But I think I do understand why she blocked me. In a moment of CPTSD overwhelmed dysregulation I trauma-dumped a bunch of text about how betrayed I felt by our mother and I think it was too much for her.
I feel like I should have known better. She's always suffered a similar kind of trauma to me, despite being the youngest - parentification and being way too mature for her age compared to her classmates. When she started school her classmates would fight over things that she would find laughable, being raised the youngest with siblings five and seven years her senior and, I guess, being used to having to act mature to keep up with them.
I guess she, as the baby, also had a particularly close relationship with my mother, not having to share her the way my other sister and I did, as rivals growing up, though we later in our teen years became friends. I guess my mom's appeals to love each other won out over our parents' (particularly my dad's) incentivising us to compete and my mom's tendency to compare us to other people's apparently better-behaved children without understanding reason for this was the security those children grew up that their parents cared about their needs, and not only the ones other people could see.
So forcing my trauma onto her when she was already in therapy and herself likely coming to terms with parental abuse, or not even there yet in that realisation, likely felt like far too much, and I do not doubt that my mother weaponised that as an attempt to bad-mouth her.
My mother, unfortunately, is what Dr K describes here as a non-traditional narcissist.
If you want to truly understand her and her manipulative nature, think about Lila from Miraculous Ladybug - that is the level of insidious that she is, and unfortunately it is incredibly difficult to expose that to anyone who has not been on the receiving end of the abuse. I wouldn't even try, because people like that are skilled at priming those around them to see any accusation as victimizing them. She unfortunately even has my other sister firmly in her grasp and I have no hope for her - she was not subjected to the same neglect as us, because she became the favourite at a young age, when it was discovered she had a talent for singing and songwriting.
My youngest sister also has that talent but by the time it was recognised, well, my dad already made his investments, one of them in the limelight and simultaneously skilled at manipulation, and the other truly, like me, internalised and took to heart the teaching of minimising ourselves for the sake of others, trained to be a "good submissive wife", to support and worship our as-yet-unknown future husbands and rulers, as evangelical grooming teaches in its parentification and objectification of young girls under purity culture.
It is, after all, built on the oppression and free labour of women, as a patriarchal movement.
Honestly I do wish I could reach out to her. I believe she was simply overwhelmed at the time and could not handle the wall of text, and I suspect my mother was trying to turn her into her next "spy" and message-deliverer to keep tabs on me and get around my blocking of her (my mother), as she has a tendency to bend all mutual acquaintances to do without their knowledge. But I do not want to do what my mom did - ignore boundaries where someone has clearly blocked you, even if I do think that she intended to unblock me and simply hadn't gotten around to it yet.
So I guess I kind of ... just implode a little and think about what I would do if I could talk to her.
Tell her I love her, I guess.
I know there is my cousin whom I could likely reach out through. But I don't want to risk crossing boundaries, or being perceived as doing the exact thing my mom actually does. That's the problem with living with a narcissist... they really do weaponise your entire community against you, and it can be devastating.
But still.
Actually. Maybe I could ask my cousin to reach out and ask her if she would be willing to talk. And I guess to deliver her one message: that I love her and support her and that I'm here and ready to try, if she ever wants to talk. And to ask if she would like me to stop trying to reach out, forever, because I want to respect her boundaries in blocking me.
And I guess, try to work on myself and my boundaries because I really don't want to overwhelm her with my CPTSD if she does reach out.
Maybe a mediator would be better...
I guess that's all there is to do.
But maybe, maybe I should just let it go.
She's made her decision, after all, and she does have my phone number.
Maybe I should just be respecting her boundaries. Still, being autistic it sucks when you're expected to mindread what those boundaries are in the first place, and whether you were supposed to have reached out instead to "show you cared".
Or maybe those are just toxic family dynamics we lived with from the rest of our "family", and things I used to just get used to experiencing in friendships in general, before I discovered actual friends - and communities - which don't do these kinds of things.
I guess, time to just let it be, and ignore my stupid need for closure.
Sigh.
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