A Chat

 
As I told my good co-worker the other day, I need to learn 2 things: 1 - to listen to that little voice in my head that says "run away!" and 2 - I have way to much confidence in my powers of persuasion!
 
I had a FB chat with my sister that started out OK. Then I asked her if she read our youngest sister's recent blog post (which involved our family & a difficult period we went through, but through the eyes of her as a child), little knowing what the heck it would kick off. The essence:
 
Her: I have mixed feelings about her posting about our family.Me: OK.Her: What does that mean, ok?Me: It means that I accept the fact that you have mixed feelings about it. (this is where red flag #1 popped up)
 
So we continue on, hashing out how she feels, etc. I try to get her to see from Youngest's perspective to no avail. Tried to get her to see that it wasn't as big of a deal as she was making it out to be, to no avail.
 
Then it turned into how the blog painted "us" (her & me) as abandoning Youngest to our crazy family & how it was a "reproach" to us. And I, of course trusting in my wonderful powers of persuasion, tried to argue that realistically, we couldn't just up & take Youngest out of the house, etc. To which my sister goes on & on about how "we" didn't reach out enough, spend enough time with her, and how Youngest didn't feel she could call us (as if she knows how Youngest actually felt).
 
Now, there are some elements of truth to this, but the fact is, I did spend quite a bit of time with Youngest. I'd take her to church, we'd go out to lunch, she helped me bake, she got my 1st Xmas tree with me. One time when my dad failed to pick her up from a concert, she called me to do so.  As she got further into her teens, yes, she spent more time with her friends but I felt that was very normal.
 
But at this point of the FB chat, I stopped. I knew if I said any of the above, Mean Sister would just invalidate it because it wasn't her experience. (That's when I realized that despite my trying to persuade, we got to the same exact point as we would have if I didn't argue the point at all--her minimizing my memories/experiences/etc.) So I just said I was sorry I brought it up. Then she was like, "Sorry it's too heavy for you." (ooo, I was so tempted to be sarcastic back, but I just said I was tired & was going to bed now--"running" away like I should have done paragraphs ago!!)
 
So I learned my 2 things. And I now know a few more:
 
- I think the closeness that she's been experiencing with Youngest may be out of a sense of guilt over the past, so I don't feel as jealous of their relationship. My relationship with Youngest, really, has nothing to do with Mean Sister.- Along those lines, I've been noticing that Mean Sister cannot separate out our individual experiences, feelings, etc from her world. If it's not in her world, it doesn't count or it doesn't exist. I need to lower my expectations that she would ever be able to empathize with me.- I need to lower my expectations that she is EVER going to stop belittling, picking at or invalidating me. And with that, if I ever see that red flag again that she is headed down that path: RUN AWAY!
 
The irony in all this is: in her obsessing with how she may have treated Youngest in the past, she is completely disregarding how she is treating ME now!