Family heirlooms: dresses and mental illness

Today my fourteen year old niece announced mid dinner in a restaurant that she wasn't joking but thinks there is something actually psychologically wrong with her. She got mixed reactions from the crowd, which included two aunts (me being one), my husband and a cousin. My sister, Katie tried to tell her that the symptoms which included 'suddenly getting really really angry and hearing myself being horrible to people for no reason and then being really happy all of a sudden all the time' were normal because she gets the same thing. I had to bite my tongue from telling my sister that she may not realise it but she's not so normal herself. I expressed to my niece that maybe part of it is just being a teenager but that she has had a difficult life (to which my sister outright disagreed with me: so having two abusive parents and no sense of stability in life and moving countries twice and going through your parents extremely messy breakup and then your grandparents doing the same and having the responsibility of practically caring for your two younger sisters and spending the first half of your life in a cult isn't difficult?) and two very volatile parents so it would be understandable if she was having problems expressing her anger or emotions appropriately.

I don't know how well my niece really understood how well I was understanding her but I was surprised at my sister's resistance to the conversation. I sensed she disagreed with me even engaging in the conversation.
The thing is, if you grew up in my family, you would be a miracle child not to be psychologically affected. Is this just a pattern of mentallness that will be passed on from generation to generation because each parent is so fucked up by the ones they had? Is this reason enough for me to never have a child of my own? I like to tell myself I am the least crazy of me and my sisters (and I have DID!) but maybe I'm just naive. I don't know that I won't damage my children in the same way my sisters have damaged theirs.

It's sad though, because I feel I have so much to offer a child. I feel I could be an amazing mother. Yet at the same time, I know I couldn't do it consistently because of who I am sometimes. I myself am unstable in that there are other parts of me who can't tolerate humans. How would they tolerate a needy child? Will I ever be different? Is there any hope for me or would I be doing the world a favour by allowing this chain of crazy genes/learned behaviours to die with me?

My eldest sister Noeline has been getting on my goat a lot lately. She appears to be going through some kind of extended mental breakdown, which involves being extremely accusatory, harsh and angry towards everyone she knows. She managed to fall out with my entire family, including me, while I was away on my big trip earlier in the year (I hadn't even been speaking to her, I just got home to find I had been blocked from her facebook). She then reinstated us onto facebook via a new separate identity she has set up so that it is secondary to her 'real' facebook. She doesn't post much on this, except to moan about how hard her life is as a single mum and to write critical things on our profiles. She has pissed me off something shocking this week, firstly because she had a go at me for not getting in touch with my dad and for not making more effort with him while he was over. This really upset me. I can cope with harsh judgements from outsiders who don't know my dad or the history, but my very own sister?! She of all people should know why I might not be keen to make much effort with him.

She annoyed me again because she posted a picture of her little girl wearing a special dress which has been worn by all the girls in our family so far: me and my sisters and all my nieces. She said that she was going to keep the dress now to hand down to her children's children to wear. I questioned what about mine or Katie's children, as neither of us have kids yet and she posted a harsh and cutting response about how it was hers to do what she wants with etc. There's just no need. She could have said that she'd happily lend it to them to wear or something like that but that's Noeline for you. I felt angry but I didn't want to let her know that. I also didn't want to just say nothing because I feel like she only says hurtful and cutting things because she gets away with it, so I just responded by saying: "Oh well, it's only a dress". I think that will piss her off, which I'm glad about, because she's certainly pissed plenty of people off lately.

I asked the rhetorical question on twitter and I ask it again (although if you have the answer that would be great!): how much crap do you take from a member of your family before it is enough? Is there some kind of manual with guidelines as to the recommended amount of abuse you should tolerate? If she wasn't my sister, she wouldn't be in my life anymore. It would be simple: friends don't treat their friends that way. She obviously hates me so get her out of my life. When you share blood it's different though isn't it? But does that mean you should just put up with anything?

Sibling abuse by a sister (What Katie did)

I'm still working on my impending post about what happened at therapy this week... I feel I need to get this off my chest though...

A few days ago I asked my sister, Katie how to sharpen knives: just one of the many useful things I never got round to learning despite being a straight A (or A* to be precise) student. I was scraping the knife on the sharpener but not really getting the hang of it so she put her hands over mine to show me the sweeping movement as it should be. 

That's the end of the story about what happened. 

The knife didn't slip and cut me. I didn't accidentally stab anyone. Nobody got hurt. 

But that moment when she put her hands on mine was the reason my hands felt like they were burning for what seemed like hours afterwards and caused me to want to furiously scrub them clean with soap and hot water. That moment is the reason I have been having horrible, horrible nightmares and flashbacks for two days since.

Growing up with Katie as a sister was not a lot of fun. As she was the closest in age to me, we were together all of the time. We were both on the receiving end of my father's anger and issues, we also both had two other older sisters who received the brunt of my father's anger and issues and in turn took their anger and issues out on us. You'd think having those two things in common might have meant we would be closer and look out for each other; but my sister Katie, had one thing I didn't have. She had a younger sister who she could in turn take out her anger and issues on (and she had a lot to get rid of). 

Given that we were together all of the time and our other sister's were a little bit older, it meant I was the handy target for all of her abuse. We shared a bedroom and went to school together; there was never a minutes rest from her. My sister psychologically abused me. Every word she spoke to me from I was five years old onwards was full of spite, hatred, bitterness... designed to cut me and make me feel bad. It's hard to imagine how a child could successfully psychologically affect another child; you'd think a child would not be affected by hurtful words from another child... but I was and still am. 

What is harder still to understand is the other way in which my sister abused me. I can't say it in words but you will know what I mean as you read. I have struggled for a long time with thinking that this couldn't have been abuse if it was done by a child and by another girl at that. I still struggle with this concept. I've felt guilty for feeling so affected by the things that happened. The fact is though, it was not just child's play or healthy developmental exploratory play; I remember what those times felt like... kissing my cousin... it was innocent. What happened with my sister was different. It is so hard to think about this and even harder to put into in words. 

I still don't know if I was affected so much by it because of things that had already happened to me at the hands of others. I feel sure that my sister must have already been through some things herself to have had awareness and desires strong enough as to lead her to coerce me into fulfilling them for her (it's killing me to write this!). 

I have never read about anyone else being abused in this way by a sister. I've heard of big brothers doing things to little girls... but sisters? I hate that it happened but I also hate that it was her. I feel that because of who it was, I shouldn't have been affected. I should just feel it was child's play. But at the same time, I know it wasn't. I hate her for it. I am disgusted by it. I feel sick when I think about it.

Needless to say, I have been pretty angry with my sister throughout my whole life. She continued to psychologically abuse me throughout our teens and even after she left home, when I would see her, she would still cut strips off me with her tongue. It only recently occurred to me that she probably felt reminded of what she had done to me by my very being and this provoked her to hate me. I certainly hated her. I wished so many times for her to be dead. 

I stopped seeing her for a good few years after she left the cult (while I was still in it: you weren't allowed to have much to do with people who left) and in that time she seemed to mellow out a lot. Nowadays, I probably find her the easiest of my three sisters to get along with. I push all of this stuff to the edge of my mind and try not to remember her as she was. I try to think of her now as a different person. She seems like a different person for the most part.

Last year Katie got married and asked me to be her bridesmaid. Despite her being so different now, I still found the process of being her bridesmaid very trying. I guess I do keep myself at a distance. I think I got through the occasion by dissociating myself from the awareness or emotions. That was the only way. I guess it wasn't surprising that I went and got all my hair cut short the week after the wedding (symbolic 'getting rid of' something), crashed into a deep depression and started self harming again, which I hadn't done in a year and a half. I also stopped contacting my sister and actively avoided spending any time with her as much as possible. I just didn't want to think about her.

In recent months however, I have felt guilty for doing this (because after all, she is a different person now isn't she?) and have seen a bit more of her. I do well to keep all of the feelings of the past separate from the here and now when I'm with her. She's someone else... I keep reminding myself. 

 

But I am obviously not dealing with anything by doing my best to leave the past in the past. How something so simple can bring it all so vividly back to the present. I feel sickened by the images and nightmares. I want to forget it all. I want it all to never have happened. How can I ever move on when the tiniest thing takes me back to square one?