Well the worst of the holidays are over! Only new years to get through & that's not that hard. Christmas was a definite mixed bag this year. The events leading up to it have certainly shifted my relationship with my sister irrevocably. When we all first started off & Rodney & I got our house first we had everyone over for both Thanksgiving and then again for Christmas Eve & Christmas day dinner. We did that for years! Then once Debbie got herself together & decided she wanted to add to things we would switch off Thanksgiving & Christmas dinners. But for the last few years with all the financial stuff going on with us for a while we did Thanksgiving at home then Christmas at her house. For some reason or other, I think it may have been because Scott came up early one year, we started having both Thanksgiving & Christmas at Debbie's. Of course she was never put upon to do all the cooking. I certainly brought my fair share plus since I notoriously overdue when it comes to cooking though it was eaten less & less by them. Seems Debbie was always gearing the meals to what her kids would or wouldn't eat. I like the tried & true but I like to try new things too. Since they are both adults and there are others at the meal I don't see why that was supposed to continue. This past Thanksgiving about the only thing that I brought that they ate, and Debbie squirreled a lot away for Trevor as usual, were my rolls. So here Christmas is coming & I notice Debbie isn't saying anything about what she plans to make, what she wants me to bring or anything. Unusual. Of course she's not obligated to do the meal, she never has been, and if at any time she would have said, 'Hey, I'm just not up to it.' it would have been all good. I mean it's not like I can't do our own, I did it for years & still do a lot of our meals weekly and the majority are home made not from box stuff too so I am & always have been more capable of it than even she is. What pissed me off & has changed my feelings for my sister is that she said nothing. Not a word. Not that she didn't feel up to it, not that I might think of making my own plans or anything. Had I not just had this nagging feeling that something was off I would have assumed it was business as usual & only gotten what I needed to make the dishes that I planned on taking and would have been left without the meat for the meal. But as I said, I had a suspicion so I bought a roast. Just to check my suspicions I called my sister on Christmas Eve & talked to her about nothing in particular for almost two hours to see if she'd say anything. Again, no invitation, no mention of the meal at all. Now how damned sad is it to not even say anything to give the person the chance to cover their own meal. That's just sorry behavior from anyone, no less from someone who is supposed to care about you, your own sister. I suppose, as usual, it's my own fault for feeling hurt simply because I expected her to behave as I would have & I forgot again that she might not because she's not me. I could never do that to another person, especially not someone I care for. We all hold others to our standard either of what we might do or what we expect others to do for us so it's little wonder that people disappoint us so often simply because they are NOT us. They don't have to be. The thing we have to do is remind ourselves that it's likely we have disappointed people with our behavior sometimes too. But anyway, I went about making my meal & baking & things to give to my sister & her family just the same. I have to answer to myself so I won't allow her to change my sense of right & wrong. I don't play the retribution games that some others might. If I don't like a behavior I don't partake in it myself. Serves nothing to spread that kind of negativity. The next day she called for something & I flat asked her if we were invited for dinner or not. She said that if we wanted to come she could feed us but that she didn't have much. She just didn't feel up to doing a lot because of all the stress she'd been under this year... I'm thinking, really? Let's see, was it her who almost died a couple months ago? Was it her mother in law who just died a month ago? Has she been fighting to stay afloat financially? Was her relationship as unsustaining as mine is? The answer to all of those is a resounding NO!!! Why my sister does the things that she does has always been a mystery but make no mistake, it's never accidental hurt that she causes, never has been. She took the worst qualities of our mother and somehow managed to intensify them to a whole new level. Where she's nice & generous she's ridiculously over the top. (I've never been privy to that stage) When she views you as less than desirable the only time she can tolerate you is if you can do something for her. (This is where I live in her heart & mind) Anything that I do for her is owed to her because she thinks its her due, not because I genuinely care for her, which I have always & still do in spite of herself. Back to the conversation... I told her that I had plenty of food to bring if she wanted me to. She said that we could do whatever we wanted but she then added the addendum to the statement by going on about how sometime that day she was going to have to get to a lady she works with house to drop off all the gifts that she got for her kids. (That person is on Debbie's highly generous level, at least for the moment) Which was just another way of saying; I'd rather be around you & yours as little as possible thank you. So I said that we'd eat our meals at our own homes & we'd drop their gifts off later. From this point on I will make my own holiday meals & we will drop off their gift on Christmas Eve and that will be the end of it. Needless to say, it was a bit tense; at least it was for me, when we did get over to her house. I kept prodding them to open the gifts so that we could be on our way out. Kind of hard to feel comfortable where you don't exactly feel welcome. When I was in the hospital I was talking to my brother & he got upset with me that when I needed help, such as to borrow money for a short time, why I didn't come to him. I explained to him that I come to him every time I need the important stuff. Someone to listen, someone to disagree with & still be sure that they loved me & I love them when we don't see eye to eye, someone to just be easy & bs with. He's my best friend so he always is there to help in all the important ways. I only go to Debbie when I have no choice, no other options because she's always made the cost of asking too high. Seems the cost is always a chunk of my dignity. She's very practiced at looking down her nose at people & she doesn't exclude family. I know the psychological edict that says what she is doing is called leveling. That the way to elevate herself by putting others down. That being the case then she should be one of the most conceited things walking the planet - which I think she often comes too close to being. I could also suggest that my medical run in with death yet again might have frightened her to the point where she is acting out of self preservation, a common emotional trick that we play when we know that we are in danger of losing something or someone important to us so we protect ourselves by moving away from it before the loss because we fool ourselves into believing that when the loss came it would hurt less if we weren't as close to it. But of course you also see what I'm doing, what I always do. Trying to not only figure out the puzzle but why the pieces are shaped the way they are. Making excuses for behavior that is inexcusable. It's not bad to do that for the occasional oddity but when the actions are habitual there does come a point where it is no longer something to be tolerated. Given the situation then I have to exercise my own preservation. If I can't physically be away from her all the time then I can move myself emotionally away & not engage her or the behavior when I can avoid it. As it was with my mother it is the same with my sister. It's not that I don't love her a great deal, I do & always will; I just don't like her very much. My mother & sister both needed help & support that I can't provide. I'm simply not trained to do so. There has been & still are many things that I offer to those in my life who want it but I don't force it nor will I again tolerate being abused for having an open heart like I did with my mother. Far too many scars there to subject myself to more filleting if I can avoid it. Still, it strikes me how sad it is that she has cut herself away from the relationship we could have. But I suppose there is no forcing someone to value us as we hope that we might be valued by them. All we can do is decide whether or not we allow the relationship to go on as it is, change it or end it. In the end we are the ones with all the choices as well as the consequences.
But other than this one issue it wasn't a bad day. Still happy that it's over with for another year all the same. Everyone got almost all that they wanted and then some. I start back to work full time tomorrow so there will be a bright new shiny computer somewhere in my future. Bring on spring!
