Sister's May 17, 2008 Email

One of the first thoughts I had when I read this newest email was, "why didn't she send me this email a week ago?" Her email below would have had a very different effect on me if I hadn't been treated to her email of May 10th which stands in sharp contrast. Two letters. Two very different realities. They can't both be reality because they are so fundamentally different. Thankfully, they arrived in the order they did because if she had come to me with this last email first I would have been tempted to believe in her sincerity.

I am so tired of my sister right now with all the thought and effort that has gone into dealing with her that I'm not anxious to do much parsing of her email. I'm going to insert some comments into her missive, but certainly not to the extent I could. You all are smart and have enough background on the situation to see things without me pointing it out line by line. I'll put my comments in [brackets] and this color. Like you wouldn't be able to tell the difference if I made no demarcation. I crack me up. It is my neat streak.

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Sat, 17 May 2008 23:26:27

Dear Anna,

Thank you for taking the time to answer my email and risk opening up old scars. It has been a help in understanding how you feel and where you are coming from. I am sorry for the meanness and disrespect I have shown you in the past. I am especially sorry that I have not been someone you could trust and that i have manipulated and forced you into my way of thinking so many times. I realize that it is degrading and disrespectful. I realize that I would force you to accept my view points while ignoring yours. Then I would turn the knife in even further by demanding that you not only see my view point but agree with my view point. I wouldn't stop there, I was not content until you would be excited about my viewpoint...all the while totally ignoring your feelings. For all this I am truly sorry. I did the same to [her husband] and he told me how dehumanized he felt when I did this to him. This all the more confirmed in my mind, the truthfulness of what you were saying. Please forgive me.

[Notice how intentional all this behavior she describes is. The intentional nature of her underhanded dealings with me has been completely denied in all her previous emails including the email she sent only one week earlier. Also, she really loves to believe she is all powerful in her relationships. Dehumanizing? My sister has never had the power to "dehumanize me". Or to force me into her opinions if I was unwilling to be moved. What an ego.]

I did want you to be excited to meet K [her biological daughter]. I did disregard what you had said about wanting to meet her later after she turned 18. I thought I could convince you otherwise and I tried to do so. I didn't think your reasons were valid and that by giving you more "information" I could have things turn out the way I wanted them to. I am sorry that I did not allow you to have your own opinion on this matter. I am sorry I tried to convince you that you were incorrect. I should have just said okay. But true to form, I pushed. And you felt devalued and manipulated. I am so sorry. I apologize for this and I was wrong not to just accept what you said. You had every right to be angry and hurt.

[Again, she finally is admitting to the deliberate nature of her behavior and words in 2006. Something she has denied up to this moment.]

You asked me to own up to when I purposely tried hurting you. I remember in my teen years being very angry with you. This was a time in my life when I really was trying to hurt you. I was so resentful of you. I know I put you down and would dig at you. I think I wanted to even humiliate you. I know I wanted to punish you. I was horrible. You already felt degraded and humiliated and trapped in a life you really didn't choose for yourself and there I was trying to make you feel worse. It was evil. I apologize to you for this. I am so sorry. It was cruel and wrong. I was selfish and self righteous and I am so sorry. I know i couldn't have treated you worse because my digs were sly and subtle, probably leaving you to feel like, "did she really mean that". I can only imagine how awful I made you feel. Please forgive me.

[She obviously has a pretty good memory on how she treated me back then. Why am I only now getting this apology?? We've been on the topic of her rebellious teen years on many occasions. Never once did she think to apologize for how she treated me. Not once. The focus was always on her pain and angst.]

Rebellion has been an issue in my life. I can remember being three years old and deciding that mom's way of doing things and ascribing motives and judgments to my actions was wrong. My act of rebellion to this was to disrespect her requests and demands of me. I realize that my rebellion was a sin. It had terrible consequences. And it hurt others. You were hurt in my acts of rebellion. I was so wrong. I was wrong to mom but especially to you, an innocent bystander. As an adult looking back on this I know you are right. I was shielded by you. You did so much to protect me. Thank you and I am sorry that my selfish rebellion caused you so much hurt and resentment.

[I've heard all this from her before minus the part where she admits I was directly affected by the sins of her youth. This is supposed to be one of her recent revelations, yet she talked to me about this when we were still in contact. All her insights and revelations from God that have supposedly changed her completely in these last two years are old scripts!]

I know I put you into the role of mother. I am sorry. It is not a role you asked for or ever felt comfortable with. It was unfair to you. You were a child and needed a nurturing mother yourself. I am so sorry you never had that. I accept your rejection of that role and I agree with you.

I am sorry my paraphrase offended you. It was not accurate, I can see that. I should have said that after your statement, it was the question I asked myself. And God eventually revealed the answer to me. The root was an issue of abandonment and rejection that controlled my life. [emphasis mine]

[Highlighted above, she presents this as a reason for her youthful rebellion. From what I can tell it is the human condition to fear abandonment and rejection. I have observed that some of the most badly behaving human beings are the ones with the biggest issues of abandonment. They know their behavior should earn them abandonment and rejection yet they persist in being vile. They test us with great frequency. Sister had no particular reason to have these fears. She was the wanted child. I was the unwanted one. She was the petted and spoiled child. I was the work-horse and sometimes the whipping boy. Rather than treat people the right way to avoid what she feared most, she acts like a bitch and expects everyone to hang in there with her. I see this confession as self-serving, as an excuse, as a big red sign of her narcissism.]

I know you said that this wasn't the main issue you were interested in addressing but it has everything to do with all the issues you addressed. God showed me that.

["See? It is really all about me, my issues, my childhood fears." No matter what, she always circles back to making everything about her. Oh, yeah, and she has a hot line to God's desk. She always works that one into her emails.]

No, it is not a work of a lifetime. I only had to live with it so long because in my stubbornness and rebellion I was unwilling to release it and submit to God for the healing. But when I did, He healed me. He changed my mind in a miraculous way and all the screwed up ways I think and see things was shown to me. You are right. I have been a terrible person and a horrible sister to you. I apologize for that most of all. My driving need for your validation was more important to me than your need to be authentic and free to hold your own opinion. I am so sorry. Please forgive me. I am sorry that I never showed you the love you deserve. I did not take responsibility for my actions and decisions because I was afraid of being abandoned or rejected because of it. It controlled me entirely. I was wrong. I am asking for your mercy and forgiveness.

[Using words like "terrible" and "horrible" are ways narcissists pretend to be sorry. I call it "horribilizing". It is a frequent tactic of drama queens of which both my mother and sister are. Using phrases like "terrible person" and "horrible sister" sound like an admission but it lacks content. Then she reduces her "terrible" and "horrible" behaviors to her "driving need for validation" and her fears "of being abandoned and rejected." In other words, "I was horrible, but I was suffering. Can't you see my pain?" She is still playing a victim role. She is still not confronting head on what she has done. Least of all, who she is.]

I have given God the authority over my life. He has set me free from the fears that controlled me and caused me to take a very good long look at myself. I can see why you feel the way you do. I finally can see the me you have described. I am willing to look at more and take responsibility for my actions. So, you talked about my "lies" and whoppers. I don't know what you are referring to. But if you want to tell me, I want to know. In fact, if there are any other specific actions that I have done which are an offense to you, I want to know. This is not a game to me. I do not think that if I play it right I get my sister back. You have made it very clear that ship has sailed long ago. I do not think that if I hold up under my "punishment" steadfastly, that suddenly you will change your mind. What I want is to own up to what I have done. I want to acknowledge your hurts and resentments and anything I have done to you that is still a clear memory you have. I want no more hard feelings and resentment to exist between us.

Love,

D

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I deal with most of what she says in the last paragraph in my response to her. I'll point out a few other things here that I didn't in my response to her. First of all, notice how she uses the past tense to describe her being "healed" and "set free from my fears that controlled me". In the past she "took a very good long look at myself". If she was truly reformed at some point in the past wouldn't that have been reflected in her email of one week earlier???

Secondly, I see her on another fishing expedition. She wants to perfect her game. "Me? Lie? When have I ever lied??" If I sat down and pointed out every single lie I can see in her emails to me all I would do is enable her to hone her skills of deception. Kind of like the psychopath in psychotherapy. You just make a slicker, more adept psychopath as they get tips handed to them on how to better manipulate normal, decent human beings. I'm not interested in improving her game.

She is also wanting to feed. Since I won't let her into my life to latch onto a vein, she can be happy with a recounting of all the past pain she has caused me. She can live on my recitations of past abuses and know I was hurt enough when she did it that I can still remember them. Which she would assume is still causing me pain. There is much supply to be found there.

She persists in talking about my hard feelings, hurts and resentments. She has not hinted even once in any of her emails that she harbors any resentments toward me. So when she offers to confess to whatever I lay in front of her so there are no "hurts and resentments between us" she is obviously talking about my hurts and resentments. She has not admitted to having any herself. She continues to presume to know my mind. She reduces our problems to me being stuck in my hurts and resentments. This is a minimization tactic and subtle blame-shifting. It is also coming from her sense of superiority. She has turned over her rebellion and fears to God and has been healed. Wouldn't I like to be healed too? I am supposed to see that my healing resides in her. She is more than willing to provide the salve my soul needs.

Ugggh, she is disgusting to me.

Another thing on this "hurts and resentments" theme she always boomerangs back to. She has brought it up in every single email since Apr. 1, 2006. I have refuted it each and every time. She acts like I never said a thing about my true state of mind and goes back to talking about my "hurts" and "pain" and "resentments". How is this different than what she describes about her behaviors in the past with me where she would ignore what I have said, try to force me to agree with her, dismissing what I say as invalid, pushing to give me more "information" so I'll accept her viewpoint, etc.? She is still doing this crap in her apology email! She is apologizing for doing this very thing...yet, she hasn't stopped doing it! This is largely how she does it. Mostly by omission and by ignoring what I've said explicitly. Acting like I never said it. This was a significant part of how she behaved when I told her I didn't want to meet her bio daughter until the kid was older. She primarily fought by this sneaky way of pretending I never said what I said.

This apology email is more significant in what she chooses to continue to ignore. This is how she can avoid being confrontational. When she doesn't agree with what I've said then it is like I never said it. She, the princess of needy validation, withholds validation at every turn from me. I am glad for more proof that she is unchanged and unchangeable.

Lastly, on this subject of my supposed "hurts and resentments", I think my sister is projecting onto me her own state of mind. She would never admit this to herself let alone to me. A narcissist can not fathom how the mind of a normal and decent person works. They do not believe it is possible to act as I am acting, by cutting her out of my life and saying what I've said, and that not come from a place of pure hatred and seething rage. They can't conceptualize how we are able to happily move on without even thinking about them. They think about us all the time. And they are not charitable thoughts. I am sure she would love to have some kind of pretended reconciliation with me so that she could lay in wait for any opportunity to punish me for these last two years. The hard feelings and resentments are in her heart, not mine. I'm happily moving on with scarcely a thought of her. She certainly doesn't stir up my emotions when I think about her at times when I'm not having to deal directly with her. She, finally, has admitted to the anger, resentment, hostility and desire to punish me back when she was a teen simply because I left home. My leaving was not a personal act against her. Yet she acted like it was. Now I have rejected her personally. What is the chance that old nasty teen narcissist wouldn't still want to get a piece of me when she could if she had access to me? Small, small chance given that she is essentially unchanged in character from what she was back then.

I do not regret having written her back last week. Now that this little drama has worked its way through I am thankful for what has happened. Ever since I started writing about my relationship with my sister I have expressed my internal conflict. Not knowing for sure if she is a narcissist. I feel I have gotten all the proof I need. I can go on from here knowing that I never need to exchange one more word with her.

In none of my previous letters to her did I shut the door forever on her. This is why she felt bold enough to write me after two years. Even though I told her I would be the one to decide when to contact she, of course, disregarded that. All she knew is that I dangled a piece of hope in front of her two years ago when I signed off. This has been rectified. In my response sent yesterday I told her to never contact me again. Yes, I fully expect she will disregard my command at some point in the future. It doesn't matter. What I've made clear is that I will not respond if she does. She will only get deafening silence from me from here.

The reason I was willing to engage her in this latest round of emails is because I am safe. She has no power to get any further into my life than I allow. It is easy enough to shut down her only avenue to me ... email. She can't force me to engage with her any more than I am willing. She has no power over the quality of my life. Because I had left her two years ago with some hope that she may someday make it back into my life I was willing to see where this latest communication would go. I knew at some point she would need to be vetted. My own sense of fairness didn't allow me two years ago to completely slam the door shut because I wasn't yet sure what she is. She has kindly provided that proof. I never again will feel she deserves another chance to prove herself. She is tested and proven. She has been weighed ... and found wanting.

I will engage in a bit of speculation which is based on nothing more than a hunch. One of my first thoughts when she emailed me on May 10th was that there is something big going on in her life right now. It could be marital problems up to and including a possible divorce. Perhaps she is again having serious health issues. Maybe one of our parents is having a serious health issue. I suspect she was trying to gain some kind of relationship with me now so that in the near future she could try to obligate me to do what she thinks I should do in whatever crisis is pending.

Like I said, this is speculation on my part because she obviously didn't even hint at any of this. I know how she thinks. I have had several conversations with her when we've talked about my mother's 2,400 sq. ft. house that is crammed packed with years of her stuff. Mother is a pack rat. My sister would talk about our having to deal with all that crap when my mom dies. Sister would then become authoritative, "I know I won't be dealing with it alone. You will help me. We are in this together. I'm not going to be miserable alone...etc." She said this several times, and it was after I had cut off contact with my parents. In times of family 'crisis' my sister is always the issuing the orders. My sister has been issuing orders since she was around three years old. Bossiness is one of her most prominent features and has been all her life.

I am very sure she will still try to contact me in the future with some kind of order, "Your mother is dying and in the hospital. She wants to see you. I'm sure you will give her her dying wish if you consider yourself a Christian." All such communications will go unacknowledged by me. They all deserve each other. They can rot in their misery without me.

So much for not doing much parsing. Sheesh. I'm so verbose.

The last installment of this recent saga will be my much more brief final email to sister.