What to My Wondering Eyes Should Appear...

...but another email from sister dearest.

It was a shock. Shocking because she responded so quickly. I had hoped I had bought myself another extended silence. I found it at 1:00 a.m. Sunday. Reading it was not conducive to getting to bed. No sleep until 2:30 a.m. Why was I checking my email at 1:00 a.m.? Hubby and I had just finished cleaning up the kitchen after our family guests left. I always check email just before shutting down the computer.

I will be posting her email for you. All in good time. What is very clear to me is that it's time for me to shut her down hard. The first read-through of her email filled me with a sense of amazement. She was completely showing her tender underbelly. Complete with a confession about how she treated me when she was a teenager. I've never heard her admit to any of it before. It was especially interesting since just a few hours earlier my cousin "Lee" said, "I remember when I was fourteen and living with your family your sister told me she hated you for leaving her there with your mother, and she wanted to hurt you." Here is what my sister's email said about that very time:

"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."

A clean apology like I've never heard from her in my life before. As you can also read here in her own words...I have not exaggerated about her treatment of me. It was nice of her to provide confirmation for ya'll of what I've said about her.

I will say that reading her conciliatory email did have the effect of softening me. I may come off like a hard-ass but I really am in possession of a very soft heart. At the same time she softened my feelings, I also realized it is time to forbid her from further communication. I can still see her working the situation to her advantage. She is now approaching me like she is going to be my savior. I find it repugnant.

I will elaborate more on what I see in her email when I get around to posting it. I think that many of you will see me as being a heartless bitch for dismissing her when she finally gets around to a real apology. I don't relish laying myself out there for the knives to be drawn and to see people feeling sorry for my sister. But I started it...in all fairness you deserve to see how she responded.

Before I close this post I will respond to a question posed in the comments to me from "Poe".

But I have one question. I have read all your posts and there is one thing I can't understand. Your sister is not stupid. Doesn't she know that you have this blog? That her emails will be publically exposed and scrutinized?

She isn't stupid, but she also isn't terribly smart. The thought has not even crossed her mind that I have a blog let alone a blog where I have talked about her at length. That thought would require her to think bigger than herself. She isn't very good at that as you might have noticed. Since the earliest days of my blogging I have kept an eye out for her through Sitemeter and Statcounter. I know beyond all shadow of doubt that she has not found my blog. Keep in mind, too, that she is proud of her letters. She thinks she is right and has expressed herself in a way that no one can see her game or object to her words. She does not possess the ability to know how she is perceived by me. She can't get out of herself enough to get it. She sorta seems to get it in her latest email, but it is too little too late. Anyway, it hasn't occurred to her and I doubt it ever will. Writing under a pseudonym makes the chances of her finding what I've written vanishingly small.

As I've said before, I don't care if she finds what I've said here about her. I don't care if she finds herself publicly exposed and scrutinized. She deserves whatever she gets if she should find me here. In any case, she still has her anonymity. She isn't "publicly exposed" in the truest sense.