Last Chapter on the Book of Sister

Here is the final episode of the sister drama. I sent this Tue, 20 May 2008 12:53:54 my time:




D,

In your May 10 email you said,

"I know I have always stepped unaware on your sensitive spots."

My last email of 2006 and the one I sent you last week were not efforts to induce you to apologize for past misdeeds; it was an effort to give you some clue as to why you are unsafe for me and my family to be around. It is your ongoing behaviors, much more than your past "crimes", that have been my concern. It is your complete lack of empathy. It is your refusal to recognize the rights and privileges of others - in the present - that prevent me from trusting you and having you in my life as well as the level of deception you're willing to employ to get your way. You can't think of even one lie to cop to. That is a lie in and of itself. Look at the lie in the sentence of yours quoted above. The words "always...unaware" is the damnable lie. You proved the lie in your most recent email. You have done things with intent to hurt. Yet you persisted up to May 10 to insist you never intentionally hurt me.

This latest email of yours confirms what I suspected about your May 10 email; it was a fishing expedition for the next phase of "Operation Trojan Horse". You didn't really care what I had to say as long as I gave you a list. Even though I rejected your pretense of not knowing your offenses of two years ago, I went ahead and reiterated. This suited you well since you ultimately got what you wanted: a formulaic opening for your "repentance" shtick. But it took me having to repeat myself for you to suddenly 'know' what to apologize for. Then, suddenly and miraculously, you can remember details from 2006 that I didn't reiterate proving you were lying about not knowing what the hell you did. This mitigates against me believing in the sincerity and the motivations of your apologies. See my problem? You talk, you lie.

You then indicate you're willing to apologize for more if I'm willing to give you the list. You're only going to fess up to whatever it is I "have" on you.

This is a criminal mindset.

Let me illustrate. A career criminal has finally been caught for one of his crimes. He's been dragged into court before a judge with a list of related charges against him. The evidence is irrefutable which convinces the crook his best hope is to plead guilty to the charges and throw himself on the mercy of the court. This criminal has been doing his life of crime for years. He has just been caught for a crime, but not for a fraction of what he has done over his lifetime. He is willing to plead guilty to whatever the DA has on him because he knows he can't dispute the evidence. There is a list of crimes longer than both his arms that he has never been caught doing. He does not plead guilty to those crimes. Oh, no. He is only going to take his lumps for whatever it is he can't wiggle out of. Whatever it is the "law" has caught him on...that and only that will he confess to.

That is you. You still think like a crook. For all your vaunted "change" and "healing" you still clearly show you operate from the mindset of a criminal.

I don't need to spend my time coming up with your laundry list for you. I'm not going to provide your Jiminy Cricket services. It requires you to do no introspection when we rely only on my memory to come up with what you need to confess to. Expecting me to come up with things for you to apologize for shows me you're not interested in making things right. You are only interested in convincing me you're making things right. It is about rehabilitation of your image, not your character.

I'm not interested in more apologies or confessions. The time for that is long past. You finally getting around to some unvarnished apologies is too little, too late. Sincerely sorry people don't wait two years and several lengthy emails on the part of the victim to start to come clean. Even if I did give you a check-list and you apologized for everything on it, I would still be left with my basic problem concerning you. My inability to trust you. Your way of apologizing inspires zero confidence in you. The only way to find out if you're truly sincere would be to admit you back into my life. That is more of a risk than I'm willing to undertake. There is simply not enough evidence to believe anything has changed.

You need to understand something about my state of mind toward you. I don't think about you 99.9% of the time. And when I do think of you it is just a passing thought with no accompanying emotion. Well, I do usually have an emotion. It is one I would describe as relief. Relief that you're out of my life. By the way, relief is what we call a positive emotion.

That being said, you have gotten a sense of my anger in my letter. Here's the deal: I went from not having to think about you at all to being hit out of the blue with one of your letters where you yet again plead ignorance and pure motives. This is provocative, annoying and manipulative on your part. So, yes, in the present, while I'm having to deal with your latest shenanigans, I'm frustrated and angry. You are mistaken when you extrapolate my frustration at what you've just thrown in my lap to deal with again into some kind of proof that is my constant state of mind and attitude about you. It isn't. Quit pretending my anger is coming from harbored resentments and recognize my anger is directed at your behaviors in the present. Because the past with you looks like the present I bring it up. Your present behaviors make the past relevant. Yes, I was angry in my last two letters of 2006 because of what you had done in the present. I wasn't suddenly lashing out based on some simmering resentment.

I know you'll continue to ignore what I tell you about my state of mind because it doesn't serve your agenda. It is much better for your state of mind to pretend I am the one who is broken, the one with the problem, the one who isn't being "spiritual" enough.

You say you have no expectation that your apologies will result in reconciliation. Yet, you magnanimously offer me the service of further apologies with the obvious implication that you think I need them for my "emotional healing". My emotions are fine and your services are not needed. You have nothing I need and nothing I want.

In the future I will be the one to contact you if that is what I decide to do. Do not initiate contact again. I told you in April 2006 that "Maybe, at some point in the future, I'll call you and see if you're willing to have an mutually respectful, healthy and adult relationship with me". No where in there did I tell you I was waiting for you to initiate contact. I indulged your forwardness. It was yet another time I have given in to your demand for attention that I have lived to regret. I have wasted my time in responding to you. I won't repeat this mistake.

If you want to show me that you've learned to respect my wishes prove it by leaving me alone. The only avenue for the restitution you claim you want to engage in is to leave me to my life without you in it. I am content to let eternity prove who you really are.

Signing off,
Anna

****************************************

Thus ends the sister saga. At least, this ends my participation in that saga. If I ever hear from her again I'll let you know. Be assured, she will not be able to provoke a response from me. It has been three years since I cut off from my parents. They have not heard another word from me. I tell you this to assure you I won't be lured from my peaceful life into my sister's maelstroms going into the future. When I'm done, I'm really done. Maybe I should say she's done. Cooked like a Christmas turkey.

Stick a fork in her.

[Credit for the great 'Princess Bride' icon goes to]