On week three.

The burnout level is high.

Three hours each way (six hours daily) my husband commutes to his job.  Nobody thought this was sustainable but I don’t think I thought it would be this bad.

The pressure of solely parenting five days per week, coupled with preparing a house for (I hope) a tenant is just too much.  Added is poor behavior from my four kids, much of it I’m sure is centered on their anger and fear about moving.

I know I have virtually no support and so I must solder on, somehow.

Yesterday was the second day my youngest daughter, who has serious impulse control issues, fucked with the thermostat so badly the air conditioning didn’t work.  I know she can’t stop (really) but I also can’t express how infuriating it is.  I sent her to bed quickly and sternly and was eventually able to restore the air conditioning.  Thank God. It’s over 80 degrees today.

Meanwhile, the legal issues with my own sister remain at the forefront.  I am so frustrated, angry, hurt, upset, furious…there aren’t enough words to describe how I feel.  Our separation is over a year old.  Legal action is approaching eight months and counting.  I can still remember her statements, even back in July, that she would “only do what a court told her to”.  I remember asking, multiple times, in emails and in texts and in person:  Are you kidding me?  We have to go to court?  You can’t just do the right thing?  Wow, REALLY?  Think of your kids.  Think of your family.  Does this matter at all?

The answer was a deafening no, and here we are.   Fighting in court so she can leave a house she does not legally (solely) own by selling it.  Compensation for my torn ligaments; from her assaulting me.  Lost wages.  Doctor’s fees.  On and on.  It is things I am entitled to, but at times I feel as though they are not worth anything sometimes.  My family is broken.

And yet, in the brokenness, I have learned things of value.  I have learned things that I don’t think I would have known or learned in any other way.

For example, I learned how truly selfish, mentally ill, and damaged my sister is.

One might say that is coming from a place of anger and isn’t necessarily true.  But truthfully – it is.

For years, I believed that we had a pretty close relationship.  When she moved ten minutes away from me, I was sure we would be even closer.  I told myself that it was just distance and financial insecurity that separated us.  But my mother would handle her finances and there would no longer be distance.  Our kids would be together and our relationship would be as I imagined.  We would hang out, talk shit about whoever, while our kids played.  We would help each other (trading kids, trading meals); I even dreamed that I could go to work and maybe she would watch my kids and I could kick her some cash!

But none of that was true.  The truth, I later learned, is that anytime I came over to her house when she moved closer to me, she felt that I was intruding.  She interpreted my offers of “trading kids” for sleepovers to mean that I didn’t love some (especially one) of my kids and was trying to “take” hers.  She felt taken advantage of.  She shared a story of me emailing her to ask about my kids coming over to her house “because they’re begging to see their cousins”.  She highlighted this in a sort of a manifesto she sent our mother and in her left-handed chicken scratch, she remarked that she felt used.  Used!  But just beneath that request from me, beneath what she had highlighted, were ALSO my words.  They read:  “If you want, you can come over here and I’ll feed your kids dinner.  Do they all like spaghetti?”

How was this not perceived as equitable?  I never though that my kids, or me for that matter, was an intrusion or unfair.  Moreover, I routinely offered to feed her kids, watch her kids, or “trade” kids.  I used to encourage her, after she moved ten minutes from me, to call me more.  I will help you! I said.  That’s why you’re here.  You’re not a bother (even though sometimes she was).  Reach out; I know you are going through a divorce and I am happy to help you and your children.  

I only learned later how she truly felt about these interactions.  She liked to be alone.  She did not like an “extra set of eyes” on her (she felt that’s what I was about).  I was an unwanted intrusion and she felt used and “surveilled” while we were still connected.

I didn’t know she never intended to divorce her husband.  I didn’t realize she had clandestinely taken them to see this man (the same man, she alleged, had beaten my nephews.  But it wasn’t just allegations. I saw some of it too.) and then asked them to lie about it.

I didn’t know.

And truthfully?  I probably wouldn’t have known if this hadn’t happened.

Now, maybe it would have been better if I never knew this.

I wouldn’t have known, as she has said repeatedly, that she’s “hated me for years”.  Hated me? I thought we were close…I thought we were sisters…I thought…

I thought wrong.  I was wrong, and through this experience, I have learned just how selfish and truly messed up she is.

If she hadn’t moved down here, I would not have known. I would have continue to press a relationship that I don’t think she ever wanted, certainly not in the way I did.  What she wanted more was support; from me, and from my parents – and most of that came in the form of money.  When the money stopped, we were a nuisance that needed to be eliminated.  She has done a fine job at that.

At some point, I must gather the knowledge that I have about her and appreciate it.  I’m grateful to know that my sister hates me because that means I do not have to expend any more effort on her relationship.  I can keep my children safe from her.  I know the truth.  I know she is a person who is willing to lie at any cost and wants to hurt me in with fervor that remains surprising.

I have to stay strong on dozens of fronts.  I have no idea how.