I Thought We Could All Grieve One at a Time

 I know, three in a single day. But what? You feel inspired, so you write.

It took my sister less than two weeks to call me drunk and accuse me of abandoning her. I think she was actively drinking on the phone with me. She seemed okay at first, just asking for advice and being sisters. It devolved fast.

She never understood boundaries. I kept placing them and she kept stepping all over them. She scared her child yelling at me. That was the moment that I realized I could not possibly keep doing that to my family and to myself. I never stopped loving her and I never abandoned her. She left me, I'm just the one who stopped answering the phone.

That was also the night my friend texted me back. Angry with me for two weeks. And every right to be and I don't blame him. I was such a mess trying to be supportive and kind for my sister while also establishing boundaries that I missed the text that night. She called back after we'd hung up. I didn't answer. And that hurt. That was about midnight.

The next morning, I was awake and mad about it. I rolled over to check the time and saw the text. My heart stopped. Then it caught up. I guess I wasn't going back to sleep after that. There's still some weirdness and awkwardness around that whole thing, but I apologized and I meant it and I will do better. My doctor tells me that it was probably all of the stuff in my life, but also what they call "steroid psychosis." So that's a thing. I know that I did not feel like myself and that I was not thinking like myself. It was all the feelings that I had, but...on steroids. Okay, that was bad. But magnified that way, I couldn't control it. 

We picked up just about where we left off. He managed through the hard thing, and still is. He still hurts. I can tell. It should. He said he was okay, but no sane person is okay after that. So I'm just going to be present when things bubble up or boil over. The best I can do and it's only fair.

Of course my sister apologized the next day. Doesn't the abuser always? And she's done it again since then. Girl needs a therapist. But she does not listen when I tell her that. No one listens to that until they are good and ready to hear it.

I'm realizing lately that there is so much I don't know. And that my expectations and beliefs about people are generally warped toward their favor. I do not know how or why I expect the very best of people. It's not a safe thing. I believe people when they tell me things. Maybe that's why I'm not the jealous sort. 

I'm learning new ways of establishing boundaries. I will not answer the phone to my sister after 5pm. I will not let her be unkind to me when I do answer the phone. It's okay to say "I am not comfortable with this conversation so I am going to stop it" and then see it through. It still boils down, I'm certain, to how hard it is for me to reach out. I figure every other person on this planet is as a good a person as I am, at the very least. Spoiler: that is a big ole nope.