A question for the community at large. I cycle between being in Love with Life and in Love with Death. For the moment I am focused on living the best version of life I can. As I grow, with each new coping mechanism I develop, each spiritual practice, each new facility and strength, I feel my burdens lighten, and then the next wave comes. I can accept this for now, since I can always leave……
But while I am here, I wish to benefit those around me, so as not to burden my being with the knowledge that I lived opposite to my deeper nature which calls me to compassion. As I type this my sister is on the couch, generating an enormous drama over the awful person she just dumped, basically demanding the kind of love and attention she will never receive, because she will never accept it, or reality. Though I despise labels, sometimes they are easy. The easy way to describe our relationship is to say Textbook Borderline Personality. “Textbook” because so many people are given this diagnosis today, but only a few really fit ALL the diagnostic criteria. Those who have experienced it know the patterns that can emerge, and how one person can dominate all the energy in the room, jealously preventing anyone nearby from having an experience that isn’t directed at the sufferer, and part of their mostly self-created drama.
I’m not sure what I am asking really. Just trying so hard to love her while accepting that she is effectively deaf to anything helpful I say, keeping distance to preserve my own heart and strength. My poor nephew lives and suffers alongside her, and looks to me for emotional support. My parents somehow look to me to help them communicate with her, and my nephew, and I have become over decades a sort of battery, charging up partway to be drained suddenly, a process that destroys people the way in wrecks cell phone batteries.
Any words of comfort are welcome, or thoughts on the matter that seem helpful for a person who is trying one more time to live strong before dying.
8 comments
family counseling? The question mark because some people are against it because it sounds so stupid to have a stranger trying to tell other strangers how to live their life just cause they spent a lot of money for a degree. However I feel it helps some families, by having that person there that doesn’t know the family they become the third party who can possibly get through to the member of the family that won’t listen hence making your burden less (that is to say if everyone corporates and is honest.) I’ve tried to get my family to do some sort of counseling for years well mine is more of an intervention for one of my siblings but counseling all the same. I’m sorry you have to take the burden of them all when you yourself feel so much pain inside that’s not easy.
I got them TO family counseling twice, but they are all intelligent, educated and defensive. It was a bit like watching a grudge match between skilled duelists. There was blood on the sands.
The times that they ask the most of me are not the worst really. In a lot of ways they hold me in this world by giving me something to do, since I can’t think of very many good-sounding reasons to exist. Then I get to thinking “is this really what I stick around for?!”, and at those moments it becomes more than a burden. It feels like a whole life stolen.
That doesn’t sound the least bit pleasant. Maybe you’re here to leave them all behind and by leave them all behind I mean leaving where you live save money get out go start a life of solidarity without them. However i know that is easier said than done cause it’s really what I think would help me want to live but at the same time I don’t have my ged so I’m kinda sol on finding a job other than what I have to support me. Plus I’d need to save money which is impossible each year something comes up that takes any and all my money.
You are describing one half of the equation with my parents. I suck at making money cause I don’t give a fuck whether I have it, it’s an illusion.(this is a ranty moment, not ranting AT you though)
I live with them because it’s tough out there, and it’s tough here, but here I know I can eat. I Love them and care for them for other reasons, but I stay for food and shelter. Which feels a lot like a pet on the bad days.
I do intend to thrive for sure, and thank you for voicing that like I see you do for others. Anyone who’s not comitted to action yet may as well try new things!!
I keep my escape hatch ready and think wistfully of death often, and that brings me peace to have a way out always ready. It’s straight up tactics! Too much heat comes my way and POW! smokebomb, and like a ninja I am gone…… 🙂
ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh love ranting
thx
Rant away! I don’t mind at all. I wish I could do what you do with the living there to survive I’d do it if I could. However my mother has ran a daycare my whole life and so growing up with other kids that really hated me but were made to be nice cause my mom was their babysitter was not fun. So I moved out as soon as I could. Spent about a year in the real world, working for others sucked, one I didn’t have a ged so no real good paying jobs available and two I really hate people and so I went to my mother and asked if I could run her business with her. Now I feel stuck 10 years later like I feel bad leaving her because we are partners and two I still don’t have my ged i was working on I for a bit but decided fuck it I don’t really wanna continue in this life anyways so what’s the point. Idk I may go back to trying to get it, I teeter back and forth. But I know it’s not worth much, I’m sorry you have to put up with all the drama of your sister and parents. Sorry I ramble on a lot sometimes 🙂
It’s good to be honest with the people who can handle it. Anyone who has lost the will to live can handle quite a bit it seems. Which is my way of saying rambles are ok.
It’s so great when you are the rock for people and you are coasting on fumes yourself because of your own problems, isn’t it? Note the sarcasm. I tend to like it though cause it takes my mind off my own problems for a while.
It’s the chain that keeps me from flying away, for better or for worse we shall see.