Tammi wrote..
"Remember you are talking with the alcohol". I have said those very words to myself many times. Like you said in an earlier post, forgive them, for they know not what they do...
My oldest sister has never acknowledged that our father was a raging alcoholic. He was a social drinker, at best, as far as memory serves her. She was grown and out of the house by the time the alcohol shifted its hold on him... And since she was "Daddy's Little Girl", she refuses to take him down off the pedestal she put him up on and see him for what he became... To look at our father in anything other than the good light she's had him in for all these years would be to admit he wasn't Ward Cleaver and that maybe, just maybe, he had some problems...
My sister disliked my mom and liked my dad.. Whenever we talked about me forgiving my mom she would sputter and go on and on about how my mom could have changed her ways.. etc.. As far as dad was concerned she had and has blinders on.. IMO
She missed and misses the reason why..
I do not think alcoholic behavior just starts up halfway through a persons life.. My mom and dad were not very good parents.. They were not good at raising kids.. Maybe your sister had some tough things happen to her.. Stuff that is buried deep..
I think of that line.. “Me think she doth protest too much.”
Scott Peck wrote in In Search of Stones..
“All things are multi determined.”
The last time I saw my sister I finally understood why she could not be a ‘girlfriend’ to me.. and with that understanding I saw how incredibly vulnerable she was on terms of my mom and dad.. and me..
What your sister did when she manipulated you into that place looks to me.. to be.. a thing that (for lack of better words) smacks of dysfunctional thinking.. Controlling thinking.. Unable to see other people for the very people they are kind of thinking..
Maybe some detective work on your part may help you to understand why she did it.. I believe that if you find out why.. she may end up looking like a person who was messed with.. and in turn messes with others.. or something like that..
Julia Cameron wrote a book called.. Vein of Gold.. In that book she has a person write down their lives in five year increments..
Cameron wrote that when a person writes something that takes them to an emotional place.. a person should go into it deeper… Write about it at length.. Mine for the ‘gold’ in the memory.. Because.. when a person does this they may end up understanding why.. And that in turn brings the understanding as to why we re-act to certain stimulus.. or thoughts or happenings..
You wrote..
My dad was a male chauvanist pig. Women had their place - in the home cooking and cleaning and raising babies... and #2. She was African American. I knew that my racist father would never take advice from her and would do everything in his power to undermine her attempts to help our family... He lasted all of 5 minutes. The second she honed in on his 'drinking problem' as a source of contention, he stormed out of her office. My mother went chasing behind him like the dutiful wife...
Oh to have been a fly on the wall.
I did not take pills.. I used to love tranks but I knew they were long term trouble..
A therapist told me once.. that I was one of those people who could ‘cope’..
I swear that that last generation of people is going to mess up this generation and the next with their denial of emotions and their denial of the humanity of others and on and on..
Jackie