Dear Cali Chica:

I kept the  computer on longer than the half hour I mentioned yesterday but lost the internet, tried to retrieve it but wasn’t able to, eventually I gave up and proceeded with the rest  of my  day.

It  may very well be that  you were abusive to your younger sister when the two of you were children. It happens often that siblings in an aggressive household turn against each  other, the older against  the younger. I physically abused my younger sister, regretfully. In your sister’s thread, she shared what you told her as adults, and  according  to her quote, you were clearly verbally abusive to her.

In your post yesterday, you wrote: “I have put  her down many  times in my life”.  If she was a  child when you put her down, then your abuse  of her happened during  her formative years, and  even if you  no longer do, that childhood experience gets activated  in the  present.

In her experience she has two or three abusers of  origin: mother, sister, father. This is why “she felt like the  black sheep”- in her experience there weren’t two black sheep, you and her, only one.

Last summer, “one day while she was living with my  parents, she had a terrible breaking point. I drove from my in laws…”- a person at a breaking  point will ask for and receive help from anyone. Not long before the recent summer she lived far away from her parents, needed help, they were willing and therefore she moved in with them.

Come Christmas she chooses to be with  people she just met, than to be with you or with her  parents.

Let’s look at your example: “The way I see it is like this, and sorry if it is graphic. There are 2 girls who are raped by the same man. One is older… The other is younger. They both suffered trauma and abuse from this man”-

I will add to it that following  the rape by the man, the older girl raped the younger girl (in a  different way, still a rape). As the younger girl grows up, she sometimes get angry at the man and stays away, at other times when she  is desperate for help, she reaches out to him. She is sometimes angry at the older girl, but when she needs help, she reaches  out  to her.

Sometimes she  feels good  and  forgets about the rape and has fun spending time with the man, or with the  older girl.. then she remembers, becomes angry or so troubled that  she needs help… from anyone willing.

What is right for the younger girl in your example is to  stay away from both, the man and  the older girl. She doesn’t know  it when  she is hurting badly because she is too desperate for  help. And she  doesn’t know it when sometimes  she has fun with  either one, or a feeling of comfort.

Your thoughts?

anita