Dear Cali Chica:

I am impressed by your writing as well. And I want to join you in that pat on the back that you gave yourself for the progress you made on your journey. Very impressive!

More of your writing then, a quote I forgot to include earlier-

April 15, 2018: “I needed some space from my sister, every time I speak to her I feel like there is an explosion of distress that is coming out of every pore, she doesn’t have to say anything at all, she doesn’t even have to say oh I am stressed out- I just get this energy from her. Perhaps this is ingrained in me, or perhaps it is reality.”

And a recent quote, January 2020: “I think of my sister as a wounded child that does NOT LOOK up to her sister with innocent eyes and for help- but instead.. has a twisted face and kicks and screams.. dishing out crap.. she thinks black and white.. She has zero credibility to comment on long term serious relationships.. She also doesn’t understand that annoyances with friends does not equal hatred.. obsession.. She absolutely CONSTANTLY for her whole life only has negative things to say about her friends. ALL THE TIME.. I actually have VALUE for the people in my life.. which she SEVERELY, SEVERELY LACKS. She’s so  busy blaming others… She doesn’t leave room for growth and getting to know these people.. has a lot of jealousy.. resentment.. Seeing herself as very worthy, but yet terribly insecure at the same time.. she has jealousy of me, and thinking that things are seemingly easy and seamless for me.. filled with annoyance and anger over and over. JUST LIKE MY MOTHER.”

And now my thoughts and suggestions beginning with what is most clear to me, the no-brainer input:

1. If you do move to California, do not have your sister follow you there to live. You can’t ban her from California, of course, but do all that you can to discourage her from following you there. The two of you need to live in different parts of the country.

You predicted, March 2018: “if in the future she lived locally and we see her more regularly I can see myself feeling extremely drained just like I did with my mother”. Your prediction came true when she joined you in nyc. And it will come true again if you move to SoCal and she joins you there.

2. It is useless to figure: I will have her living with me, or close to me, but it will be okay this time because I will be enforcing boundaries (“I will just have to have some better boundaries with her”, 3/26/2018) because it is her presence alone that distresses you. What boundary can possibly protect you from her presence, other than … her absence.

3. I had a personal experience with your sister, I too delighted and enjoyed the delightful little girl in her, but that little girl (as is true to people fitting severe personality disorder diagnoses) is stuck in a monster. So you get to delight in the presence of the monster for as long as you can … forget that you are in the presence of a monster. But the moment you get a glimpse of that monster, or a memory of that monster, you feel that terrible unease.

That “fragile puppy” you saw in your mother is stuck in a monster, and the “wounded child” you see in your sister, is stuck in a monster.

You did not create either one of these two monsters. What makes them monsters? A combination of mental illness, rage and an inability or an unwillingness to accept the concept that they should correct their distorted thinking and change their dysfunctional behavior.

If you love the monster, be it your mother or your sister,  and try to point to this or that distorted thinking on her part, or this or that dysfunctional behavior that she does, the monster does not consider your input. She doesn’t have that humility or sensibility. What she does, is she attacks you for bringing it up. She will injure you so to protect her illness.

She will create your illness (your mother did that) or maintain your illness (your sister did that), so to protect her own illness.

“no matter what I do or don’t do, what I say or don’t say.. she will always be the same”- this is what happens with people who exhibit severe personality disorders. This is why they are not open to therapy and why therapists who have tried are extremely reluctant to have a client with a severe personality disorder.

“The monster is a monster at the end of the day. Now and forever”- you can pretty much count on it, this is the prognosis for severe personality disordered people.

It is within the core definition of a borderline personality disorder that the person can’t form or maintain a healthy relationship with anyone. This means that a healthy relationship with a bpd person is impossible. To make it very specific: you can’t possibly have a healthy relationship with your sister.

So what is it that you can have with her? My answer: damage to you and to your husband. Less so if you live away and be in occasional phone contact with her; more if you live in the same geographical area as she does and interact with her often. But damage in any case.

You can’t separate the delightful little girl in her from the monster, it is the monster that gives you that unease in her presence. We are uneasy in the presence of monsters.

In cartoons, monsters look like monsters, menacing, threatening, evil. In real life, you get to see that innocent, loving, joyful child that used to be there and is still there, stuck in each and every human monster. True, your sister is not the kind of monster that collects bodies in her basement, but she is the kind of a monster that will continue to make your life miserable. So you don’t end up dead in a basement, you end up perhaps dead from a stress related disease, or dead from a stress related accident, or ..just miserable. And at the end of your life, you wonder: what went wrong?

I studied hard, I was an excellent physician, I married an excellent physician, and an excellent husband, and yet.. I kept my sister in my life because I love her so much. But now.. all that love for her led me nowhere and .. and she is still the same, there she  is saying: Cali Chica, you are doing this again, you are blaming me for your failed life!

anita