Dear Anita,

Thank you for “keeping her busy” by communicating with her while I was in CA.  I never formally gave you that appreciation, sorry for that.

I wanted to say something about that – no matter how much you supported her and spoke to her and talked to her during this time – she still managed to take my time and energy.  Isn’t that something?  It reminds me of my childhood.  My father or I would spend countless time calming my mother down or this or that, and then bam when a new person arrived in the home, say my sister, an aunt, anyone – it would start all over – all of our efforts in vain.

Dear Anita  – I hope nothing I said about her talking so much to you was offensive to you.  I by no means feel the way you approached it was wrong.  I was just point out her extreme behaviors, and patterns of it.  That she is all or nothing.  I recall her talking to a new boy once, for hours and hours – not uncommon for 20s – and then telling him the deepest darkest things about our family — and then getting annoyed when he didn’t get things.

Her expectations of people have always been for them to “just get her.”

Some people like yourself truly try very hard to get her, and help her – but it can be a difficult task.

I apologize once again if anything I said was offensive.  I truly appreciate what you did to help her – and I know that when she had just gone NC she was so grateful to have you as support and a backbone.  You are an especially kind person for giving that to her.

Dear Anita,

Phew! It is never my intention to offend you – and I know often when we speak so freely things can be taken out of context.  Not by you, by anyone! I am glad it isn’t that way.

I respect immensely the effort you put in to support her, and the emotional attachment makes sense – a kind exuberant personality of hers, loving and grateful.  But of course then you were bit.  And as you said so maturely – you don’t need to be bit anymore, so you won’t.  Now that is a strong woman! Bravo to you!

Great point about the histrionic personality – that term coming back to my mind.  When I mentioned in psychiatry extreme quick attachments and back and forth wavering – they can be present in borderline personality disorder.  It is not my intention to diagnose her or anyone.  I, myself, have plenty that could be diagnosed as well! Lol!

—–

So Anita, I assume you do not make official New Year’s resolutions.  Or perhaps I am wrong – and you do!

But, what, if I may ask – is ONE thing you want to work on this coming year?  I will think about this and answer as well.

Dear Anita,

I like your response, and it makes sense! I used to think of New Year’s resolutions as a time to think of all of the stuff I hated about myself! I won’t do this and this and this! It wasn’t constructive, it was full of negativity – and pessimism.  It lead to no progress that way of thinking.

This year my resolution is, well let’s see…..to focus on inner circle.  That’s it! It means everything!

Dear Anita,

I will be heading out of work soon – the last long day complete.  My final day working here is on Monday! January 2020 will begin with freedom and space.

I want to let you know that you have been a pivotal part of my 2019 – I feel I have accelerated in the last few months, and finally seeing so much that you have been saying all along.  There is so much to go- and as you wrote in your first post – about rushing vs expediting – that is the work I have cut out for me in 2020.

Sink and savor

Quiet the frenzy

Hush the rush

I will be away from the computer through the weekend as my husband and I make some more final conversations about the big question at hand.  Enjoy the end of 2019 with your wonderful husband – and be safe! No more injuries for either of us!!!

Dear Anita,

My last day of work at this grueling job.  Yes, it is! Here’s to having time in NYC being FREE! Of all things I have learned in 2019 – mental space and freedom top the list!

Thank you for giving me support as I learned this lesson, and thank you for showing me that it is priceless.

I hope you have a wonderful end to your 2019.  I will be away from regularly using the computer over the next few weeks as I will be making some trips to see friends and not in a usual routine.

I will be sure to update you about the move – and anything that is related to that – and of course just to talk!

Anita, you are one of the main highlights of my year – and i Hope you will always know that.

Cheers to 2020 – to health and inner circle!

Dear Anita,

Good morning! How is 2020 going for you so far? It has only been five days into this new year, and you took it out already so many lessons. It seems to go like that a lot for me these days, a lot of it because of what we have achieved of the last two years or more.
How did you spend New Year’s Eve? We had some dinner and relax on the couch, I was likely asleep at 12:02 AM. I saw some smoke in the air from my apartment, can’t see the actual fireworks but still a smoky sky, special to be close to the Macy’s fireworks.
I spent a lot of time yesterday truly going over so many of the things that we spoke about, in regards to my sister. In fact, it almost felt like it was a script in my head that was replying. This was not a bad thing, it was as though you and I had rehearsed five or six points together, and when I saw them in reality, in real life, I was able to rehearse them back. I didn’t have to dig deep to understand what was going on, the information was at the forefront of my brain.
Needless to say, my sister yet again showed her passive aggressive behavior, and anger. Just as you said. It’s ironic, almost like the clock strikes 12 and here she goes.

I’m not sure if I ever mention this to you in the past in regards to my mother, but there were times when she did something truly tangibly eccentric, I’m looking back I was glad for those moments. It’s those tangible moments of a Radick behavior that allow a human being to really pinpoint and say wow that is not normal and I want to stay away from that. The underlying passive, indirect, and jumbled Waze only lead to confusion. It does not lead a human being to feel completely confident in how they feel. It simply leads to their uneasiness, and often frantic behavior, as we have discussed in detail over the last month.

So the scenario involved my sister, and I am glad it happened. She acted exactly how you would probably think, in fact if you had known the whole scenario to begin with you probably would have predicted her behavior to a T. I chuckled when I thought of that last night, I even said to my husband, if I told Anita this whole story she would’ve said “I told you so,” well not exactly – and no not in a snarky way, but in a we both have a great mutual understanding now.

It brought me great comfort knowing that our conversations about this have been so accurate, and also that you are someone who has understood it so well. Like many other times in my life I felt very connected to you.

I can bring up the details of exactly what happened if it’s relevant, but in this post I will jump to the way I approached everything.

First of all, I felt a little sadness on your end. I felt to myself, wow, it’s one thing for me to feel like this. But it makes me sad that I need I did get close to her to a point, and was disappointed by her behavior, my sisters I mean. That makes me sad, as especially someone like Anita does not deserve to have those sort of feelings.
When I saw my sister is a erratic responses, that were not out of character. I was not surprised or shocked. I did not immediately go to that place in my brain that feel sorry for her and finds a way to defend her. It was like taking a big step away from the phone and staring at it from a far. I thought of my sister at that point is not a sister but someone who was highly traveled and has very little awareness of it. I also saw her as some snippets of my old self, someone who is extremely distressed that throws out abuse and punches out to others. The roar if you will. But to a different level, I’m not going to compare it to myself and my own roar.
One of the most important things that I learned from you over the last few months as the concept of assertive communication. As I stated earlier, prior to discussing this, I wasn’t really aware that my communication style may not always be direct. Given that I was raised in a family that was full of emotional outburst and hysteria, I felt that because we talk so much and Atlanta about every single emotion that we were of course indeed good communicators. I assumed that bad communication was the opposite, people that were closed off and stork or unable to express themselves. Perhaps I felt that the more you expressed yourself the better you were communicating. Yesterday when my sister was responding to me, I noticed that this was truly a fallacy. We were raised to think that having Emotional openness and saying anything that’s on your mind at that given second was direct. It is not, in fact, I don’t like to use this word, but it’s off and just plain crazy.
I didn’t follow that, I’ve visualized a person with a ball and chain, and thinking of my sister as a ball, driving me down to childhood Waze, adolescence, and I realize that I don’t have to stoop down to that level. I continued my adult communication style, direct into the point. I did not give into guilt or feeling of uneasiness.

At the end the day I am glad that we had the interaction that we did yesterday, as above it was a tangible interaction that reminded me of what everything we spoke about is indeed true. Like clockwork Anita, you are right! Of course.
I woke up today feeling slightly lighter, in the sense that house at 5% or more of myself has been brought back to me that was given to my sister. Maybe 1 percent. Who knows. But clarity.
In the world that I have lived in my whole life, clarity wasn’t really the forefront, progress and resolutions did a car of course. For clarity, not so much. It was almost like constantly walking in fields of dust and trying to get out on the other side, you did get out on the other side, but it was off and just buy true Hard will and perseverance. not because the dust was cleared away by clear views of what was going on. If that makes sense.
Clarity is key. A new one for me.
I wanted to Take another moment to give the gratitude of the progress that we have had over the last few months. It makes me smile this morning. Perhaps it will make you smile too.

Dear Anita,

Good morning and thank you for your post. I woke up today feeling a little hazy. Well it’s a Monday morning and I don’t have to go to work! It feels quite odd, perhaps slightly uneasy. But I’ll take it! I’m glad to be sitting with some coffee and able to write to you, not at work  But in the comfort of my own home

now that is special!

So when I think of a dust storm I think of somebody traveling great distances – with decreased ability to see, having difficulty walking, and feeling their entire body exhausted.
A bite as you said is different, it is pinpoint, you can attend to a bite in one part of your body and it does not affect your entire body. Once you heal the bite, the rest of your body is untouched. This is not the case.
I woke up this morning feeling kind of hazy, a slow start to my day into my brain. I thought about how a lot of people must feel like that, and so they allow themselves to ease into the day, into whatever they are doing. They are not jolted into their morning like a shock.  I read your entire post and I thought about it all yesterday, especially the concepts of how she will continue to throw dust. I thought to myself. We are both From the same mother and have had similar trauma, of course different aspects of it, but similar trauma. Could it be that perhaps the anger my sister has towards me is really truly making her a B****.

Well YES – for  lack of a better term the way she acted is exactly like this. I never saw her like that I always saw her as someone desperate, pulling the victim card constantly, confused, insecure, etc. but never that. I would never have thought to think of that term and my sister even in the same sentence! But it’s true.

I do this thing, and I think it has a lot to do with the fact that she constantly throws back how I used to be. I do this thing where I think back to how I was at her age. I think back to my erratic behaviors. Most of them do not involve her as she was younger, and I was away at college or medical school. These are out of behaviors of mine were always directed towards the boyfriend at the time. I recall myself acting similar to her, expecting the person I was dating to predict what I wanted, and getting annoyed and short with them if they did it. I recall being all over the place one moment wanting something in the next moment not realizing it was incorrect for me, but projecting that annoyance outward. Always everything at word. Never anything in.

But Unlike my mother who projected everything out and gained energy and power from this. What did I gain? I gained more self-hatred. This is how I know that I will never be like my mother, because I dohave the ability to look back and be very ashamed of many of those actions, especially of how I treated my husband which we have talked about for over a year.

I know that it’s not an excuse to say, my internal distress and anger has caused me to treat others poorly. It’s not an excuse, but it’s what we work on here, knowing that those qualities are not truly us, and that we could work through them once we learn better coping skills. In fact, in the last two months Anita, I have realized that I am actually a wonderful loving person just like I thought I was, and those incidents with myself and my husband – As terrible as they are, are far from the way I truly feel. I think about how it took me years to get to the point to know myself better. Perhaps my sister is not anywhere close to that. But here’s the thing, when she consistently brings me back as a ball and chain, by throwing old ways at me such as “you used to do this too.” Or saying things like “you always blame me for all your problems.” It’s hard to not think “oh man I used to be like her too I can’t judge that.”

But the difference is — I wasn’t like that Anita I was not and am not – like that.

In this last incident, my husband was disappointed and hurt. Not to the point that he was devastated. But he wasdisappointed and annoyed. My husband has gotten much better about explaining what he is feeling and thinking, after all the work that I have been doing too. He mentioned things like my sister is just respectful, and not that she owes us after all we have done for her, but of all people she should be able to be more flexible for us. In addition, not to be all traditional but usually your older sisters brother-in-law is someone that you respect. If he asks for a favor, and the sister, my sister, is just dismissive and hasty, that’s pretty rude. Especially given the circumstance that my husband has gone out ofHis way above and beyond to be an older brother for her, and my in-laws treat her as family as well, always looking out for her, and making sure that she is well, and has family support. As you know if I go over to my in-laws they always ask about her, and say if she’s not doing anything to bring her, my mother-in-law always pack some extra bag of food for her as well when we are leaving. Etc etc.
My husband and I ended the conversation by saying, that she truly just does not have value for all that we are doing for her and always would do for her. It’s never that we want anything in return, but respect is something that it’s not too much to ask for.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 3 months ago by Cali Chica.