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In Reply to: family dramas posted by porceleindoll on May 22, 2003 at 02:05:11:
Porceleindoll, I feel for what you are going through. One thing I am working on in the real world is tolerating conflict. I do realize, however, that most day-to-day conflict does not rise to the level of what you are going through right now. Please forgive me if I say the wrong thing here. This exchange has hit a raw nerve and I want to try to write what it evokes in me.
Again, this is all me, and driven by projection, so please ignore me completely if you want.
But emotions aside (and I know that is hard, even unreasonably hard to do in this situation), what is so different or new from all the tearing apart of the family that your father participated in, from what you have said?
I have to say too, that as somebody who does not believe in "Jesus," including his "turn the other cheek" (although I believe big-time in not feeling "righteous" for too long when I've been hurt if I can see the other person as just another human guarding their turf and they have not just been gratuitously cruel, which i despise) or in martyrdom and "sacrificial" family-type acquiescence and self-devouring, or laying down my life or my anything else, what your sister is doing strikes me as making perfect sense.
Confucius said something to the effect that if you bend over backwards for those that hurt you, you are devaluing what you do for those that do right by you. Your sister from my viewpoint is using real currency, not a counterfeit we were forced to trade in as children.
If I ever marry, neither of my parents will be welcome or allowed. They raised me not believing in the institution of marriage (as it is understood by the outside world), but "one Wife" and "all things" and "the Law of Love." How much do you think their claiming to be so hurt will ring true if I am entering into a marriage contract as they denigrated all along?!
One of them left the Family physically, at least, long ago but has not made any amends and has been entirely absent. I do not wish to speak to either of them, or my weird Family "step-parent," and I would never allow a child of mine to have unsupervised contact with them, in fact I would not let them be part of their lives.
This may sound harsh, but I believe that for every action there is a reaction. And it seems not at all like an overreaction to me. I was allowed to be raped as a child and then left to rot as far as they were concerned when I escaped. All that I have now i have earned for myself with the help of some kind people but not the help of those whose natural duty it would have been. And I have been too close too many times to the brink. I still suffer from the strain.
The day my PTSD is lifted, I might reconsider speaking to a parent who managed to convince me that they realized the wrongness of it all and showed me some amends-- the amends could be to my siblings or to other SGs, even.
But still, no unsupervised contact with any child of mine.
