Pay no mind to what they say; it doesn't matter anyway

I had a good day today, which stands in stark contrast to the rubbish one yesterday.  In short, my sister and I have found ourselves at a curious impasse and this is unexplored terrain for us.  We are fighting, which I cannot understand as we never fight; the last one was something like a decade ago and it was over something stupid, as familial battles often are.  But this one feels in some way more poignant because the points at which we disagree are at the personality level, about issues that run deep between us that perhaps need to change.  

I have changed in some fundamental way in the last six months or so, and I may have been incubating these changes for even longer.  But I feel good about this change; it feels somehow like I understand things differently; I engage my world in a new way now that requires more of those in my life than it used to.  

What I learned in therapy - as lame as it sounds - is that much of my life has been lived in the service of others.  That is, I am often the one who is leaned upon, and mostly regarding my family.  My parents put me in the middle of their war when I was very young and I always mediated their fights, debates, controversies, etc. when I should have been an ignorant but happy child.  I know things about each of my parents that children should never know; I never want to know bad things about either of them and yet both of them have never had any problem telling me such things for reasons that are still basically unknown to me.  Was it to get me to "side" with them, to effect some kind of change to their relationship, to "one-up" the other?  I cannot and do not want to know this.

I am the oldest kid and was always responsible for the other two from the age of about nine or ten; I was the babysitter, the chore-enforcer, the tattle-taler, the one who fixed things.  In retrospect, this has served me largely well in that I'm able to take care of myself and others well, it makes me a generally good leader, and it permits me to feel confident as a decision-maker and advice-giver.  But it also, retrospectively, wasn't fair to me.  I had to be a grownup at a young age, and at no time was I ever granted permission to disobey - I had an early curfew, rules about the car, about boys, and I stuck to them religiously because I knew that the hammer would fall hard on me if I didn't.  My sister, on the other hand, outright ignored all such rules with almost no repercussions.  Sure, my parents were frustrated at her refusal to comply, but consequences - if any - were light at best.  By the time my brother was a teenager, he got condoms and something like "don't get anyone pregnant."  He came and went as he chose, knowing full well that consequence did not really exist for him, that he could behave any way he liked and someone would excuse it.  I fell into the camp of a parent, able to keep their secrets and advise and not to judge indiscretions and missteps.  But who was there to keep mine?  To advise me and not to judge?  No one, until I was into my adult years and had the guts to impart any of the desires for these things to another person.  It happened to be my sister in large part, and it wasn't until this point that we could ever be friends.

Ultimately, though, I think our relationship was still always a bit imbalanced by the fact that I'm the older and supposedly wiser one and did things "first."  This is in no way my sister's fault, of course, but my role as de facto parental unit was established when we were kids and I felt had no real ability to change.  

In therapy, and after Sami's surgery, I came to a stark realization that a large percentage of the people in my life are the recipients of my mothering - even my parents - to the degree that it is never reciprocated.  When I really needed support during the hospital thing, I was shocked by how few directions it actually came from.  It came from Laura, who called me every day and asked how I was doing and actually paused to hear the reply.  She offered to come have coffee or lunch.  She didn't care that I was frustrated or snotty or unwashed.  She even let me hijack her chai with another friend in order to vent my frustration and madness and later insisted I need not apologize.

I wish I could say that such actions were a theme of this traumatic point, but I can't.  My ex-husband, from whom I have been divorced for twelve years, still depends upon me to do everything regarding our daughter; he feels no responsibility because I will care for her in every way.  My parents (my mother, more pointedly) expected me to care about my brother's hurt feelings that I hadn't called him back after a whole night of my daughter in ICU, forgetting to breathe.  This sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?  But it happened.  My sister was there, of course and was supportive, but with a baby in tow.  Jamison is my rock, and so in tune is he that he always knows exactly what his role is at any given moment - he knows when to sit next to me and say nothing, when to make jokes, and when to stay away.  I may not have survived this without him.

So after this point, I decided to start taking account of this and opted to make some real changes.  But I was a complete fool for thinking that I wouldn't meet with some resistance to my sudden honesty and refusal to stay in the little box certain people have put me in.  When I started to rebalance my relationship to my sister, it was met with hurt and anger, which has taken me by surprise.  It feels good, though, to be saying that which needs to be said between us, and I feel certain that in the end we'll be the better for it.  I want to surround myself with people who meet me in the middle.  I want to hold dear the friend who reads my blog and picks up the phone to find out if I'm okay, and who, when I say I am, will change the subject and just talk to me with the implicit understanding that I don't want a post-mortem or a pity party, but just someone to talk to in a more general sense.  Someone who asks "how are you?" expecting an answer, not as a greeting.  We all deserve this and should settle for no less.