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Dear Carolyn: I have an older sister, “Amy,” who was prettier and more outgoing than I was, so I kind of lived in her shadow, but I adored her and she was always my best friend growing up. Her sophomore year of college, I found out from a friend at her school that she was doing drugs and her boyfriend was a dealer. She’d secretly dropped half her courses and was barely passing the rest. I offered to find her some help, but she just ridiculed me. As things worsened, I was worried about her, so I told our parents. She lied and said I’d made the whole thing up because I was so jealous of her. My parents believed her and even said I might need therapy for telling a lie that big, until she was arrested a few months later and the whole truth came out.
For years following, she kept lying, stole so much money from me, wrecked my car and said/did many other horrible things to me. I moved away and cut her out of my life. She skipped out on her treatment program and got arrested again.
Last year, Amy completed rehab and is supposedly clean. She also had a baby last month, has minimal support from the father and is back living with my parents.
They want me to forgive and forget and be part of my nephew’s life, but I see it as insisting I give Amy another chance to hurt me. I still have so much resentment against her. I don’t want to take it out on her son, but I can’t stand the thought of being around her. She never apologized or tried to make amends for all she put me through, and I’m not sure I could ever trust her again. Is it even worth trying to be a part of my nephew’s life when I feel that way about his mom?
— Distrustful
Distrustful: That’s a great question. But the wrong people are pushing you to ask it. It’s not your parents’ place to broker forgiveness or forgetting between you and your sister — especially when it’s not your or Amy’s idea. Even more so when your parents, not Amy, inflicted one of your worst psychic injuries. And they (presumably) weren’t high.
Have they ever “apologized or tried to make amends” for all they put you through in doubting you at that pivotal time? Even if they have, you still don’t owe them an answer beyond, “This is between Amy and me.” Or a more pointed, “We know where to find each other when we’re ready.”
Just as rehab was possible for Amy only when she was receptive to it, so is recovery — including amends, rebuilding bridges — connecting with others, period. Same principle applies to you. You cannot be forced to this table. When Amy is ready to approach you or vice versa, then this issue of how to conduct yourself will be right where you left it.
Given that you feel both resentful and pushed, though, I suspect your resistance has multiple sources:
· The parents’ butting in.
· The pushing on reconciliation with Amy when Amy herself has shown no such interest.
· The renewing of the ancient sibling power imbalance. Golden Amy consigns you to runner-up in childhood, then you need backup from law enforcement before the folks will take your word over hers, and now they ask you to forgive?
· The addiction weaving its way through all this, probably as both cause and effect.
Discovery and disentanglement come first. Then you worry about whose life to be part of and how
.
You don’t say, for example, that Amy has an illness, which she does. And she harmed you. Both can be true at once. Her illness neither absolves her of the harm she did nor clears her to-do list of making amends.
I do think, though, it means the lying, the wrecking and the “many other horrible things” she did to you were not harms of targeted malicious intent. Instead they were collateral damage of her illness and some degree of her own self-destruction. Maybe my seeing it this way is a luxury that only someone who didn’t grow up in her shadow can afford. But for your sake, I recommend a few counseling sessions with someone experienced at treating addiction — or a hop over the lower barrier to entry at Nar-Anon or Al-Anon, to inform your thinking on addiction in general.
Even if you sought this kind of support once already, your sister’s new stage — the baby and the apparent sobriety — prompts a set of new questions for you and your family and justifies updates to your own education. It’s your pain, so your call — but I suspect your decisions will also feel better the less they derive from “She did this to me.” You were all in the addiction blast radius for sure, and have the injuries to show for it — but that is not quite the same thing.
Link
For years following, she kept lying, stole so much money from me, wrecked my car and said/did many other horrible things to me. I moved away and cut her out of my life. She skipped out on her treatment program and got arrested again.
Last year, Amy completed rehab and is supposedly clean. She also had a baby last month, has minimal support from the father and is back living with my parents.
They want me to forgive and forget and be part of my nephew’s life, but I see it as insisting I give Amy another chance to hurt me. I still have so much resentment against her. I don’t want to take it out on her son, but I can’t stand the thought of being around her. She never apologized or tried to make amends for all she put me through, and I’m not sure I could ever trust her again. Is it even worth trying to be a part of my nephew’s life when I feel that way about his mom?
— Distrustful
Distrustful: That’s a great question. But the wrong people are pushing you to ask it. It’s not your parents’ place to broker forgiveness or forgetting between you and your sister — especially when it’s not your or Amy’s idea. Even more so when your parents, not Amy, inflicted one of your worst psychic injuries. And they (presumably) weren’t high.
Have they ever “apologized or tried to make amends” for all they put you through in doubting you at that pivotal time? Even if they have, you still don’t owe them an answer beyond, “This is between Amy and me.” Or a more pointed, “We know where to find each other when we’re ready.”
Just as rehab was possible for Amy only when she was receptive to it, so is recovery — including amends, rebuilding bridges — connecting with others, period. Same principle applies to you. You cannot be forced to this table. When Amy is ready to approach you or vice versa, then this issue of how to conduct yourself will be right where you left it.
Given that you feel both resentful and pushed, though, I suspect your resistance has multiple sources:
· The parents’ butting in.
· The pushing on reconciliation with Amy when Amy herself has shown no such interest.
· The renewing of the ancient sibling power imbalance. Golden Amy consigns you to runner-up in childhood, then you need backup from law enforcement before the folks will take your word over hers, and now they ask you to forgive?
· The addiction weaving its way through all this, probably as both cause and effect.
Discovery and disentanglement come first. Then you worry about whose life to be part of and how
.
You don’t say, for example, that Amy has an illness, which she does. And she harmed you. Both can be true at once. Her illness neither absolves her of the harm she did nor clears her to-do list of making amends.
I do think, though, it means the lying, the wrecking and the “many other horrible things” she did to you were not harms of targeted malicious intent. Instead they were collateral damage of her illness and some degree of her own self-destruction. Maybe my seeing it this way is a luxury that only someone who didn’t grow up in her shadow can afford. But for your sake, I recommend a few counseling sessions with someone experienced at treating addiction — or a hop over the lower barrier to entry at Nar-Anon or Al-Anon, to inform your thinking on addiction in general.
Even if you sought this kind of support once already, your sister’s new stage — the baby and the apparent sobriety — prompts a set of new questions for you and your family and justifies updates to your own education. It’s your pain, so your call — but I suspect your decisions will also feel better the less they derive from “She did this to me.” You were all in the addiction blast radius for sure, and have the injuries to show for it — but that is not quite the same thing.
Link