YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

I will try to write this without being too confusing. I have two sisters. Sister 2, the middle child has always been extremely mean and rude to me and sister 1 just kind of goes along with her and then sits back and does the whole "I didnt do it" thing. I could talk about how neither came to my wedding shower and sister 2 cancelled at the last minute saying that the president of AMWAY was in town talking and she thought it was more important to go to that instead, or how when I was 8 months pregnant my husband had to go out of the country (dying parent) and he called sister 2 as she lived only 2 hours away (other sister was 12 hours away) in case I went into labor that she might get a call and her response was "whats the matter, dont you have neighbors". I could go on and on but lets deal with the current situation.

Mother called sister 2 and said "I want to take you three girls on a cruise, find a date and lets all go". Sister two calls her kids, gets dates that work for her family, then calls sister one and coordinates dates so they and their husbands also are going. Then I get a call giving me the date they all chose....which did not work for me (kids are in school). I should point out that both sisters cruised with mom two years ago and I was not invited and two years before that. I then sent a mass text telling them that I was very hurt by what happened, asking why a mass text did not go out for dates from ALL so that we all could have attebded. Mother basically said that they were all going to go and she would take my family another time. My teenage kids were furious as they wanted to see their cousins and I told my mother what I thought of the situation. They were going and I was, once again, being left behind. I had decided to stop talking to my sisters. I was actually at peace with that decision. I came home from work two days ago and found my husband on the phone with my mom. He took it upon himself to call her and tell her what he thought of the situation and shortly afterwards, my mom sent out a mass text stating that another date would have to be found, that if we all couldnt go, noone was going. This is where it gets bad.

I recieved a call from sister one today telling me that I am being selfish, that this is about mom, not me and wont I call her up and tell her to go on the cruise, that there are no dates that will work for the entire rest of the year (yeah right) and I need to fix this. I was in shock at this point. During the day, I was removed from FB by three of my four nieces..they are now mad at ME!!!! Sister one says they are mad that mom will not go on the cruise and it is MY fault because I complained about the way the situatio was handled. No one now is speaking to me, everyone is mad at me and I didnt do ANYTHING but stand up for myself for once. I am so upset that I have just basically been dismissed by the ENTIRE family. I sent a mass text to all 4 nieces, explaining what had happened amd that I felt that they were removing me from FB to punish me for something I did not do and a situation I did not create. I told them that I felt that they were emotionally immature and that I loved them more than words could say but I would have to love them from a distance. The response to this was to have my ex-brother in law, who has been in my life sonce I was 16 (51 now) to also remove me from FB and sent me a text calling me names and come to find out, he was told by his daughters that I called them names. ( I guess where I said they were emotionally immature).

I only have two sisters and their kids besides hubby and our two children. Somehow, even though they did not handle the situation correctlly and basically screwed my family out of the trip, I am being made to feel that I am in the wrong. I finally called my mother and told her to just go on the cruise with everyone, that everyone was mad at me and I would never be vacationing with them again. Can anyone tell me what it is I did so wrong here?

Hi Longsally,

I read your post. Welcome to the forum.

Thank you. As an update, my mother decided to send me a check for $5000. She says that's how much she's giving each of my sisters to help pay for the vacation they're all taking together. I just feel like it's a pay off.

Sigh. Families are so much fun!!
I don't think you did anything wrong -- they've excluded you from things for whatever reason and gotten away with it. Now you call them on that BS and they can't handle it. You stuck up for yourself and your family and that's good.

So I just wanted to post an update. I've had no real contact with my family and the truth of the matter is I only kept contact with my sisters through the years because I wanted to keep up with their children. But since their kids have now defriended me on Facebook and I've thrown me away like I'm trash I just saw I did that I really didn't need to keep in touch with my sisters at all anymore. I wrote them the following letter:

Lauren and Lisa
I’m sorry.
I'm sorry that our relationship or lack of one has caused this. I'm sorry that we could not be close and I'm sorry I can't have you in my life anymore.
We have always had our differences, but we somehow managed to get along when needed. Underneath of the smiles is bitterness for issues that never got resolved. Things that you never said sorry for and that you wouldn't own up to. I'm sure my attitude wasn't always the best but after being hurt and betrayed multiple times I can't help it. I've had to build a wall to keep the two of you and the pain you inflict out of my life. It shouldn't be this way. I should be able to enjoy the very little time that I get to spent with you instead of dread it, I shouldn't have to carry your stress around with me everywhere I go.
For the best outcome for me, I'm going to have to remove both of you from my life. I can't accept your behavior towards me which affects my life and adding on to the large amounts of stress that I already face with having a special child. I can't smile at you both while I wonder if you'll ever apologize or if you even think what you do is wrong. I kept contact for years for the kids’ sake, not considering that, in the end, they would end up acting like their mothers, guided by watching your treatment of me through the years, and that they would throw me away like trash. You have forever destroyed any relationship I could ever have with them and in doing so, destroyed what remained of my reasons for staying in touch with you both.
I've used so much breath defending you and your decisions to my husband and his family as well as cousins who ask why I am always treated so poorly by the two of you. I have apologized for actions that were not my own. I did all of it because I love you. I did everything for it just to come and smack me in the face. I was made a fool of, time after time again. The amount of pain that my continued association with the two of you has caused me is beyond measure. You have both made me feel unwanted and unloved for more years than I can count. I had hoped after a near fatal car crash and the other ills that befell me through the years that the two of you would come to realize the distance between us and how lucky we were to have each other still. Again, I was sorely disappointed.

I love you both more than words can express and will always love you. I don't want to cause anyone the pain that you both have caused me and I have learned that no matter how badly I want someone to change, they're not going to. I would say that you both don't realize how badly you hurt me but you both have been told through the years. You still choose to be selfish and put your choices as a high priority over myself and my family. The cruise and the way it was handled, making sure that both your families could go and my family being an afterthought is a prime example. Just like the cruise two years ago where I expressed to Lisa I was interested in going and I was informed by her that Lauren didn’t want me there. As a result, I'm putting my sanity and my happiness over you. I must do that and am choosing to do it now as I no longer care to see “happy family photos” on Facebook where my family has been purposely omitted once again.
Let me just say I’m not perfect. Far from it. But I feel the meaning of family should be quite clear to most of us by the time we reach maturity. It should mean the people who you call family are supportive, caring, nurturing and kind. That they respect you, should you respect them. They don’t hurt you, dismiss you, laugh at you, allow their children to disrespect you. I've always been the 'black sheep'. Perhaps that is somewhat my own fault because I have allowed this treatment of myself for so long…. but no more.

I am aware that communication will be necessary on some level while mom is still alive and so for any information related to her, her health, hospitalizations, medical decisions, etc. I fully expect to be kept informed. You can still text or call for those things.

I pray that the two of you will live long and happy lives and that you will have all the things you want and that you will be all that is intended for you both. I hope that maybe, someday, you will truly change but nobody can create that change but you. I will miss you and love you both.


And of course I received no reply. And it sounds weird but I actually feel better .....

You've given yourself the gift of closure.

You are correct, and I needed that closure. And I did notice that I pointed out in my letter that they were the ones who needed to make the changes. One sister did not respond at all and this was the response I got from the other sister:
L,
I have received your email and I am sorry to read it. Obviously there are years of hurt that have built up for you and each of us has our own issues to deal with. Family can be complicated. I hope you will change your mind in time as I would like to have contact with you. Meanwhile, I'll keep you up to date with mom and I hope you will allow me to keep up with you and your family on Facebook.

Maybe it's just me, but what I noted in reading her response was that she took no responsibility for anything, didn't apologize for her behavior, didn't say anything about working on anything. Basically she turned it around so once again it was on me and said she still wanted to follow my family on Facebook. Obviously, I did not respond. And both sisters have been defriended and blocked. As far as my mother is concerned, she is mostly responsible for all of this and she always treated me differently than my two sisters growing up and obviously nothings changed. I have no intentions of excepting her phone calls or text messages from this point on.

Im sorry to read all of the ways you've been excluded or treated as an afterthought, good on you though for taking a stand and trying to give yourself space to focus on your life, your spouse and children. We all only have so much daily attention and energy to spend and often times cause ourselves great distress by getting caught up in the things we have little to no control over. For the one sister who got back to you, do you think she would be receptive to family therapy with you?

Not a cylon..... absolutely no hope of keeping in touch. But on an interesting note, my mother became quite ill and had to be hospitalized. I drove in for the afternoon and spent the night in her hospital room with her. The next morning before I left she actually apologized to me. She said to me that she should have done better with me, admitted that she treated me differently than my sisters growing up due to my ADHD which of course nobody at that time knew what it was. She admitted that the way she treated me caused problems between her and my father in their marriage, and that’s why my father ended up doing so much for me which then caused jealousy with my sisters. She took full responsibility for the relationship I now have with my sisters and stated “I should have done a better Job with you”. My two sisters continue to visit each other and hang out and I hear nothing and I truly feel that that’s for the best.

Longsally wrote:Not a cylon..... absolutely no hope of keeping in touch. But on an interesting note, my mother became quite ill and had to be hospitalized. I drove in for the afternoon and spent the night in her hospital room with her. The next morning before I left she actually apologized to me. She said to me that she should have done better with me, admitted that she treated me differently than my sisters growing up due to my ADHD which of course nobody at that time knew what it was. She admitted that the way she treated me caused problems between her and my father in their marriage, and that’s why my father ended up doing so much for me which then caused jealousy with my sisters. She took full responsibility for the relationship I now have with my sisters and stated “I should have done a better Job with you”. My two sisters continue to visit each other and hang out and I hear nothing and I truly feel that that’s for the best.

. As an update, I also found out about my nieces. I sent my sister several text messages where I spoke into my phone. So upset was I over everything going on that I didn’t read any of the text messages before I send them. Well in one of them, Siri took my words and twisted it to say something to the effect of your kids are retarded. As soon as I realized what had been sent which was about two hours later, I sent another text where I told them how Siri had change my words and I would never ever call their children names and how much I love their kids. However sister that lives in Georgia took that text, copied and paste it into an email and sent that to my nieces and I found out that that’s why they think I called them names and that’s why they have now completely cut me off. There was no reason for her to do that and less she was looking to cause trouble which of course she did. She never sent them the second text .