To My Sister,
Let me start with this. I am sorry if my words have hurt you. You have hurt me too. You mention a "detailed letter of the deep wounds I have caused you". Where is this detailed letter? The photocopy letter? Where you sent me back snippets of things that clearly you misunderstood? I wasn't *refuting* your words, I was clarifying MINE. I am saying this gently, not meanly, because clearly, one of two things is happening. You simply do not understand my words and are assigning the wrong intention to them, or you want there to be this divide for conscious or subconscious reasons and you are hanging onto anything to "prove your point."
Let me continue with this. We have hurt each other. You cannot live your life as the only hurt one, or the most hurt one. None of this is a contest. You have hurt me. I have hurt you. I'm not trying to justify my hurtful words, I am explaining how my reactions to you were hurtful because of the hurtful actions towards me by you. I reacted strongly, from years of pent up frustration and hurt and from the fresh raw hurt of the last two years. I am sorry you feel hurt. We both need to do better.
So here we are. I have not cut you out or off. I have kept the door, however awkwardly waiting, open to you. You have cut me off. You have cut your girls out of the entire family's lives for HOW long now? While we both need to make changes You have to be the one to make the move closer as you have taken yourself furthest away. Everyone else is just waiting for you. How long are you going to waste the larger family time that we could be enjoying together and with dad? We of all people understand life is short and fleeting. We have learned from losing mom that we don't get a warning. But here is the deal, we HAVE a warning with dad and it is a big one. And apparently you are ok with keeping it all separate, and honestly, I have to admit I think you like it that way. And it's ok for you to like it and even have plenty of only you and your world with his time. But we need to come together too, without contest, without jealousy, without comparison. We function in different circles, even if the people in the circles overlap. But to hold your ground as if I am this monster that has gone out of my way to just hurt you, it's taking it too far. I have not involved dad with this, you and I both know he isn't in the place to deal with our drama... you and I both know he hasn't been remembering things well, etc. I am not going to drag him into this, plus it isn't his business... and he shouldn't ever be asked to take a side. That's wrong. I also don't involve Gary and Sandy. But they seem to feel they know stuff...so I hope you haven't lowered yourself to trying to garner support. This is between you and I. I don't involve OUR friends either. I have never sought out anyone who is YOUR friend. I have answered questions, briefly, from OUR friends. I have had to clarify details of things that I never brought up to them and that they asked me. Where they got the false information, etc. is not the point anymore. The point is, I actually have tried to not give specifics unless I felt serious clarification was needed. I haven't tried to talk to people about you in general. If I tell someone my heart is grieved for the unrest in my family, ok. Does it not grieve your heart? I have spoken in generalizations for the most part. People do ask.
What hurts me? What feels to me like blatant disregard of any and all of my personal feelings since mom has died. There is this underlying message to me from you that I feel that consistently says " I have lost more, my kids have lost more." And no, you haven't. Not where mom is concerned. We have all equally lost. We each lost who and what she was to us. There is no weighing or measuring or comparing. We just all flatly lost.
What else hurts me? The effort I feel you made to cause division between dad and me over just about everything, especially his wife joining the family. My own husband overheard our countless conversations on the phone in which you stated certain feelings and got my feelings all riled up, and your actions caused reactions in me and our brother. And then you'd seem to step back and claim none of it, but all of his favor. We both felt betrayed and played by you. You will deny and refute this. I expect nothing less. I forgive you. It's over. I have made my peace with our father and his wife.
If you need to feel like you have won something or have more of them... go ahead. It isn't a contest. I'm not comparing or weighing things. I am not trying to win anything. I am trying to continue to live my life and have peace with my father in his last years. None of us should be interfering with that on each others' personal levels nor as a larger family. We should WANT to be on the houseboat together. We should WANT to do holidays together. We do not know how many we have left. It hurts me that while we are very different, you don't reserve a place for me in your life, which I understand will cause a reaction in me, which then because a recursive sequence of hurts, it needs to stop. It hurts me that to me it feels like only your hurt matters to you, that we aren't entitled to hurt, your hurt will always outweigh ours. It hurts me that no matter what I have done for you in life, it is never enough. It hurts me that I feel like I cannot trust you. It hurts me you do not allow me to be an aunt to the girls and never really have. So see, we both have hurt. We are very different people that approach life very differently, but that isn't the worst thing in the world. Being alike shouldn't be the prerequisite for having good family relations. No one said we had to be best friends, but we shouldn't be against each other either. We both need to do better on being better sisters. Better family. It hurts me deeply that you chose to keep your family away from milestone events for my son...18th birthday and graduation. And no, a card and money don't make up for the actions.
I have already stated that I am sorry you lost your home and all your precious items of your home and memories. It is hard to watch you and so many friends, and others, suffer in this way. There are so many that have lost that it hurts all of our hearts to know the suffering of so many in our community are going through and to know how to help anyone out. I see different friends and family approach it differently, and go through different lows and highs at different times. Its grief, and just like with mom's death, it hits everyone differently and as a bystander, we have to watch and never necessarily know how to help who when. But the difference with you is you don't seem to want to let us in. It feels as though you want there to be that separation. No, we will never fully understand. Just like people who haven't lost someone they truly loved, doesn't fully understand the pain I feel having lost mom. I get that. I don't want those people to HAVE to understand.
I did my best to help in the ways I could after the fire. There were so many to help. I am sorry if in your mind I didn't do enough...I tried to do a lot...I knew eventually my efforts would fall flat and would be insufficient to you.
So, here is the deal, we find ourselves at a crossroads. You and I can both hang onto our own hurts forever and just not have a relationship at all and act like the other doesn't exist. Or we can find some level of sisterhood/family connection that allows us all to get along...we can actually do it you know. I don't have any problem being with you, and I am certainly not going to make dad choose or to do separate events. My goal isn't to garner support or to turn family members against you. I have enjoyed and I cherish a closeness with our brother's family, that fills some of the empty left by mom's loss. We want you to be a part of that. I know you're saying we don't, but we do, in the end, this rift serves no one except Satan and it's really pointless.
You have hurt me. Deeply. You may never acknowledge your part in what created strong reactions both to you and to dad over this last year. I release you from it April. I forgive you. I forgive him. I am sorry for my part in anyone's pain. I am sorry I reacted strongly. I am releasing you both from understanding the depth of the pain I felt and I am choosing to not hold onto that pain daily. Sometimes it does rise up and it hurts again and I have to make the choice again to let it go. I will be imperfect at it. I am imperfect at it. But I am consciously trying because I do not want the rift, the divide, the chaos. I want peace, I want our family to find a new level of wholeness in which we can operate in a way that would bring honor to mom and to God. Nothing will look the way we "want" it to look. We have to all let go of what we each expect. We aren't actually entitled to expectations of other people. This will be an imperfect journey. I know this. I will be imperfect. I know this. I am imperfect. I mess up. I react strongly at times. I also know people know this and use it to their benefit, and I am doing my best to not allow others to extort emotions from me for their purposes.
Let's learn and grow and forgive together. Because the only other option is to be apart. You have to make a choice... what is more important...to hang onto your hurts or to find some common ground and be here to support each other and to support dad and be a family.
I am sorry I have hurt you. I am sorry you had to be part of the great loss of the campfire. I am truly sorry you lost precious memories and things you loved... I am. Your family is still here and we do still love you and you don't have to shut us out and push us away, we are not lost, we are waiting.
I love you and would like us to learn to love each other better, despite our differences, because we do still have plenty, besides just family and friends, in common. But its a choice, an individual and joint choice. We cannot go back and undo misunderstandings and actions that were hurtful, whether intentional or not. We can only let go and move forward. I chose to try to move forward. I do not want to waste precious time.
Love, Your Sister.
