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My only sibling, my older sister died and I have very mixed feelings about it. I have grieved all my life about the relationship we never had. Years ago I wondered if she had Borderline Personality Disorder but maybe she was just a Narcissist. She didn't start breathing right away when she was born. Our father said it was about 5 minutes that they worked on her, maybe that “fried” something in her brain. She was intelligent enough and was a bookkeeper for part of her employment life, and also did data entry for Bank of America. Can deficits just be in the personality circuits? She sure was tweaked and seemed to hate me from the get-go. Our mother was ill with Pyorrhea (and lost all her teeth due to it) when pregnant with me, and my sister blamed me. For the rest of our mother's life, she could not physically smile naturally because of the bad dentures and bone problems. She would have to consciously move her muscles into a grimace. I never thought she was pleased or happy because she never smiled, and my father wouldn't have anything to do with me, just so I would go to my insecure mother since my sister was “his” girl.
I have vague memories of being closed in a dark closet very young maybe one and a half or two, and being swung around in a circle by my arms by my sister. I was rather terrified of her. When I was 2 ½ she put lipstick on me and had both of us up high on the narrow ledge of the kitchen sink to look in a mirror. We both fell, she on top of me, broke my arm and possibly my back. I was hurting so bad that I couldn't stop crying. She lied as all children do, that I put the lipstick on and I did not have the words to convince our mother otherwise. I was totally frustrated as was our mother when she got home. Mom didn't drive, maybe didn't know what to do, and she had to spend money on doctors. I will share that to this day I have fractures in my L5 vertebrae that never healed, that doctors say I was either born with or happened before I was 5. Those fractures and deteriorated disks next to them have given me a lifetime of grief.
My sister hated it (and me) when she had to go to school and leave me at home with her beautiful Story Book Dolls. They were put on a high shelf, but I was so small and wiry I climbed up and got to them. They weren't made to be played with, only looked at, and I messed up their hair. She told me the neighborhood kids were older than her, but because she was big, they let her “in”. But our mother made her take me along, and she said the other kids didn't like it. I hated being left alone with her because then she would taunt and abuse me. She must have gotten heavy by eight or nine. Our mother put us in dance and acrobatics classes hoping she would lose weight. She didn't and couldn't dance. I loved it and eventually in a year was dancing on stage at theaters between the two shows, and a talent scout wanted to put me in the movies. Another reason for my sister to hate me with all my fancy little costumes. It was devastating to me when our mother stopped it all, days before I was to be in the Pasadena Rose Parade, even though my costume was ready.
She took a lot of grief at school for maturing early. By ten years old she had big breasts, menstruated, reached her full height of 5'2”, was heavy, and looked matronly. She was never slender, but had a couple of good years around 17 to 19, with her extraordinarily beautiful face. When I was 14 and 15 she totally changed and wanted me to go out with her. I was getting attention from boys but was not allowed to date yet. She would take me to the Roller Skating Rink, made sure we dressed like twins, but would demand I only skate holding hands with her, never by myself whether it was a number for couples or free skating. She wanted in on the attention. I had no choice if I wanted permission to go out somewhere, it had to be with her. Our church-going parents would have been so very shocked to learn we also “dragged” Hollywood Blvd, picking up servicemen, drinking hard liquor, and necking with them. She must have told them I was only 15 because not one of them ever got out of line with me. I was very lucky to not have been hurt by them.
When I was 15 she hit me one night and I wrestled her to the ground even though I knew she could surely “take” me, at only 106 pounds. I didn't hit her or want to hurt her, I just decided I was not going to “accept” physical abuse. She never hit me again, but she still played the (bad) mother role the rest of our lives. She got pregnant with some guy and got another one (that had been in jail at the time) to marry her and her life was all downhill from there. She carried her second child eleven and a half months so her stomach got all stretched out. She was huge at 5'2”. It looked like she had multiples in there. Her youngest child (at 11) lived with us for some months. She threatened to give the child away if we didn't make it a permanent arrangement. My husband said no, and she followed through with her threat. She was always so mean to that child, so maybe foster care wasn't worse. She was also always mean to her three husbands. We bought a cabin together. I was totally against it but my husband did it anyway. It was always a source of heartache. She expected me to cook and clean up for all 8 of us. My husband put a second story on the cabin when she and her husband made 2 ½ times as much as we did. She owed us tens of thousands of dollars but only paid $100.00 since the late 1960's. She was cruel and obscene many times. One example of her personality is that she told me that it was my fault that our son was killed by a drunk driver. She was always a compulsive liar and in fact, lied to me last month. She wore sizes 18 to 22 in the better years. Both breasts were removed with no reconstruction when she was 50, so with her big stomach she had an unusual appearance for 33 years, With time her stomach hung down progressively, eventually to her knees. At 290 lbs, with diabetes and oxygen, she was not a happy camper. She couldn't pick up anything from the floor, and couldn't get up when she fell. The fire department would come to pick her up. This gave her more reason to hate me. At nearly 5'4” I never weighed more than 136 in my life.
Maybe I'm as tweaked as she. Some say we should not speak ill of the dead. But I had a lifetime of abuse, right up to the time she died. For years I have prayed to the Lord, that He not hold against her, her sins against me. I want her to go to Heaven, and she thought she would. I think she has, but she was on the cusp of being mentally ill. Devious, mean, and sometimes evil, she never apologized to me or anyone else for anything. As a matter of fact, I never saw one instance of remorse or repentance in her entire life, until she mentioned it two months ago. Within the last several telephone conversations with her, she was talking about repentance and that she was asking the Lord to forgive her often. I was so shocked since I had come to believe she was incapable of it. A few years ago, she was instrumental in bringing a friend to say the “sinners prayer” before she died. I believe salvation is by accepting the Lord Jesus Christ into our hearts and asking for forgiveness for our sins since we are all imperfect, and we remain imperfect for the rest of our lives. I have mixed feelings about people that appear to "want" to be mean. I never understood her, and have to leave it to the Lord. I choose to believe her bondage or personality defects did not keep her out of Heaven.
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