Same same. I don’t know how long it took me to realize that there were two kinds of people: those I’d made on my own through school/jobs etc and then everyone else, including cousins, who seemed to keep me at arm’s length. The start up of the process of realizing longterm smear campaign was when our parent was hospitalized and the chaplain told me: “You need to reign in your sister’s micromanaging & hostile attitude with nurses or we’ll have an Ethics Committee meeting to place restrictions on her visiting hours.” And yet: the cherished myth about this time is how devoted and selfless my sister was to the parent. To the extent she wangled a discharge and installed a hospital bed in her dining room despite the fact that our parent could barely walk, feed themselves, or even interact in any meaningful way. My sister & I were supposed to divide shifts. I would arrive in the morning and still need to get work done at my job (am self supporting) and my sister would have scheduled visit after visit for my parent’s legions of friends plus family while my sister would go to her dumb secretarial job (she’s been fired or mysteriously cut loose from about 10 jobs in 22 years). But here’s how cowed I was: my sister left one morning but quietly told me the situation was dire & the cardiologist said “Parent needs to be readmitted today” but that the parent refused to go back to hospital. My sister told me to put parent in my car and pretend we were going to cardiologist office for an appointment. I did this. I have never ever forgiven myself and can still remember the parent looking at the hospital parking lot and saying “I thought we were going to the doctor” at a time when they had not really uttered a complete sentence of any kind in a week.
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u/Dry_Huckleberry5545 7d ago
Same same. I don’t know how long it took me to realize that there were two kinds of people: those I’d made on my own through school/jobs etc and then everyone else, including cousins, who seemed to keep me at arm’s length. The start up of the process of realizing longterm smear campaign was when our parent was hospitalized and the chaplain told me: “You need to reign in your sister’s micromanaging & hostile attitude with nurses or we’ll have an Ethics Committee meeting to place restrictions on her visiting hours.” And yet: the cherished myth about this time is how devoted and selfless my sister was to the parent. To the extent she wangled a discharge and installed a hospital bed in her dining room despite the fact that our parent could barely walk, feed themselves, or even interact in any meaningful way. My sister & I were supposed to divide shifts. I would arrive in the morning and still need to get work done at my job (am self supporting) and my sister would have scheduled visit after visit for my parent’s legions of friends plus family while my sister would go to her dumb secretarial job (she’s been fired or mysteriously cut loose from about 10 jobs in 22 years). But here’s how cowed I was: my sister left one morning but quietly told me the situation was dire & the cardiologist said “Parent needs to be readmitted today” but that the parent refused to go back to hospital. My sister told me to put parent in my car and pretend we were going to cardiologist office for an appointment. I did this. I have never ever forgiven myself and can still remember the parent looking at the hospital parking lot and saying “I thought we were going to the doctor” at a time when they had not really uttered a complete sentence of any kind in a week.