Welcome to the house of fun?

There’s nothing like waking up and stepping into a nest of hornets waiting to pounce. Have you ever walked into a room filled with people and you sense that some drama had played itself out just before you made your entrance?

Still groggy from a lovely deep sleep having had no sleep the night before from coughing my lungs up all night long, I casually made my way to the kitchen and poured myself a cup of coffee. Out of habit, I scanned the different rooms for the Other’s (sister, BIL and niece), looking for signs of trouble, fighting or any chaos that would require me to run for the hills (my bedroom). At first glance everyone looked busy or content, but boy was I wrong. My niece was in rare form and whiny and obnoxious doesn’t fully define her actions during the next several hours. My BIL is possibly facing a stint in jail and hasn’t worked in six months. Between bills and lawyer fees his trust fund has run out and all my BIL and sister have to live on is their savings. My sister floats from room to room playing the martyr and acts like her world is falling apart, which in her case it is. As of today I have no pity for either one of them. The reason they are in dire straits is because of my BIL’s addiction and my sister’s share of the blame runs deep but is too long and complicated to write about at the moment. I don’t find joy in their suffering, I don’t sit in my room relishing their down-fall but I do believe the karma like justice befalling them is more than fair.

Here is a sample of my sister’s daily antics. Every day I find her crying or “acting” emotionally distraught. At these moments I ask her if she needs a hug or would she like to talk. I rack my brain for ways to cheer her up or calm her down. Most often she pushes me away and acts like I have nothing she needs. Still, I keep putting myself out there, ready to be a shoulder to cry on. I’m not saying their problems are small but we all have burdens to bear and their burdens are not tragedies dumped on them but burdens they themselves made. Today, I found my sister in tears on a few occasions but for some reason I was hesitant to comfort her. Maybe because I’m tired of her rejection or maybe it’s because she was acting very childish around me, I’m not sure but I kept to myself. Then, while my niece was in her room listening to music (rare occurrence), my husband and BIL were out running some errands, my sister starts crying and tells me that she woke up at 4am in the morning and tried to gas herself to death in her car. I was stunned. I couldn’t speak or think. She said she couldn’t go through with it because she found an old picture of her daughter in the front seat of the car. The next few hours were a blur to me as I grappled with the possibility of my sister’s demise. I must have looked very tortured by my thoughts because finally my sister comes waltzing back into the living room and says, “I was just joking about the car thingy”. AND, she had the audacity to smile when she said she was just joking.

So, you can understand why I feel NO pity for either my BIL or sister while they deal with the consequences of their bad behavior. Gosh, I’m still sick to my stomach from just the thought of my sister sitting in her car slowly dying. I must go and find a way to relax and let the very toxic feelings leave my mind.