My sister Mary - the oldest of us four girls and mother of my niece Elizabeth - had a t-shirt that read: "The way some people find fault you'd think there was a reward." I think of that often and my own corellary (fuck spelling): the way some people withhold anything positive (compliments, love, etc) you'd think there was a punishment. Mary would pretend to care for me but, always, behind my back she would tell Mom and Dad how selfish I was. I guess Susie did this, too. I knew Barbara did and the only mistake I made with her was telling her I was done with her forever about thirty years to late. Her suicide - a gift to the world - could have happened much sooner. When Red Cross borrowed me to do casework after a hurricane in Corpus Christi, Texas, Mary bugged me and bugged me to visit her when I came to the San Francisco area to visit a boyfriend when I was done with Red Cross. I did. Spent several not very pleasant days with her at the end of which she told in her matter-of-fact abusive manner: "I only invited you to visit because Dad kept bugging me to." What else could I have expected from a person who told me how lucky I was that my daughter died the day after she was born. "I can't help but think how much better Joe (husband) and I might be if Michael had died?' Michael, her son, was about 18 months old at the time. Mary raised him with regular reminders of how "lucky" I was because my baby had died while he had lived. Michael hates me. A typical reaction of someone who is abused - get mad at the wrong person. By the way our parents paid for the phone call to avoid dealing with me directly and because they knew how close Mary and I were (as if I'd never know about her backstabbing ways)
and they knew how she would "console" me. Yeah, Lucky Kathy.
Reminds me of Barbara getting drunk and maudalin on the Mothers' Day after she had abandoned her husband and son for the third or fourth time until he finally fled to Europe with Benjamin. So the family was gathered at Susan's house and Barbara, center stage, pissed and moaned about how she "was a mother, too." I thought of reminding her that I could make the same claim (Susan said to me later, privately, that she'd had the same thought, but of course she didn't say anything). It was take care of Barbara while everyone had a rotten time everyone just had a rotten time.
One of my clinical trainers once commented that he had the feeling that the people in my family got mad a lot. Looking back I can see what an understatement that was. Angry and critical and nasty, pretending to be "honest" and adult.
And the Hairballs keep coming.
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