RE: Proof of Brain: Life, Death... and Sometimes a Person Just Gets TIRED!
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Funny that was the first thing that entered my head when I heard he had passed away of suicide. Can't say he wasn't an incredible man of luck and misfortunes it's just the misfortunes finally overwhelmed his desire to see if he had any luck left.
It's a bad spot to be in for sure, weighting your gains up against your losses and the strength(s) needed to move on from there. My sister passed away awhile back and I still want to drop to my knees and cry because basically, if you ask me, she just gave up. Once she learned she had a heart problem she just let it live out to her end. She was the biggest nemesis in my life but in a ironic way I miss that. She captivated and took control of my mom to the point I could never be considered to have done anything right in my life. We spent very little time in life together because she was the youngest of six and the last to come home from foster care. I never got any thanks or gratitude for the many times I had to save her from beatings from my mother. I was the second oldest, I use to have to listen to them howling from the beatings and then I took karate and that part ended. Once she got married that all changed and she was the one who did everything right. Years gone by and her life fell apart I was there buying up the loss like little trophies of her not so perfectness. I cherished each and every item even more so after she got lucky and bought a house, of course as a single mom like me now though she threw it all up in my face, she had a bigger yard, a better neighborhood, etc., it went on and on, just like we could never come to my house ever for the holidays because she considered herself cleaner than me.....well she cleaned houses for a living so maybe she had all the inside tips on the best stuff to clean with on the market....not to mention she had two foster boys she drove like slave masters while her biological girls sat around like Cinderella's. But she truly was like my brother quipped, someone who spent money like Ivana Trump and one day it wouldn't be sustainable for her anymore. Sticking her hands in all those chemicals finally caught up to her and she came down with a debilitating bone disease. Her two sons hated her and ditched out, well, her daughters one basically did the same while the other sat around like her usual Cinderella self. She ended up losing her home, moved to Florida but came back and wanted to stay with me for awhile. Totally unlike her, I should have known something was up. She apologized to me for the things she said and did over the years. Her selfishness with my mom, man, I really should have known something was up. But I don't think it would have really mattered, she was just tired, things were never going to change for her, she so longed for someone to just love her the way she was brought up in foster to care to see what true love was between two loving individuals, she really wanted that but the roadmap to that success was never in the cards the same way coming from a poor home as an abused child having lived in foster care. She had thought she had found that with her first husband having come from a rich family living in the wealthier district of town, they never accepted her, at some point the rationalization sets in that it is what it is. It continued on to be what it was and she just knew her happiness in life again would escape her, she was tired of trying.
Really it was sad because she gave it a run for it's money, she tried so very hard, and as hard as it is for me to admit she did a hell of a job as far as that went. I know she was really hard on those boys, I was often vocally critical of it but standing next to one of them, actually the only one who came to her funeral, weeping like crazy I told him it probably came as a shock I am so broken up and I am not trying to justify the way she treated you but one day you'll realize that having to have lived with her and put up with her is going to be end up making you a better man than the pain of not having lived under such a tyrant because after that you are better equipped to handle life. Everything else in your life is going to pale in comparison and you'll be stronger for it.
I hope you don't mind me telling you all this, it's just it has weighed heavy on me since her death. All those battles to keep them all safe when they were younger, three of them are gone of the six and two are sitting in prison for life and I am still out here running the gauntlet, the one I miss the most is my nemesis, the constant pain in my side whom I could never live up to even in death. She was a hard one for sure but she always got it done, all her kids graduated and one is in college now, she was a terrible person but she accomplished amazing things. Somehow I think we drew off each others weaknesses and strengths but would never admitted it to each other, that's how we kept going but in the end even visiting your strongest strength wasn't enough to overcome the true deficit missing in her life. She just plain wanted out but before she left she wanted me to know she really was proud of me.
I can't express enough that you brought this up. I've wanted to talk about it for a long time but it's something I think someone has to have a understanding of, as you expressed, not many people, as you explained can understand it all.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences. Indeed, everyone probably has a nemesis, I can agree with you. Especially people with whom you have a difficult relationship are the ones you miss when they are gone. Even during one's lifetime, there are these separations and many a door has closed.
It seems to me that you have already gone through a long period of reflection and have found a way to deal with your family history. It is good to hear such experiences because they put the abstract events around us into perspective and make us aware of the importance of personal relationships.
The theatre out there in the world is often not worth making too much fuss about, in my opinion it is a distraction from what we don't want to let in and therefore we shift our confrontation with ourselves to the outside and fight battles that have little relation to the intimate sphere. Seeing a person as they are and not as they should be is an art.
You have done a good job of illuminating your sister's dark side, which leads me to think that you know your own and are seeking to make your peace. What we recognise about ourselves in terms of shadows is incredibly important so that we don't fall into the error of thinking that we are exceptionally good people, because we are not.
But to conclude that we are bad is too extreme and inappropriate, I think. Looking at life's work like your sister's makes me - again - realise how much people are actually prepared to sacrifice to give their offspring a better life, and such things are all too quickly interpreted as success. Although there are several perspectives on this, as you show. The fact that parents have no claim on how their child's life should be is a painful thing that is difficult to let go of.
Greetings to you.
My sister and I were polar opposites, she could go to the refrigerator and no matter what she had to work with she could return with the best sandwich you ever ate in your life, I on the other hand am surprised my kids even survived my cooking. Basically because she led a more protected life in foster care as I was the second one to come home from foster care in the long line of six kids, my younger brother was first because no one could tolerate him. My mom's mother died when she was young so she never had anyone to instill those mother daughter propensities so she in return didn't know how. Despite my sisters dark side, such as, say, one of her sons didn't wash all the folks clean she'd stand over him and force him to eat spaghetti with his fingers type of darkness, she took them to family vacations all across the country, encouraged them to do fundraisers so they all went to France in an exchange program and as I mentioned secured them a home in a good neighborhood with an excellent school district. She was never one to just hand them anything, they had to earn it. I on the other hand lived my missed childhood through my kids and it's taken them a lot longer to mature as a result of it.
She was guy crazy, always craving the attention of men, I was totally opposite her, I had guy friends versus having a lot of girl friends, but they were friends. In other words I was always like one of the guys. That actually may have hurt my perception of men as they always hung out at my house and I heard a lot of "guy" stuff when it came to their relationships. I wasn't as trusting as she always way. When she met her husband she was a stripper at his family owned strip bar, they've owned that business here for decades but somehow she was never good enough for them. Go figure. She married him she quit stripping, quit smoking, drinking, etc., and they went on to a nice lifestyle, they were the type that had to have everything. When their marriage fell apart she literally, well after she came to grips with it, threw everything out the door, filed for bankruptcy, moved the kids to an apartment complex then slowly rebuilt her life on her own, despite all her little nasty moments, and if you could take them all away, she was an incredible woman for doing what she had managed to do. So when she died it was really hard to balance all that in perspective because of course as I explained I experienced a lot of her nasty moments in life myself. It wasn't just the division she drove between my mom and me but it was costly things like the time my parents got in a bad accident and got a settlement, there was a substantial amount of money paid out to all the people and their relatives who were impacted as a result of those injuries, she talked my mom into letting her sign my name on the papers that I relinquished my share of the settlement so she could have more. You know though there are just some bonds you can't break in this life, as she was sheltered away all her life in foster care I took the blunt of living the longest in an abusive environment and trying to shelter my brothers from my moms abuse which later came back to bite my mom in a series of tragic events that unfolded over the years, I was always the rescuer, not just during the times of protecting my younger siblings but during all those tragic events being called upon because they considered me to be the one with the most common sense and I'd know what to do. That happened that day my parents got in that accident, I had to travel several hours there and was meant at the hospital my doctors and nurses whom my sister told them horror stories of conflict between them and I. They said I could see my step dad but my mom wouldn't come out of it and they were more leery, they led me to my step dad and as soon as I entered the room he immediately started giving me instructions of who I needed to call, what I needed to do because he knew, he knew from years and years of calling me to the scene of whatever happened I'd know how to handle it. It was quite different then how my sister had described it might be. The doctor then took me aside and said we really need your mom to come out of it, she was in pretty bad shape, her best friend died sitting next to her, they couldn't get her to come around, they said they were willing to take a chance to see if I could get her to pull out of it, the only thing they asked was if it didn't work out to walk out and to not mention the death of her friend yet. I walked into the room, standing over her bed I said "mom" and she immediately grabbed onto my arm and wouldn't let go, she started mumbling my step dads name and I told her he was okay, she asked about her friends and I told her they were also. The doctors and nurses were amazed at the response. I didn't get upset my sister told them a bunch of stuff, that was just all stuff she instigated in the first place, it was meaningless basically except to her. Despite the bonds that can't be broken my mom is still like that to this day, she never misses my sister's kids birthdays, or holidays or the one niece of mine who has kids all their birthdays but if you ask her she couldn't even tell you what month my kids were born in. It is what it grew to be but when my mom is feeling alone and neglected I am the first one she comes crying to. Between my mom and me it's like the shoe's on are the wrong foot, I am more a mother to her than she is to me. There was only one thing I'd never tolerate her calling me and crying about and that's the calls she'd get from my brothers, she never wanted to acknowledge the abuse and that was the biggest contentious point between her and me for years. She accused me of never wanting to stick up for her, finally I told her just tell them you are sorry, just admit what you did and I will forever stand behind because that is all that you can do and then and only then will I tell them the same and they need to accept that. She did it, I defend her to this day.
For my sister to have to have lost everything in end and go back to being a middle aged stripper online, well, after everything she had done I can't say I was disappointed, I just walked away with more trophies. But now I look at all those trophies and I reflect upon her life and like I said it's been a difficult balancing act trying to put it all into it's own little perspectives. On one hand you want to admire all her accomplishments without letting all those bad moments mire the moments, if you take those moments out she was one exceptional woman for doing what she did on her own.
Thank you for the heartfelt sharing!
In some ways, your sister sounds a bit like my own mother who eternally seemed determined to fill "her empty spaces inside" with accomplishments, glitz, status and material wealth... even though all that "having" and "superiority posturing" never made her feel better about her life. She more or less "made a career" out of marrying well but somehow it never got her what she actually wanted... and her relentless pursuit of these things created manipulative and abusive fallout for those around her.
Although my mom and I were never all that close, I do miss her now that she has been gone for about a decade. However we might feel about someone, we can't get away from the fact that they had a major role in shaping our lives. In most of my adult life, I found myself quite leery of anyone who came across as having an inflated sense of self... as my dad would say, back when I was a teenager "your mother checks her reflection in every shop window in part to check her appearance, and in part to wave to her imaginary fans!"
After my mother died (chronic liver failure from a lifetime of heavy drinking) I had some frank conversations with her cousin back in Denmark, who also was often her best "sane" friend... and her thumbnail analysis was that my mother always chose money and status even though what she most wanted was to be loved as she was.