It’s All Relative

24 February 2021

A boundary is the sort of thing that makes sense and sounds good in theory, but in actuality is incredibly difficult. While it’s beyond easy to like a post about the importance of boundaries on Instagram, which there are plenty, it’s a whole hell of a lot harder to set and remain firm in holding onto a boundary in real life. Just another thing that is easier said than done.

If you had told me five years ago that the idea of the five members of my immediate family having dinner together was a distant possibility I would have laughed. How absurd.  We’d been around each other for our entire lives, since the last time my parents had unprotected sex and my brother came into the picture, which was over three decades ago. That’s a lot of shared history for five people. A lot of ups and downs, good times, sad times, and plain bad times. These people are your family whether you like them all the time or not. Sometimes it seems like I have nothing in common with these people besides shared DNA.

A sibling relationship is sacred because if you’re lucky enough to have them, these people have known you forever, but in a different way from your parents. They’re probably some of the first people you learned how to get along with, communicate with, and share inside jokes with. They were always present under the same roof whether you were best friends that day or mortal enemies. Whichever one it happened to be, it was only temporary. Because tomorrow promised a whole new day of possibilities and problems, like who would get the last best flavor of granola bar in the variety pack.

My family hasn’t been in the same room with one another in about four years. Our distance started before the pandemic hit. I left Seattle in July of 2017 with all my crap in the trunk bed of a 1984 Nissan pickup and headed to Colorado. I didn’t say goodbye to my sister. I didn’t even tell her I was leaving. At the time I didn’t want her to know where I was living and that I had moved several states away. The last words we had shared hadn’t gone well. I had voicemails from her that I could play just in case I needed a refresh on why I wasn’t saying good bye, or much of anything to her at the moment. 

To understand this story and to begin to comprehend the reasoning for why I eventually had to cut all ties with my sister, we have to go back a few years. I had just returned to Seattle after living in Portland. Within a few months of being back under my parents’ roof, all three of us kids had returned to the nest. I’m sure my parents were so proud. Here were all their fully grown adult children who had left home, gone to college, and lived in other states and countries and now we were back on their doorstep with all our belongings.  

It was a full house. This time around felt much fuller. Maybe because we all took up more space physically and emotionally. It’s as if we all enjoyed the first time around so much, we figured why not wait a bunch of years, move back in together and do the whole thing over again? I’m not going to sugarcoat it. Terrible fucking idea. 

So there we were, one big happy family trying to live our best lives, while maintaining some level of sanity. I should mention that both my brother and sister are bipolar and during this time both dipped into episodes, usually not in tandem, but it felt like one right after the other. The dates are a little fuzzy for exactly how long we were all living together again. Mainly because I have tried to desperately forget much of those few years spent in close quarters again. Sadly, I know it was at least over a year. 

It had been years since I witnessed a manic episode up close, but I sure had ample opportunity this time around. My sister is very intelligent and her work had always been a big part of her life. She quit her job and moved home, and promptly grew restless after going so long without being challenged in any real way. Besides being intelligent, she’s also one of the bravest people I know. She dropped everything and moved to foreign countries all alone multiple times and made a life for herself wherever she lived. She was pretty fearless. 

She’s five years older and even at a young age I understood that I would never quite follow in her near perfect footsteps. I’d never be the class valedictorian or excel in ballet, or be so effortlessly beautiful. Things didn’t come as easily to me, as they seemed to for her. I didn’t resent her. I admired her. Especially when she uprooted her life on a whim and moved to New York and worked her way up in one of the biggest publishing houses in existence. 

Because she’s older, we didn’t really grow close until I was in high school and then more so when I went to college. We talked regularly and had a close sister relationship. That’s not to say there weren’t any strains in the relationship even back then. I had to take a break from communicating with her a couple of times. Usually after she said something completely absurd and insensitive that I couldn’t move past right away. 

One time she insinuated I was responsible for our brother being diagnosed with bipolar, which I know isn’t how mental illness works. It stung nevertheless. She refused to relent, asking how I was handling all that guilt that I must have felt for pushing him over the edge into the murky waters of bipolar disorder and ultimately into a hospital room. It was ugly. I felt like an awful person, not to mention a horrible sister.  Even with the knowledge that I couldn’t be responsible for his diagnosis, I still felt like shit. I stopped talking to her for while after that. 

We went on a road trip several years ago from New York to Las Vegas. She had invited me on the trip, told me she’d pay for my flight, the trip, and the money I’d miss from taking time off from the restaurant I was working at then.  I agreed. Things were already looking bumpy when I drove the rental car out of New York City. It turned into the trip from hell. I sat in the staircase of a Hampton Inn Hotel in Little Rock and debated getting a taxi to the airport and flying back to Montana and not finishing the trip. It was that bad. 

Each time I told her I needed some time away from her, she never once seemed concerned with what she must have done to make me want to not have any communication with her. She knew I’d come around and drop whatever it was and move on for the sake of our relationship and the sake of simply keeping the peace within our family. And I did that. For years. She never apologized for anything she said or did and eventually I let it go. 

This pattern we found ourselves in dramatically changed after her last major episode, which began while we were all living together. This episode felt different. She would slip in and out of reality when it appeared convenient for her. Soon she was unrecognizable to me and our family. One night she woke our whole house up at 3 or 4 in the morning banging on the front door of my parents’ house. She was drunk, demanding to be let inside because she was starving and freezing. My parents told her that because it was so late she could sleep on the porch, that was the deal if she came home at that hour. 

She went into a rage. She stood on the front porch shouting and threatening to wake all the neighbors up, and go door to door asking them for money to get some food. Then she threatened to walk to the park near our house so she could just wait around to get raped. My parents let her in. I’m pretty sure all the neighbors were awake at that point. Soon all of us were in the kitchen, most of us groggy from being awakened from a dead sleep, watching as this complete stranger, who looked like my sister, opened the fridge and cupboards looking for food. Then she lashed out at all of us one at a time. She called us crazy and said we were the problem in this situation. There’s nothing you can say to a person in this state, or in a moment like this. Nothing sinks in. I left the kitchen and went back to bed.  

At the beginning of her episode she slept in the house, then the backyard, then the porch, and finally my parents refused to let her in the house. She became a vagrant in the neighborhood we grew up in. I’d see my sister on the streets, at the beach, and in every bar and restaurant within a couple mile radius. She was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. She would scream in front of the apartment building my brother and I eventually moved into. Even when she wasn’t physically nearby, she was on my voicemail, leaving messages during all hours of the night in a voice that was filled with utter hatred. 

She was relentless. Slandering our names, especially our dad’s, going into rages, threatening us, and becoming so vile I no longer recognized her. She was kicked out of our parent’s house, out of my apartment, out of friends’ places. She called me from jail once, demanding I pay her bail, because I owed her. I said no. My parents said no. She tried to get me to pass the phone to my coworkers, who were very familiar with the situation and told me they were uncomfortable with how much shit she was talking about me to them. Honestly, jail was probably the safest place for her at the time. That’s saying something.

No request was too invasive and no demand was too grand enough for her. She dined and dashed all over town. She did it where I worked. I’d walk into work and she’d be sitting at the bar, running up a tab she knew she wouldn’t be paying, with the smile of a psychopath spreading across her face when she saw me.  

It felt like she had one purpose in life. It was to make sure I knew the part I played in being responsible for the situation she found herself. I finally deleted all the voicemails she left, telling me I was an awful person, and more pointedly an awful sister. I no longer recognized the voice of the person in those messages, but one thing was clear, I had failed her as a sister. Everything was my fault. It got so bad I seriously considered getting a restraining order.

After I moved four years ago, our communication was limited to a random text or email. Until I got a birthday card from her last year. In the card she told me she loved me and was confused why we didn’t talk anymore. Though this was hardly the first time she appeared confused as to why we were taking a break from each other, it was the first time I hadn’t given in. I hadn’t let her break down a boundary that I painstakingly built to protect myself. All the other boundaries and lines I had drawn with her were written in the sand. They weren’t set in stone, but rather vague, and not intended to survive a strong wind. How could they? I couldn’t not have a relationship with my sister? Could I? Who does that?

I sent her a letter, explaining in great detail why I felt she had gone too far, and that I needed an apology or an attempt at an apology. I needed to see a glimmer of interest from her that showed she wanted to reconcile or make amends with me and our family. Until that happened, we wouldn’t have a relationship. I basically told her that she needed to take some responsibly for herself and her actions over the last couple of years. I know she’s bipolar, but that doesn’t entitle her to a pass to treat the people in her life like shit. That doesn’t work for me. I don’t think that’s fair. Sometimes I don’t know if I was more upset with how she had treated me, or our dad. He took the brunt of her rage and I haven’t been able to let that go, no matter how much I try. 

Her reply came nine months later. It was an email. I’m not surprised by what she wrote, but after almost a year of therapy, where a great deal of time was spent discussing her and our relationship and boundaries, I was surprised by how much what she said and didn’t say affected me. Had I gotten nowhere? And finally it hit me. I set boundaries with her for a reason. I was very aware that I couldn’t let her play a role in my life because I always felt like shit when I did. I don’t want to feel that kind of guilt and sadness anymore. I can’t do it. I have plenty of other things to feel bad about. No need to add any more reasons to be depressed and anxious. I felt awful for a week after I read and reread her email. Why was I allowing myself to feel this way again when I said I wouldn’t?

The boundaries I set and abandoned in the past were fluff, because I didn’t know how to be okay with shutting the door on her for good. In the past she knew I’d eventually give in and forget about what she had done or said that bothered me enough to need some time away from her. I’ve known her all my life, except for the last four years. I don’t know anything about her day to day life now. What she’s reading. What t.v. she’s binging. Simple things. At this point she’s a stranger to me. It’s taken me a really long time to be comfortable with knowing that while my sister is alive and well, at least from what I hear, our relationship and any serious communication is dead. I’d be lying if I told you I always feel comfortable with what our relationship has become. The truth is I’m not. I may never be.

It’s not natural to cut a family member out of your life. I don’t recommend it unless you have exhausted all other options. That doesn’t mean it’s not necessary. I can’t begin to explain how it feels to have a sibling who is very much alive, but one that you can’t have any real communication with because it destroys you. I told a guy I was seeing a while back that I didn’t have a relationship with my sister. He didn’t get it. He told me he couldn’t imagine never talking to his own sister and didn’t know how I didn’t talk to mine. I didn’t know how to react. So I didn’t. What I should have said is this isn’t the result I’d strived for and the guilt I felt for keeping her at a distance felt like it was eating me alive. It took years for me to realize this was my only option if I wanted to protect myself.

I’d argue I’ve exhausted all the other options a few times over the years. Something changed for me after I received her latest email.  I couldn’t allow this person to bulldoze me again and again and then be the one that had to give in to make things peaceful. There’s a part of me that desperately wants to in order to keep my family together, or at least to be able to eat a meal together again. Each time I cut her off, or took a hiatus from her, I’d be wracked with guilt. I’d feel like a terrible person, just like she had told me I was. Maybe it’s not so bad I’d tell myself. Perhaps, it’s mostly in my head. You can only fabricate falsities like this for so long. It’s not a permanent solution. 

My family, including my parents, set boundaries with her. But those boundaries didn’t stick. Currently, the only boundary still being enforced is the one I set. I was succeeding at keeping a boundary, but I also understood that not having a relationship with my sister would be one of the greatest failures of my life. It’s hard not to think of it as a failure, but maybe that way of looking at it doesn’t help. I cut the toxic connection we had. But that can’t erase the failure I feel or the sadness that never seems to fully go away. If I give into her, I fail myself. If I hold my own, I fail my family. At least that’s what it feels like. We’re a broken family. It’s weird to accept that your family probably can’t spend an hour together without shit hitting the fan. 

I finally understood with her last email that our relationship couldn’t be resolved. At least not now. She isn’t ready. And I’m not ready to give in. I’ve come too far to let my guilt rule my decision making. I can’t keep doing the same thing over, giving in, and expecting a different result. Clearly that hasn’t worked in the past, and I finally learned to accept that it won’t work in the future. All I can do is love her and hope she’s happy and healthy from a distance. That’s good enough for now because it has to be.