My Mom and Sister

[Woglinde]

Hi guys.

I have depression myself, but my mom and sister also have it.

My mom was sexually abused as a child, by her mother no less, and she just started to reflect on it in the last few years since her mother started to take ill and eventually died. She doesn't seem uncomfortable talking about it, but I noticed that her panic attacks and other symptoms have gotten more pronounced in the last five years since she started to talk about it.

She is going to therapy, but the health center will only see her for one hour every month. It's not going anywhere.

Now her situation is even worse because she's living with a disabled spouse who is constantly on morphine because of her health issues, and supporting my sister who lives with her as well.

My sister is two years younger than me. She has been diagnosed at different points in time with any number of things. ADHD, clinical depression, and now they suspect she may be high functioning autistic spectrum or something that was not as widely known in the 80's and 90's when she was a child. We still aren't 100% sure, but she's very attention-seeking, manipulative, paranoid, and delusional. Most of the time I can't even hold a conversation with her because of the crazy things she tries to get me to believe.

She makes up stories, and I'm never sure how much of it she actually believes, but if I try to tell her why I know it isn't true and present her with facts of the matter, then she gets just as angry as if she were telling the truth.

When we were kids, my parents didn't have a handle on her at all. She would pull stunts like stripping naked or peeing on herself in school to get out of class or maybe just to call attention to herself. She used to destroy my toys. The one time I had a birthday party at my house, she cracked one of my friends in the face with a flashlight. So of course, nobody would come to my house.

As teenagers she would tear up expensive computer equipment or scratch my CDs and games. My parents were on the low end of middle class, so it took a lot of effort to collect these things that she would destroy. If I bought any food she would immediately eat it, then blame someone else even though she is the only other person there.

She's always trying to make me self-conscious about flaws that aren't even there. Like, telling me that my skin is bad or my hair is messed up or that she can see my ribs through my skin, or that I have something in my teeth or whatever, and none of that is true.

She has never been physically violent towards me, but she threatened me a few times. One time she threatened to stab me because she thought my dad was giving me preferential treatment (which he was not, he was just punishing her for something bad she had done). I started crying, so then she threatened to push me over a railing at the mall.

I nearly ran away from home several times, and it took everything I had just to wait it out and hope the day that I moved out that I'd be free from it.

Sometimes she gets jealous if she perceives that other people like me more than they like her, and she tells them lies about me. Like that I physically abused her, or that I am an alcoholic, or that I stole from her. None of those things are even remotely true. It's bad enough she tried to convince my friends those things, but one time she even told my boss and co-workers that kind of stuff.

The most recent incident was, while my mom's partner (she's a lesbian) was in the hospital and almost died, she made herself sick by drinking salt water and then called an ambulance for herself.

So as an adult I pretty much just tried to limit any and all contact that I have with her to some phone conversations.

But, I am really worried about my mom. My mom lets my sister live with her rent-free, even though she can't afford her own bills. My sister took over two of the three bedrooms in the house they are renting. My mom buys all of her food, cooks most of the meals, sends her to therapy, and even helps her with credit card payments. And all she gets is my sister's delusional hatefulness in return. My sister tries to exert control over them both by screaming at them to be quiet so that they can't watch TV or hold conversations, or she'll demand that all the lights in the entire house be off. Even though, she has two whole rooms with doors she can shut.

I'm afraid my mom is going to seriously hurt herself, or at the very least she won't be able to hold a job because of the stress living with my sister can put on her, in addition to all the other problems that are already there, like caring for a disabled spouse.

I don't want my sister to be out on the street or anything, but I can't stand to watch her make other people suffer the way I used to suffer. It's almost like since I'm no longer part of the household, she is now taking it out on my mom instead of me.