Even with 10+ years of recovery and spiritual retrieval work (though lately, the doing of the work is minimal and I find myself right back in survival mode), I continue to lose hours and nights of sleep- rehashing theories on why my sister did what she did, TO me. I recognize that my neeeeed to understand is a clever way of owning that I will not fully surrender/accept what has happened, repeatedly. Mentally, I am ready to move TF on, but emotionally, I am bound more tightly to the pain– each time I must interact with my greatest reminder of her—(my boys’ father–my sister’s emotional and moral/soul equivalent).
According to these wise words of Rumi: “The cure for the pain is in the pain.” By this measure, I might be quite close to the cure. I want to learn, grow, and expand from heartache, the most amount, and maybe I already have and and maybe the letting go makes it all too final. Perhaps I will feel empty and lost without all of my pain. Who would I even be without it? I want to resolve the conflict (within myself—but also pathetically and most unrealistically with my ex husband) and not bypass it. I want peace most especially for our children. I must make peace with some hard shit.
Reminder to Myself: I do not cause others to do things. My words and choices certainly may inspire feelings– but cause behaviors, nope. As I reflect on the few short honeymoon reunions with my sister between 1992 and 2015, I recall in horrifying detail, her descriptions of (handling) undercutting and icing each of the women and girls in her family, with the exception of one. Why did she boast those things to me– about sisters in laws, aunts, nieces, cousins, roommates, co-workers too? Was she flexing at me, warning me to stand down? I cannot help but marvel at the volumes of unfortunate details (my sister’s justification for demenaing them) I know about females with whom I have had little, if any contact.
She did the things to others. But nobody ever checked her on it. Nobody but me. I wonder how many more ways and times I will need to remind myself of what I now, as an adult, with a program of recovery, am able to understand and articulate — and still not accept. Does acceptance really need to be so challenging and continuous, tho?
