Shortly before her wedding, my sister came to me, asking me to support a lie she’d been telling her friend about me for the past several years.
Her friend, Michelle, was to be the seamstress to sew dresses for all of her bridesmaids. My sister’s wedding was going to be a large one, with many bridesmaids, on the banks of the river of the very camp where she had spent her childhood. Indeed, her two best friends in her later adult years were old camp buddies. She never got over her jealousy that they each had inherited more money than her, and I never heard the end of that from her.
Perhaps that’s another reason she attacked me when I refused to surrender my inheritance to her on the day of my mother’s funeral, after she had demanded that we all sit together and read the will.
At any event, Michelle needed to take measurements for my bridesmaid’s dress, and it was up to me to drive to her house for the measurement. The problem was that I had two children with no babysitters available to me. I was cleaning houses for a living, a single parent without child support.
I kept putting off the measurement session until Michelle finally offered to come to my house. It was at this point that my sister came to me in a panic and told me she had been lying to Michelle for years, telling her she was busy babysitting my children whenever Michelle would invite her to outings like movies, restaurants and such.
In truth, my sister had only baby sat one child of mine twice in all those years. Both times were dire emergencies. She wasn’t even available to babysit my kids while I drove across town for the bride’s dress fitting.
It was humiliating for me to sacrifice my dignity and allow this woman, who was standing in my house and measuring my body, to think that I was some unappreciative bum who had been using my sister for years when the opposite had been true.
I allowed my little sister to get away with her lie and sacrificed my own dignity for her sake. I spent most of my life believing it was my job to protect my little sister at my own expense. I started believing it less and less the more and more I saw of her selfishness, her willingness to betray me and others on so many levels.
Perhaps I’d grown accustomed to it, after the many years of taking on the burdens that family cast on me, that were not mine to bear. Taking care of a little sister who was struggling with schizophrenia, while trying to get on my own two feet. Taking the rap for a criminal sister who never paid any dues for all her violence and damages.
Appearances have always been front and center with the little sister. She has proven that she will sacrifice truth and family … for appearances.
Anyone who does not want to hear every side of the story is not motivated by the truth anyway, so I don’t care about a large audience, only a truth-seeking one.
I’m certain my sister has never come forward to Michelle with the truth, with the fact that she’d told her lies consistently for years, with no thought at all for anyone but herself.
Please take note that I willingly threw my own self to the wolves by protecting my sister with her lies, even when it was me that was the victim of her lies. And I did it willingly, because I thought I loved her, because I thought it was my job to protect my little sister, always.
When she came to me time after time, over the years, devastated because her husband had had another affair, or took advantage of her financially, or threatened suicide w/lipstick on the mirror and a gun in his hand, I grew to despise the man more and more. There is so much garbage he put everyone through that I could share, but life is short and time is meaningful.
I have to say I conducted myself quite well, obeying my little sister’s wishes and never letting on to my brother-in-law how much I despised him. This is probably the reason why the two of them went ballistic when I finally did speak up with three little words.
Simply put, the action that caused the rift, was one and only one act … she has not spoken to me since the 3 little words that I spoke. She hates me because I exposed the truth of her own life.
She got them all to gang up on me, despite the fact that not one of them had ever spent one minute in our home for the first 60 years of our lives. All of these were relatively distant relatives, yet she got them to gang up on me at my own mother’s funeral, after I’d driven 1000 miles, all night long alone, the night before. There was no crueler family I could have belonged to. Rare is the person I’ve found who was asked to sacrifice as much as I, for the sake of criminals, scoundrels, rapists and philanderers.
I mean, seriously, fuck all those frauds.
I’m certain that Lisa never told my 2 nieces that the biggest wedge between my mother and I was because I had begged her not to walk out on my big sister when she was struggling to breathe her last breaths!!
This never mattered to her because she had not grown up with our big sister, but it left a scar in my psyche that will never heal. I watched my mother be heartless and cruel to the sweetest sister in the family for 45 years.
I never spoke to Mom about it. In fact, on my last visit, I let one word slip out that sent my mother spinning like a top. I accidentally said in front of her that Nancy had always been Cinderella to me.
“Cinderella!” my mother cried out in shock. I realized I’d messed up so I said nothing more. Nothing more needed to be said.
Nancy lived in the tiniest of rooms at the top of the stairs, was treated like a maid and a babysitter more than a daughter, had her self esteem beat into the dust on a daily basis throughout her childhood, abandoned by our mother throughout her adult life.
My mother knew exactly what I meant when she heard me say, “Cinderella.”
It probably hurt her deeply and I’m honestly sorry for that. But, truth is truth. Nancy was infinitely loving and forgiving. These are the people I stay strong for. For the sake of all the victims involved, I’ll continue to speak the truth, despite a family’s efforts to silence me.
This first lie that my sister told on me, that I learned about years after the fact, was the first of many. It was just the tip of the iceberg of her betrayals.
I would continue to drive across the state to rescue her, before and after this first betrayal. I was a fool for way too many decades of my life.
Oikos 