Everytime we try to talk - I try to say "Please stop this self destruction - please choose to live" - it comes out as a fight. She asked me today "Are you saying you want me to kill myself?" when in fact I was asking her to do the exact opposite. I wonder what it must sound like to her when I talk. I wonder how it gets deciphered in her language.
I imagine it sounds like:
You hate me.
I'm worthless.
I would be better off dead.
There is not an ounce left of joy in my sister. No light. Not a speck of the person I confided in, laughed with, adored. I can't look at her and my mouth curls up in anger when she gets to close to me. It feels like hate but I know it is a broken heart that does not want to get broken anymore.
She gets her check today. My mom has her bank card so she won't binge it away. She is already finding other ways to get to her money. She cannot find a place to live or follow through with her treatments but she can get drugs in the most dire of situations. It is the thing that confuses me when we try to understand why she can't follow through with anything - we can rationalize it and blame her illness. We can handle her with care and gentleness and all the while think, "it's not her fault" but her cunning and manipulation are so sharp when she needs to drink or get high. There are a million reasons I'm sure. Not one of them will ever help me sleep at night peacefully again.
After our fight she downed half a bottle of wine and left a little in the bottom so I wouldn't notice. We told her if she drinks here we will kick her out - because that's what they tell you to do at the support groups - don't enable her. Make your boundaries and stick to them. But in the support groups for Borderline Personality they say be gentle, don't reject her or she might lose it. Use positives and tell her what she is doing right and encourage even the smallest of steps. So which one should I do? Should I kick her out or praise her for only drinking half of the bottle?
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