And That's Why You're Single |
| Posted: 25 Nov 2013 07:51 AM PST Friday was my sister’s funeral. I did not attend. I was not allowed in. I was also intentionally left out of the obituary and not listed as one of her sisters. I’ve received a steady stream of hateful texts and messages from her children. So many that I ended up blocking all of them on Facebook. Which, if you’re along time reader, you know I hate doing. It’s been an incredibly draining last few days. People have popped out of the woodwork to express their condolences. Some were welcome, some weren’t. I imagine there are others who skulk around here in some warped desire to keep up with my life, looking for that moment of vulnerability to use as a way to mend a fence. I sit here desperately trying to write and I’m coming up with nothing. I have my Spotify playing in the background, hoping for some inspiration. One song seemed to nail how I feel.
I think my head is caving in. That’s an apt description of how I feel as I sit here staring at my screen. I slept almost 11 hours last night, rising at 9am instead of my usual 6am. For the most part I have dealt with everything going on with my family by internalizing it. That would explain the fatigue. At first I thought my loss of appetite was just a result of me becoming more disciplined with my eating habits. But last week I was eating something and realized that I was forcing myself to digest it. If the food has savor or taste, I didn’t notice. I go about my days as though everything is normal, but something has switched off. I can sense it. I know I’ve taken a series of hits these past 18 months. I managed to move past all of them. I think that was largely due to the fact that I had kept my family at arm’s length. But the last 6 months or so have been some of the most exhausting that I’ve ever experienced. And I know it’s because I’ve immersed myself in the dynamic that is my family. The dysfunctional, expectation and obligation riddled dynamic. I was so much happier when they were there and I was here and we occasionally spoke about nothing all that important. I check in with one sister now and every conversation leads to an argument about the condo where she lives and how her bills are going to be paid. It’s never, “Hey, how are you?” There’s always an angle, and it almost always leads to me having to okay a withdrawal from the account I had set up for her at home. Her condo is part of the probate estate. A few weeks ago my sisters and I became owners and are now on the deed. But one sister and I want off of the deed. It’s too big of a financial risk, and we know that as long as our names are on it, we will be forced to maintain and pay for the property or risk a hit to our own credit and financial security. We want to sell it and set my sister up somewhere else with some of the proceeds of the sale. And, of course, split the rest. I could take my name off the deed and be done with it. Sadly, I don’t trust that my rights will be protected should we ever sell it and my name isn’t on the deed. My 25 year old niece rather gleefully sent me a text telling me she intentionally left me out of my sister’s obituary. That didn’t really bother me, as I knew simply because I’m an adult that a decision like that would only put the spotlight on her and make her look petty and vindictive.
That came from my nephew. The backstory is that my sister who passed bought a house from my father. For cheap. Really cheap. He drew up a promissory note stipulating that she pay X amount every month until the modest balance was paid. He cut that amount in half sometime around his death but never adjusted the note. What she didn’t understand was that my father drew up the note in such a way so that his share of the note/money didn’t default to his wife upon his death, also on the note. Since it was unassigned at the time of his death, his share went to us. My step-brothers very graciously turned over their share to us, leaving us as full owners of the note. We wanted it paid. (It was less than 100K) She insisted my father told her that she didn’t have to pay the balance once he and my step-mother had passed.We didn’t have that in writing. All we had was the note. Only one other sister and I spoke up and said she should pay the note, and pay it in full so that this didn’t drag on for the 10 or so years she had left in payments. Accusations about greed were tossed around. We tried to explain that a) nobody wanted to play banker for my sister and b) like it or not, she agreed to pay X amount for the house. It was a pretty valuable asset (at the time of sale it was worth close to a million dollars) and my father turned it over to her for less than 200K. It’s my belief that my Dad drafted the note the way he did to ensure, in the event of his death, his share went to his daughters and not my step-mother, who might turn around and leave it all to her sons. My father was a brilliant and self-less man. Nobody can wrap their brains around how he could have not written a will. But as time goes on and I learn more and more secrets, I get it. He was torn between wanting to support his daughters and caring for (and possibly not trusting) his ill wife. I believe in my heart that my father would have set up a trust so that my sister in the condo he owned could live there for the rest of her life. But to do that he would have to take money that his wife may need to live. He played the odds and he lost. As I said to Mandy over at XOJane the other day when she wrote about getting into a fight with her Mom for something she wrote, I struggled with the idea of discussing this stuff publicly. I know I have one sister who might be reading this. She keeps telling me to write “Godly” pieces. That means I shouldn’t write about sex. (Though she did encourage me to write about this particular situation.) I feel incredibly stifled. And monitored, something else long time readers know I hate. I was asked to write for another site where the content mostly revolves around sex. I pulled my initial piece because I felt paranoid. I don’t need my sister reading that and calling me and asking why I would write something like that. She constantly asks me to meet her in CT or come home and I just don’t want to. And no matter how many times I say this, she still asks. My family sucks at respecting boundaries. Okay. Back to work.
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