What a weekend.  

Saturday started off light. Ran over to visit with Mom, and while there my youngest sister and her husband came over. We all sat for a while and had a good conversation.

Came back home and spent some time laying out in the sun, trying to remedy the extreme whiteness of my legs. (I’ve heard whiteness is a real problem these days, so I’m doing my part to lessen mine!)

Then we alternated some tv time and running errands.

Around 4:30 got a text reminding us that we’d committed to going out to dinner with our friends V/W, and his father, who is in town. Then the fun started.

While waiting at BJ’s for our friends to show up I got a nasty text from my middle sister. I have had a particularly contentious relationship with her over the last years, and the last year and a half especially., But she has recently started to pick up Italian. She asked me about a few things earlier in the day, and apparently I didn’t respond appropriately, so she got mad at me…. again…. for about the 10th time over the aforementioned span and sent the nasty text.

I had at this point pretty much decided that I really didn’t want to hear from her and told her that in a text. Then I blocked her phone, for the third time in the same span. She must have figured out that she was blocked and fired off a nasty email accusing me of various crimes against humanity (the only humanity that matters is of course her). At that point, I knew the night was gonna be shot.  

I couldn’t sleep since I knew this was going to consume my thoughts, so I got up and tried reading through the next poetry volume in my series of books. That didn’t work so I decided the only thing that would help me get some peace would be to write out my responses and see if I could settle in my mind what I would do.

So I spent from 10p to 2a processing through my thoughts by writing these responses. I’ve kind of come to the conclusion that the only way for me to “let something go and give it to the Lord” isn’t trying to ignore the issue and give it to Him by not thinking about it. I can’t NOT think about it. For the, it’s to process through my thoughts about it and make peace with the issue.

So I analyze what she wrote, then write out how I would respond, if there’s anything that I got wrong, if there are areas she is correct about something, etc. Then I write out what I was thinking when I said whatever it was that upset her.  

In this case, she sent me some screenshots of the explanation of some of the singular Italian definite articles, Il for masculine, la for feminine and l’ for both when the word starts with a vowel. She texted “What is this????” Now she’s a long time Spanish speaker, so masculine and feminine isn’t an issue. I literally wrote: “Not sure what the issue with the definite articles is for you” and then restated the basic structure.

She responded that I was belittling her and accused me of having a Low EQ (emotional intelligence quotient), something she has regularly accused me of.  

I was baffled and showed my wife, who at first said- your wording DOES look kind of insulting. When I showed her the other stuff for context, she then thought it didn’t look so bad.  

But I wrote back and said “I meant no disrespect, Sorry.”

She responded with: Give me a break. That really infers ‘don’t know why you’re so stupid and can’t get it”. Then she proceeds to tell me that she asked two ‘highly educated’ friends and they both agreed that it was sarcastic and belittling. And that I was “Low EQ if you can’t see that.”

So my apology was rejected and she accused me of lying about my intentions. At this point I told her that she had returned a direct insult despite my explanation, and that I wanted to be clear now- I don’t want to hear anymore.  

Then I blocked her.

I guess she figured out that I blocked her because later I got an email telling me that I was self-righteous and arrogant and a hypocrite because I told her back in 2002 when she left her husband that she didn’t have biblical grounds for a divorce, (which was true) and yet I’d had an affair (in 2018). And furthermore, “despite my long history of telling women what to do [I have NO idea what she is talking about here, and my wife said the same thing: What???], don’t ever even think of telling ME what to do.”

Now, to be honest, I’m ready to cut her completely out of my life. My wife blocked her years ago and doesn’t want to hear from her, my youngest sister has told me that as soon as mom dies she will tell her to piss off and not contact her anymore. My middle sister has been in fights with my mom (at whose house she lives rent free), my aunt (who lives with my mom), me, my other sister and her husband, both her daughters and her son hasn’t spoken to her in years, although he just recently started to again. In fact, she has had restraining orders on her son and youngest daughter. Basically, anyone she’s around for a few weeks, she gets in a fight with.

When my dad passed away last year, she lost it. She was always a daddy’s girl, and loved him dearly. And she’s held a grudge against my mom for a reason I won’t get into since forever. But she treated everyone in the family very poorly, especially my mom and I. Since it was during covid, we couldn’t get anyone to do the service, so I basically led the funeral service. We had a tight schedule and I asked my sister to keep her remarks to about 5 minutes, just like everyone else. She went 15. And we had to cut out a part of the service because of it. No problem, didn’t say a word to her.  

My mom asked me to put together a small video of the service for her, so my sister, my aunt and I would have to rerecord our thoughts. I asked my sister at that time to edit hers down to 5 minutes. For this she accused me of being the “little dictator of funerals” and singling her out for mistreatment.

She snapped at my mom once telling her, “I just lost my DAD!”…. To my mom…. who had just lost her husband…. ALL of us lost him, and yet not all of us behaved nearly as badly as she did.  

The list goes on. I kept a record of the various spats and there were 7 different incidents where she took some innocuous thing I said and rewrote herself as the victim. Which a common theme in her life- everybody mistreats me. She goes on about being the middle child. She’ll send me meme’s that say: when is it middle child day? Oh yeah, no one cares about the middle child. As if there is an oldest child day.  

So…. given the history, I had finally decided I was going to have to cut off contact with her. I have avoided telling her, but if she is going to take any harmless statement as an insult, then ignore my explanations and accuse me of lying about it, then I don’t know what else is left. I can’t possibly have a relationship with her as long as things are like this. And she’s progressively gotten worse over the years, so I don’t see anything changing.  

Somewhat to my credit, despite some fairly harsh words that I wrote, things I’ve been wanting to say for years now, I didn’t send anything. I remembered in writing it out, that God has forgiven me for much over the years, and while He would have been fully justified in throwing me out in to the street, He didn’t. I want to show that same kind of grace, even when that person thinks I’m her enemy. I do recognize that she’s being used as a tool of the enemy, and though she is willfully ignorant of the damage she’s causing, I still want to hold out hope and act in way that if she ever were to come around, she’d be able to recall that I didn’t lash out at her in these darker moments.  

So, I go to church on Sunday morning and one of the songs, Hallelujah For the Cross, just caught me up and I completely forgot about all this stuff. So praise the Lord for that momentary respite.

Came home and watched Italy beat England in the Euro finals… in Wembley stadium in England! So good day there.

Then I got to watch the US beat Haiti in the afternoon, so more good….

Then I got to go play indoor soccer with some friends from church. (I’m exhausted and beat up and limping this morning, but it was still awesome.)

Then this morning I get more crappy emails from my sister. So now I’m kind of thinking about the situation again.  

I’m torn between wanting to lay into her and then tell her we’re done, or just tell her we’re done.

I know that she won’t hear anything I say, and the only thing it will do is rile her up and cause her to send off a bunch of hate mail. Part of me thinks I at least owe her some explanation, but that’s because my nature tells me that if we (by that I mean any parties involved with anything) can just sit together and be reasonable, then we can come to an agreement. But I’ve talked with my mom and sister and wife about this and everyone is telling me the same thing: Don’t bother, it won’t do any good.

She IS my sister, so I don’t want to cut her off, at least in principle… but to be honest, I’ve crossed a mental bridge where I just don’t really want to hear from her anymore. At all. But I haven’t crossed the Rubicon yet with what I’ve said to her. I guess I could really use some prayer, and I need to be praying more about it myself.

And that’s my weekend update. I know it’s kind of a get this stuff of my chest post, but for me, that’s what writing does.