I was thinking earlier today about something I wrote with the last family trouble update. I had mentioned that I no longer care what my sister thinks about me. 

In one sense, that’s true, but in another…. probably not quite. 

Every once in a while, you’ll hear someone, angry over a breakup, for example, say: I’m so over it! 

However, X having an angry reaction to Y probably means X is not really over it… not yet. 

Applied to myself, I said I no longer care, but this morning I was processing through some of what she had said and I had to recognize that I do, at least on some level, care what she thinks. I must because it’s taking up space in my thoughts.

What then does that really mean to be over something? What would it look like? 

In general, I care what other people think. 

So first, I know that I am concerned, perhaps too much, about what people think of me. I consider this a bit of a character issue that I need to work on, since it can lead me to maybe deviate from a course I should take, in order to have someone else think well of me. My concern about what other people think has been somewhat mitigated over the last few years, after a very public incident I caused and then had to live through at the end of 2018. Lots of people were, quite reasonably, upset with me over the incident. I had always like to see myself as a “good guy”, but in this incident, I found myself the bad guy. There was nothing to do except stand up and take my medicine. By publicly accepting the blame, it mitigated many of my friends bad feelings towards me and what I had done, but I still committed a wrong, people were hurt by it, and there was no escaping that. I had to sit through a particularly nasty condemnation session by my immediate superior, where the materials I had turned over to provide some accountability were read back to me, often with a little extra flavor added in that was never there. It was stated, to my wife, that she had every reason to leave me. I was told my word had no value. Some of this I thought was a bit unfair, especially since it was me that brought everything to light, but hey, that’s the way it goes. 

I had to accept the consequences and part of that was that I couldn’t be overly concerned what people thought of me since my reputation was already in tatters anyway. 

All that to say that the incident helped me to grow in an area that I needed the growth. But the desire to have people think well of me is still strong, and even though my sister is angry, wrongly I believe, it is still bothering me to some degree. 

Moving along a path to being over something 

So I’m trying to think what the distinction is between my genuinely not caring, and where I am right now. Maybe it’s just a spectrum; and I’m moving, on the spectrum, towards not caring. But it feels like there is some distinction I could articulate, if I give it enough thought, between apathy about what someone thinks, and where I am now: which is that her negative feelings towards me bother me, but I also know it’s unfair, and that I am genuinely unable to change it. So while I wish it could be different, and am bummed that she thinks so poorly of me, I also accept that it is what it is. 

Does being over something equal apathy? 

In talking with my wife on the way in today, she asked if I would be upset if I never saw my sister again. To be honest, not really. My sister and I were exceptionally close growing up; the kind of close that usually results in fighting and name-calling, but nonetheless… close. In early adulthood, she generally sought me out for advice and we used to be a lot closer. But as her kids grew, and she began to have more problems, that’s when the distance between us increased. I could also mention that her ex-husband was the guy that got me started in art. We worked together for years, and I still love the guy and consider him like a brother. We see each other about once a year or so when we have our art studio reunion. But given my closeness with him, I was also privy to a lot of the struggles they had leading up to the divorce. I knew about her actions at home even when she wasn’t telling me that part, and I knew the marital struggles they had because I talked him into staying a few times. But when she finally left him and then miscarried with another man’s child a few months later, I knew that she had ended the marriage. I knew that much of the fights had to do with their clashes over raising the kids. And I knew that I aligned with his viewpoint much more than hers. So I knew that any difference I had would cause her to put up the defensive walls and start firing back.  

That’s why I only got involved when she directly asked me. But that non-intervention left her with the sole responsibility for child-raising decisions, as well as the consequences. The results of her decisions have been obviously bad, and being unwilling to accept that she was wrong in her decisions, she has chosen to make me out as the bad guy. In her mind, she didn’t fail…. I did. Much easier to live with. 

Despite this, she is still my sister, and at any point if she decides she’ll be decent, I start interacting again. If she’s not, I just stay away and ignore her. But I don’t think it would hurt me if I didn’t see her again. Sad to say, but true. My youngest sister has already decided that once mom is gone, she doesn’t want to talk to her again. I’m not quite there, because I don’t think anyone is beyond forgiveness. But I don’t see anything in my middle sister that leads me to believe she’ll change. In fact, she seems to be just getting worse with time. 

To answer the question then, do I really not care? 

I think I don’t care very much, but that doesn’t mean it means nothing to me. If some rando called me an idiot on the street, I’d probably genuinely not care. I don’t know that I could really do that with my sister.  But over time I’ve also grown rather inured to her blasts. I’d rather it wasn’t like this, and it still bugs me when she says stuff, but overall, I’ve accepted the situation as is.