Realization Through Tears

In my "Mind" blog, I talked about feeling like I can't express my true beliefs with my family. I have always felt this way, from a little kid on. My family will be talking about something, and I will have a differing view or another perspective to offer - and maybe I just think them and don't say them, but I'm certain that I've said some of them, only to have no one react or validate my thought or comment. Later, sometimes five minutes and sometimes five days, someone else will have said exactly that which I thought or said, and everyone in my family says, "Oh! Well, so-and-so said that ..." and then it's valid. This has steamed me for years. Do I just think the thoughts and not say them? Do they tune me out that easily? Can they just not accept me as a valid source because of my position of youngest girl in the family?

So at Christmas, I shared with a couple of my family members an experience I had with a clairvoyant. You can read my "Oiuja Hear Me Out" post in my "Mind" blog to get the rest of the scoop - but the reason I am sharing this here is because I saw for the first time in my life how my sister's reactions to me has been a subconscious factor in the decisions I make in my life - including my weight.

I told my sister that I told my Dad about something not-so-positive the clairvoyant had said about his actions. My dad didn't really react when I told him - but when I told my sister what I said, she got angry. But not openly angry; angry like a cat growling. Our family's standard operating procedure is to pretend we do not notice the growling, or to act like the growling is that person's own problem. So growling is all we ever do, we grumble and growl but we never full on get angry and roar.

Per usual procedure, my sister growls. I am surprised by her reaction, and say, "Wow, you seem angry about that - what about that makes you mad?"

She snaps back, "Well it's just like my friend she'll go and do all this stuff and then tell me how I hurt her feelings or I don't do this or I don't do enough of that and then she says 'Oh, I feel so much better letting that out' but I don't feel better for knowing it" and she went on a little bit more but I don't remember exactly what was said. The feeling that I got from it, though, was do what you want, but don't tell me about it unless I'm going to like it.

This has been our operating procedure our whole lives. Do what you want, share with me everything, as long as it's not sadness or pain or anger or hurt. I had possibly hurt Dad with the information I had given him, and Denise was angry because we don't share hurts - especially hurts Dad has caused us, and certainly not with him directly. I don't know if it's because he can't handle them, or he's above dealing with such trivial things.

So I share with Denise and she growls. I comment on the growl, and suddenly I saw us differently. I got the image of us as animals in the wild, and she was a tiger and I was an antelope, and we got along fine as long as the antelope never pisses off the tiger. The tiger could at any moment kill that antelope, he would just as well, but for some reason, the tiger is told he must be friends with this antelope and cannot eat her. But they both know that the tiger does not really want to be friends with the antelope. He just wants to eat the antelope.

The antelope no longer wants to live this way, and starts saying what she thinks, regardless of the tigers reaction. The tiger is faced with the decision - kill this antelope or learn to understand it?

My point is - I have kept myself fat and ugly all these years so as to not piss off the tiger. But the antelope wants to run, and is tired of living her life trying to appease the tiger. It's time for the antelope to appease herself, and risk the wrath of the tiger.

But I can see how when I was little, and she was six years older than me, how powerful and threatening she seemed to me. I have fond memories of my sister Margie when we were kids. I have no fond memories of Denise. In fact, the first and only memory I have of her is her being cruel to me when I was about 9 or ten.

It relates to this blog because I have been too afraid of her to challenge her or stand up to her. I've always just backed off and gone along with her stance. No more.