rue-madame's Diaryland Diary

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Way messed up

This thing with YoungerSister and her husband/svengali and now, her unborn child� it�s really gnawing at me.

When we had lunch last week, I missed something she said, and I now kind of wish no one had told me about it. She said �I�m not a MyLastName anymore.� OlderSister was immediately peeved. TA thinks it was nothing serious, just YoungerSister�s attempt to placate her husband. But still.

She can change her last name all she wants, she�ll always be one of us on the inside. No amount of brainwashing or bible studying or JPII text reading or mass attending will change that.

At that same lunch TA said something dumb, and I directed �idiot� his way. It�s some weird family retort; we all use it. So OlderSister, laughing about it, said to YoungerSister�s husband, �Oh yeah, that�s another thing. As soon as YoungerSister calls you �idiot�, you�ll know you�re in.�

The guy was totally humorless about it! He grumbled something about how that would never happen, and YoungerSister tried to laugh it off but you could tell she was uncomfortable.

This naturally did not sit well with any of us. Even my 18 yr old nephew was all, �What�s his deal? He�s got no sense of humor!�

Stephen Colbert was making jokes about Stockholm Syndrome the other night, but the more he joked, the more I realized, �Maybe that�s what�s wrong with YoungerSister!� TA looked at me like I was insane for 1) yelling this out loud to the television, and 2) actually believing this. It�s an extreme example, I admit, but it�s strangely helping me process all of this stuff. Like, somehow, if I think of my sister as being lost to a kidnapping, I don�t feel quite as bad, like it�s not her fault.

OlderSister said something really interesting about it.

�Why do we care? This is obsessing me a little. IT�s partly that we�re literally cut from the same cloth and yet I watch YoungerSister do things that I think are weak and which I can�t understand. After all, if we�re cut from the same cloth, then those weak avenues should be closed to her.

Certainly I�ve done my share of weak things, but I did them a long time ago, learned my lesson, stepped up, moved on.

Then there�s the thought that some people�s maturation process can only go so far. I thitnk about this with Husband�s brother and wife. They�re so frozen�never really got past high school. Of course they never went to college, have not traveled, so I can see how they can be so limited in their own environment.

Which makes YoungerSister�s choices all the more puzzling.

But then I think about our fucked up upbringing and wonder how what she
does is the product of that.

Shit, so messed up.�

8:03 a.m. - 2006-07-21

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