Nov 30 2008
Is It Brutal Honesty or Cruelty? Think Before You Speak (or Write).
I’m a little TOO honest sometimes. I tend to just say (or type) what’s on my mind, without cranking up my moral editor first. Honesty is a good thing, when tempered with kindness, but there’s the rub. Most of the time, when we’re being brutally honest, we’re also angry or hurt. It’s very difficult to not be cruel when we’re hurting and want to strike back.
It seems that in my life, I’ve sometimes taken subtle cruelty to an art form.
I learned under the unwitting tutelage of my mother (God rest her soul), who, while being the woman I loved most in the world, many times took a perverse pleasure in hurting other people. She was not bold enough to just say things to people’s faces, though. She would stand aside, just within earshot, and talk in a loud voice, saying the most horrific, hurtful things. Or she would resort to veiled criticism, which sometimes was the worst.
An example of her cruelty was what she did to my sisters and me. For all of our lives, she took pleasure in playing us one against the other, making us each hate the other for no reason other than what she led us to believe. It changed us. It somehow turned us into what she thought we were. I was the “crazy” one (I was actually the most sane, but nevermind that), my older sister was the stupid one (she had more common and money sense than any of us), and my oldest sister was the responsible one (I don’t even want to go there).
The saddest part of all of this is that while my other two sisters hated me, I didn’t hate them. In fact, all I ever wanted was for them to love me, and I spent 40 years of my life trying to achieve that before finally giving up. It was too late by then. The roles were set, the lines were drawn, and the rift between us would never be crossed.
My mother recently died. Her legacy will be that my sister and I, the only remaining living siblings, will never speak to each other again. The wounds cannot be healed anymore. There are too many, and they are too deep. We both know that this was done to us, but now, it’s embedded too deep in our psyches to ever be healed. When my mother died, I became an orphan.
But like I’ve always said, sometimes good comes out of the worst situations. My mother’s family — my aunt and her children — rallied around me and gave me an anchor, just when I needed one the most. My sister would say they are not worth having as relatives, because she thinks my aunt and her children are trash, and has said so on many occasions. So like I used to say to my son when he didn’t like something I was serving for dinner, “Good, more for me!”
Love isn’t something you can just dole out when you want to gain something from it. Unfortunately, my sister doesn’t seem to be able to learn that. At 68, she still blames everything in her life on the fact that I was born, and that she didn’t get to go to college right out of high school. It’s sad, really. For someone so intelligent, she is truly ignorant of the realities of life.
And the saddest part is that we can all see what she can’t — that she is EXACTLY like my mother.
4 Responses to “Is It Brutal Honesty or Cruelty? Think Before You Speak (or Write).”
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IT is always so easy to analyze someone else because it is too painful to analyze and accept our own faults. It sounds to me that your moral editor was turned on and alhtough I do not mean to appear critical of your situations, you must remember that there are many a family out there wirh similar, if not worse issues than yours. Everyone claims to put the D in dysfunction. Try reading the book entitlesd The Child Called It before you attack your sister, we all need to forgive and it is possible your sister has just so much resentment and hurt wound up inside her that she doesn’t know how to forgive your mother, who you ask God to rest her soul, and then more importantly, forgive herself. Shame that you had to live the way you did, but to criticize your sister at 68 instead of nurturing the relationship you do have and what mught be left of it seems to be a huge wastle of time and love. God bless you, I pray it all works out. Maybe just once you should try holding your sisters hand and telling her that you understand and it’s all okay.
I accept my own faults. Saying I should try to be nice to my sister is like asking a rape victim to be nice to her rapist. I forgave her long ago. I just recognize that she is not someone I want in my life. Why must be make nice with people just because they are biologically related to us? Is someone would not be a person you would want to be around if they were not your relative, then why be forced to be around them if they are? Toxic people are toxic people, and there is no need to torture yourself by being around them, when you know where it will lead, which is just to more pain. It would probably surprise you to know that my aunt and her whole family feel this way as well.
you are correct about that, toxic people are toxic people. here’s the thing, if you truly forgave her, then this post wouldn’t even be written. I appreciate the fact you are respecting my opinion onthis, if you didn’t i suppose you would’ve closed comments on it. that’s the thing about blogging, we can say what we want and there’s not a darn thing anyone can do about it, but back to you r sister situation. Although I have not lived the life you have and although you say that your aunt and the rest of the family feel the same way, a person can only control you if you let them. If you read my original comment to you, it stated that it is possible SHE hasn’t forgiven your mom or HERSELF. This has nothing to do with you forgiving her. The sad fact is that she obviously is the oldest sister and as an older sister myself I know there were many sacrifices I myself had to make for my younger brother and mother. I am simply stating there could be underlying issues here and the more you try to make your point that you and your family believe she acts “just like your mother” could be because maybe she does have some characteristics of your mom, the ones which are not well liked, therefore you associate her with the bad feelings you have of your mom, (even though you claim to forgive your mother) and so you treat her as of she were your mother. Now, in all fairness i completely understand your plight. Just because they are family doesn’t mean you have to associate yourself with the “toxic” members. You are correct about that, and if it makes you feel better mentally and emotionally to have distance between the two of you then you do what you feel is correct, it is possible to love someone from a distance but control the relationship as well. here’s an example, there is a woman in my life, everytime she has met one of my friends and someone paid her a compliment about me, she completely rejects the compliment and makes derrogatory remarks. On top of that, when i speak to her myself, no matter what the topic, the comment is always negative. this is a family member and i have had verbal disagrements about this treatment, until i decided to take control. i set the boundaries and let her know that if she continued to speak to me in a less than positive manner then we will not speak. I had to bring to her attention the negative spirit she had when it concerned me, could this be because she is resentful of me? jealous of me? dissatisfied with her own life? only she will know, but as i said, a person can only control you if you let them. Give your sister a break, at her age theres not much she can do to correct past mistakes, but you can be aware of yours and not make decisions you may regret later in life when she is gone. May God Bless you and keep you close.
WAY past that with my sister. I’ve confronted her, talked to her, tried to just make nice, everything in my power. If you say something she doesn’t like, she throws a fit like a child, or if you’re on the phone, she hangs up on you. I could go on and on about the things she’s done to me, culminating in how she handled my mother’s death, but I won’t. I’ve been hospitalized because of the truly evil things she has doen to me. Every professional counselor I’ve ever seen says I should stay away from her. Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself. Evil is evil, and I will not associate myself with evil people. Thanks for your opinion, but truly, there is no resolution to this problem. It is 56 years old, and started the day I was born. I won’t go into it again, because it just causes me more pain. I won’t close comments, but could you please just let this drop, because it causes me untold emotional pain having to discuss it.