Is she going to get angry with you too, if she doesn't think she can run your life? How do you feel about that?
When I was dating my husband, I made my roommate swear on his life to not tell my sister because I did not want my mother to know. I was a 23 year old woman and I was terrified of how my mother would react. We were always threatened when we were kids and accused of boys, our mother wanted us to make something out of ourselves and not just end up pregnant with a bunch of bastards. When I was home for a year after university living with my mother, I was dating a guy in our town, every single night I came home to her glaring at me and if I got in late, I got slapped in the head like a kid and told I "smelled like a cat on the prowl" - considering we weren't doing anything together, I don't know what she was imagining she smelled on me. So my mother was a terror when it came to guys and my sister picked up that behavior.
My mother never got any grandchildren from either of her daughters, that's what happens when you grow up being made to think pregnancy was a horrible thing to happen to you.
My sister has tried on several occasions to drive a wedge between me and my husband. You know the cartoon of a devil whispering in your ear on one shoulder and an angel on the other? When she would get me away from my husband, my sister would turn into that devil. "Aaah, he's probably got a girlfriend on the side anyway....guys can't be trusted." or "Ohhhh so he's 'working late', huh, if that was me, I'd be wondering who else he's doing." or if I just dropped a slight complaint about something he did she'd say, "Wow, I wouldn't stand for that, I'd drop his ass so fast!" I don't know how many times over the years she would try to poison my mind against him and then when I finally confronted her on it, she finally shut up and realized I was in this relationship for the long term. I think I said to her, "You sure talk big for a woman who's never even dated a man! Fine, I'll go home tomorrow, pack my shit and leave him, would that make you happy???" It was the slap in the face she needed.
It's not about her happiness, it's about mine. I have never been allowed to have the friends I want or belong to a group just on my own - thank God I've never told her about this site. All of my fb friends become her fb friends - even my UNIVERSITY friends and she doesn't even know them!! Oh but she does now and she interacts with them and now they no longer interact with me because my sister is "just so great and funny". Sigh. She takes everything from me, I've never been allowed to be just me on my own....and yet, I don't care to know her coworkers. Sometimes I wonder if she does it to keep an eye on me; she knows more about my fb friends than I do because she's constantly stalking their pages!
My sister has to know everything and control everything. I call her control freak. If I would talk too much about my friend over the years, she'd accuse me of him! Now that my husband's dead and who really cares if this guy is one of the few people still left who gives a crap about me, in her eyes he's a threat so she's trying to poison my mind against him. It's going to be easier to just try to keep my friendships and acquaintances secret from her. I never kept my conversations with him secret from my husband, my husband felt threatened by the relationship and I always had to do damage control - I don't know how many times over the years I had to say we were just friends. I wonder if my husband always thought that this guy would just move in to be with me if he ever died - ummm, he's got a live-in girlfriend/wife, he's not coming to carry me off into any sunset. I am going to be alone, husband.
Sigh. I had a really , really rough day today. The RRSP company wanted me to call them - I'd already told them that I wanted to do this by mail, nope, they keep stalling this process and I smell a rat and when I smell a rat I get my back up. Here is what I am thinking - I am thinking that they are trying to manipulate me into keeping this money with their company. I think this because I've been passed from person to person to person to person since I told them that my husband died in February. They were the first company I called and now, they are the last company I'm trying to deal with, everyone else has settled his affairs!
So anyway, I called this woman and even though I've sent them a copy of the death certificate and I am the listed beneficiary on the policy, they started quoting policy to me about needing notarized this and that or wanting me to go into one of their offices and sit down with a representative - this is their BIG THING, wanting me to come into an office to talk to one of their people. I've been asked to do this at least three times by three different people when all other companies simply sent me transfer forms and didn't need anything else from me other than a copy of the death certificate. As soon as this woman said, "can you come into a local office and sit down with one of our representatives" I LOST IT ON HER.
I mean, it started out with me feeling like I'd been kicked in the guts. All the air got knocked from me, I felt suddenly threatened and panicky. I said, "I don't understand this insistence on my going into an office, I sent you a death certificate. Why do I need things notarized suddenly?" So first off, she Interrupted Me, secondly, she quoted Policy to me - if anyone's been following my personal PTSD story, you will know why those things are HUGE triggers to me. I suddenly couldn't think or breathe and I started asking her repeatedly, begging and whining into the phone, "Why can't you just send me the paperwork? Why do you have to drag this out? You're the only company who will not settle his affairs..." and it escalated as I panicked more and more and began to scream into the phone, "He's been dead for three months, I've been in hell for three months, do you understand what I'm going through here, I just want this all to be over." I was practically on my knees in the kitchen, I was bent over, crying, breathless, hyperventilating and shaking like you would not believe. TOTAL PTSD melt down.
Oh and what does she say next? She said, "I understand what you're going through." Can anybody whose lost a loved one and is in the midst of intense grief tell me how that goes over? Not f'ing well. I was stunned and I screamed, "What!? You did not just say that. You have NO CLUE what I'm going through? Is your husband dead? Did he shoot himself too? You UNDERSTAND WHAT I'M GOING THROUGH!? WOMAN, YOU HAVE NO CLUE WHAT I'M GOING THROUGH."
Okay, so if someone is flipping out on you on the phone and they say something like that to you, would you say, "Excuse me, I'm human, I can have sympathy for you!" I hope you never would because pure WRATH will be unleashed on you. I screamed back at her, "Lady I don't want your f'ing sympathy! I want you to just send me the f'ing paperwork so I can get this over with! Do Your F'ing JOB and send me the GD paperwork!!!!" I never once got an I'm sorry for your loss, instead I got, "Now don't you start using that kind of language with me, I don't have to take this from you..." I think it went blank then, I don't know what else spewed out of me because I was hyperventilating so badly, I thought I was going to faint. Instead I screamed at the phone which wasn't even to my ear anymore, "I'm hanging up on you!!!!"
And then I collapsed to the floor and I laid there screaming and curled into a ball, shaking and trembling for about 20 minutes before I could drag my mess of a self to the couch where I laid crying for another two hours. I wanted to die so badly. Husband was not here to take over for me. Sister was not here to take over for me. I was completely alone and didn't know where to go for help. I just kept thinking that I needed my hubby. I was rocking back and forth on the couch screaming, "I need you. Why did you die and leave me alone! I need you!!!"
I managed to get out a desperate post on fb and got an IM almost immediately from one of my contacts in a PTSD support group. She knows a cop who committed suicide and she has PTSD, so she was there to help me to try to figure this all out and hear me venting about everything that I've been through. I just wanted to die so badly, just so badly. She got me calmed down and suggested I go for a walk in the park. I really didn't want to. She's a paralegal so she suggested I call a lawyer, so I sent an email to my lawyer to see if he would be able to handle the situation for me or if I'd have to hire another lawyer to do it for me. He replied this evening and said I could forward any correspondence to them through him....I wonder how much that is going to cost me. (rolls eyes)
Venting. I vented about them repeatedly wanting me to go into an office to meet with them - PTSD trigger to the time when I went into the return to work meeting and was ambushed, triggered and my vulnerability taken advantage of.
Venting. I vented about her using the words "Well, Our Policy states..." - total flashback to trying to deal with workers comp and my employer, I was getting Policy-ed repeatedly like a broken record by those two.
Venting, I vented about her trying to Interrupt Me and not let me finish speaking - exactly how both workers comp and my employer treated me every time I had to deal with them, made me feel stupid and refused to listen to my side of things
And then, "I understand what you're going through"!? OMG. I vented repeatedly about this - total flashback to that day, cops not letting me see him, me just wanting to die, having to cremate him and deal with all of this financial crap all by myself, being alone for the first time in my life!? Wow, just wow.
I went to the park but it was hard to just be there. I was very upset. I was afraid I would hurt myself - what better place to do it in, huh? No one would find me for a very long time. It made me even more sad to think that no one would start to look for me right away and no one would even have a clue about where to start because no one knows me well enough to know I'd be in the park. I then thought about that woman's head exploding and that made me feel a little bit better. I hope I gave her a heart attack - I'm sure she'll go off on stress leave now, probably claim PTSD. If she tries to f'ing sue me for the amount in that rrsp I will....unleash karma on her arse.
My entire body hurts right now. I am so fatigued but I can't sleep. My body won't let me relax. I'm Very Sad. I'm feeling very lonely. I keep telling myself that it wouldn't be fair to my sister to have to find me dead...but I'm just soooooo tired of fighting. I'm just so tired and so exhausted. My sister will be back tomorrow evening. I just have to hold on until then and I won't be alone and I can put my head down for a bit and not deal with anything.
God, I miss him so much. I would be curled up and safe against his side right now if he was still alive. He would be being silly and trying to make me laugh, probably trying to stick his finger in my ear or up my nose. He would be kissing me on the forehead and asking why the universe had to be so mean to me. He would wish he could take away all my hurt and make me happy all the time. He would say, "We have to catch a break at some point. We can't always have things going wrong. We're good people. We have to have some good luck come our way at some point." He was hurting alongside me. I couldn't make his hurt better, he couldn't stop my suffering.
I needed him. Days like this I realize just how much I needed him in my life. I have no one to just come to sit with me during these hard times...it has to be my sister...there's no one else who would come. I've got no one.
