I decided a long time ago that #revenge was a natural response for me. #Anger aimed outward signified justice, fairness. Especially if my oppressor refused to apologize and accept responsibility. What other option was there? #Forgiveness? Letting the other guy off the hook when he/she does not feel that any transgression was committed? Doesn't make sense to yours truly.
Well, I read a half dozen books on that subject and, frankly, I knew forgiveness wasn't a choice for me since I'm a spiritual atheist (which I define as someone who believes in absurd happenstance rather than a supreme being). You have to really bathe in selflessness to accept the idea of forgiveness, and I'm not into that. #Selflessness, that is. It didn't help that my astrological sign is Libra, which emphasizes #fairness. I figure people should get what they deserve. I'm not proud of this philosophy, but I accept this as one of my most human flaws. Some people may call me bad or morally deficient, but when I think about the holocaust and wars in general, I can't help but attribute these assorted messes to the whims and greed of a few malevolent people. And people have free will, free choice, right? Surely Hitler could have stuck to creating bad art instead of sealing his fate with the Devil. Ditto terrorist groups like ISIS. Let them get their just deserts!
Well, I read a half dozen books on that subject and, frankly, I knew forgiveness wasn't a choice for me since I'm a spiritual atheist (which I define as someone who believes in absurd happenstance rather than a supreme being). You have to really bathe in selflessness to accept the idea of forgiveness, and I'm not into that. #Selflessness, that is. It didn't help that my astrological sign is Libra, which emphasizes #fairness. I figure people should get what they deserve. I'm not proud of this philosophy, but I accept this as one of my most human flaws. Some people may call me bad or morally deficient, but when I think about the holocaust and wars in general, I can't help but attribute these assorted messes to the whims and greed of a few malevolent people. And people have free will, free choice, right? Surely Hitler could have stuck to creating bad art instead of sealing his fate with the Devil. Ditto terrorist groups like ISIS. Let them get their just deserts!
So I remain unconvinced that I could ever #forgive my sister for her sins of omission and commission (I'll go into what they are at a later time.) Besides she hasn't evolved emotionally to the point where she wants me to forgive her. When I once advised her that her moral compass needed a reset, she got all huffy and stuff. This is because she considers herself a religious person with Blue Ribbon values and ethics. But I've found that religion and morality don't always compute.
So, I've resigned myself to forgetting about my sister completely, and she has reciprocated. But my resolution only came after a long period of revenge daydreams and active attempts at payback. Don't judge me. You might have done the same. For instance, I got the idea that if I could procure her social security number, I could ruin a lot of things in her life. I wasn't sure just what, but I knew this was key info. So I googled obsessively and searched public records for days. No luck, though.
So, I've resigned myself to forgetting about my sister completely, and she has reciprocated. But my resolution only came after a long period of revenge daydreams and active attempts at payback. Don't judge me. You might have done the same. For instance, I got the idea that if I could procure her social security number, I could ruin a lot of things in her life. I wasn't sure just what, but I knew this was key info. So I googled obsessively and searched public records for days. No luck, though.
Another revenge strategy I brainstormed was to strip her of her faky facade, the two-faced schizophrenic way she deals with people. Friends and family get the kind, caring alter ego; I get the #competitive, #manipulative, snotty one. She's also insecure so she does the control freak thing and lulls herself into a power trip. On home turf, she's oh-so together, but I noticed she loses her cool under certain circumstances. For instance, while sightseeing in Sedona. I watched her panic near The Coffee Pot rock--one step closer to those red boulders and she would have upchucked her pina colada. You would have thought she was at the Grand Canyon by the way she reacted! Now that's a long way down. One little accidental push and you're rice crispies!
Since she plays bridge obsessively, I also was tempted to send letters to the New Jersey branch of the American Contract Bridge League, exposing her as a cheater and a fraud. She's not a cheat, at least in bridge, but when you get lemons, you make lemonade, right? I never followed up on this strategy, however--the more I thought about it, the more it sounded like homework. Another idea that never materialized was to write to her dearest friends and tell them what a hypocrite she is. But I chickened out. Besides, too much work for too little return!
But my most ambitious revenge strategy was to produce a book proposal on why forgiveness sucks, and rational revenge is a #commonsense replacement. My proposal never attracted the attention of any of the one million literary agents in NYC, but so what! Plenty of first-rate authors have been turned down by cowardly agents lacking the balls to take the project on. I figured it was fate putting me on hold. I knew if I'd suggested a Revenge Cookbook, that might have been something they could get their heads--and wallets--around. Money being the common denominator in the publishing industry, most writers scrape by with low freelance wages and publishers unwilling to deviate from the tried and true. Do I sound bitter? Oh, just a little, but rejection either kills you or makes you stronger. I chose to become Super Boomer! (I'm not really, but doesn't it have a nice ring to it?)
The one good thing to come out of all these exercises in futility was that I extinguished my all-consuming hatred and didn't have to resort to killing my sibling. That "hired gun" website (I actually found an honest-to-goodness one on the Web) became a dead end for me (excuse my nasty pun). I didn't really believe it would pan out, but I actually considered it for a few seconds. Then I rationalized: Why spend the money? She'd likely do me the favor herself one of these not too distant days--she's 50 pounds overweight with high blood pressure and cholesterol. Now if that's not a walking, talking heart attack, I have some swamp land in Jersey I can sell you!
Yeah, that's how much I hate her and her cumulative efforts to make a mockery of my life and my psychological problems. In short, Only Child Syndrome took possession of her. (OCS is a condition in which one sibling structures the family dynamics so that he or she is the focal point. For example, my sister claimed "IT" girl status in our nuclear family. Her motto: "Be the Best that you can Be and to hell with everyone else.) OCS is not yet a clinical condition in the DSM-5 (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), which is American Psychiatric Associations's bible, but I know it's trending and any day now, my sister will be in the loony limelight.
But let's get back to my reaction to my sister's MO (method of operation). Frankly, I was snookered. I actually believed that one day Big Sis and I would be pals and her "act" was mainly for the benefit of my parents. As a result she became the Angel child, and, you guessed it, I was demonized.
How did she turn me into a second-class citizen? Consider this: She had four years (before I was born) to map out an ingenious plan, during which time she cooed and babbled her way to become "Mistress of the Universe." After I blew into town, I wasn't old enough or intuitive enough to declare war on her. So I became second fiddle to her Stradivarius. Later on, she overachieved academically and talked my parents into sending her to an Ivy League institution whose name she dropped every chance she got ("Oh, and by the way, did you know I went to Penn"). As the world's most loyal alumna, she led guided tours on weekends, returned for reunions, even sent her kid to her lousy alma mater. But that part of the plan tanked when he dropped out and transferred to an easier and less prestigious school. Her kid turned out to be smarter than his mom.
Bear in mind that all this psychological insight I've acquired is from 20/20 hindsight. Back then I was putty in my sister's well manicured hands--from the git-go I was dubbed the moody, worrisome sibling with school phobia whose parents openly declared a "problem child." The score was getting more and more skewed in favor of my sister, and she was loving it.
I bathed in naivete year after year. Sister Dearest was so good that I actually thought we were partnered against my helicoptering, critical, overprotective parents, but all the while she was garnering applause for her three #brilliant grandchildren and boring but superficially traditional lifestyle. I couldn't compete. What with my #childfree decision, my failure as a teacher, and a mental disability that choked off my will power, stigma had transformed me into persona non grata.
You would have thought that my departure to Arizona would have made my sister the happiest Only Child Syndrome Kid in suburbia. It didn't, and here's why. She liked that I wasn't around to compete with her at Sunday dinners, holiday events, and other family stuff, but she didn't like that I had relocated to an area that was slowly gaining status as a choice sunbelt state and a disaster-free alternative to California and Florida. Without the calamities of forest fires, floods, hurricanes, tsunamis, and earthquakes, Arizona was pretty much immune to cataclysms. And I had done something way different--actually taken a risk. In a family that hadn't traveled beyond Bayonne, this was a hard act for my sister to follow.
After all she still had to put up with East Coast weather--an #amalgam of cold, slushy winters and hot, humid summers, and carry out her longterm plan of making her husband a Superior Court Judge. (It never happened.) And the whole transplant thing annoyed her. She had to be best at EVERYTHING, and it was nearly impossible to be the Best Family in the Garden State, where property taxes were high and morale was low. This left her one option and one option only. She rebranded me as the Child Who #Abandoned Her Poor Aging Parents. I got to admit: the concept had legs despite my frequent visits to New Jersey.
(More to come in the days ahead)
How did she turn me into a second-class citizen? Consider this: She had four years (before I was born) to map out an ingenious plan, during which time she cooed and babbled her way to become "Mistress of the Universe." After I blew into town, I wasn't old enough or intuitive enough to declare war on her. So I became second fiddle to her Stradivarius. Later on, she overachieved academically and talked my parents into sending her to an Ivy League institution whose name she dropped every chance she got ("Oh, and by the way, did you know I went to Penn"). As the world's most loyal alumna, she led guided tours on weekends, returned for reunions, even sent her kid to her lousy alma mater. But that part of the plan tanked when he dropped out and transferred to an easier and less prestigious school. Her kid turned out to be smarter than his mom.
Bear in mind that all this psychological insight I've acquired is from 20/20 hindsight. Back then I was putty in my sister's well manicured hands--from the git-go I was dubbed the moody, worrisome sibling with school phobia whose parents openly declared a "problem child." The score was getting more and more skewed in favor of my sister, and she was loving it.
I bathed in naivete year after year. Sister Dearest was so good that I actually thought we were partnered against my helicoptering, critical, overprotective parents, but all the while she was garnering applause for her three #brilliant grandchildren and boring but superficially traditional lifestyle. I couldn't compete. What with my #childfree decision, my failure as a teacher, and a mental disability that choked off my will power, stigma had transformed me into persona non grata.
You would have thought that my departure to Arizona would have made my sister the happiest Only Child Syndrome Kid in suburbia. It didn't, and here's why. She liked that I wasn't around to compete with her at Sunday dinners, holiday events, and other family stuff, but she didn't like that I had relocated to an area that was slowly gaining status as a choice sunbelt state and a disaster-free alternative to California and Florida. Without the calamities of forest fires, floods, hurricanes, tsunamis, and earthquakes, Arizona was pretty much immune to cataclysms. And I had done something way different--actually taken a risk. In a family that hadn't traveled beyond Bayonne, this was a hard act for my sister to follow.
After all she still had to put up with East Coast weather--an #amalgam of cold, slushy winters and hot, humid summers, and carry out her longterm plan of making her husband a Superior Court Judge. (It never happened.) And the whole transplant thing annoyed her. She had to be best at EVERYTHING, and it was nearly impossible to be the Best Family in the Garden State, where property taxes were high and morale was low. This left her one option and one option only. She rebranded me as the Child Who #Abandoned Her Poor Aging Parents. I got to admit: the concept had legs despite my frequent visits to New Jersey.
(More to come in the days ahead)
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