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Part 7 OCS: The Syndrome that Supports Superiority

It's embarrassing to admit that I did not consider my sister an OCS threat until I was married and moved out of state. I knew she wasn't crazy about me. That was obvious from the look on her face every time my parents asked her to assist-- for instance, give me a few tips on teaching (I was failing horribly with discipline). I knew she didn't care about my psychological problems, but I didn't know that she regarded me solely as competition. In fact if someone had tapped me on the shoulder and whispered in my ear that my sister vied with me for the title of The Bestest Daughter in the Land, I would have laughed, possibly hysterically. And here's why.

In my eyes, she had already emerged victorious.  She was prettier than me, she had more boyfriends, she was smarter (judging by her grades, SAT scores and college admissions letters), and she was less moody. She even chose the right religion. By "right" here I mean the religion practiced by my parents, which happened to be Judaism. By comparison, I had acne, only a sprinkling of suitors, had not attended an Ivy League college, and bore the stigma of an NBD (nervous breakdown). Furthermore I was a non-believer who walked that fine line between atheism and agnosticism. As far as I was concerned, the war was over, the battles fought, and it was time to put aside the big guns and get out the water pistols. But I didn't reckon with a sib inoculated with a double dose of OCS.

She was like a bulldog with a bone. Everything threatened her, so she was compelled to retaliate. When I was first married, I lived close enough to my parents to pay weekly visits. My husband and I would eat dinner at my mom and dad's house, watch a little TV, and then drive home. Well, this intimacy annoyed my sister enough that she used every other opportunity to promote herself. It was center stage every time the entire family got together for holidays and birthdays. She did almost all the talking (her husband barely uttered a word), and her narrative was directed at my parents. I can't remember her asking me a single question about my career, my house or, for that matter, my dog. Beyond this tactic she used her kids to guarantee that my husband and I would be excluded from the conversation.(We remained childfree.) Besides the detailed descriptions of her children's activities (which included everything except bowel movements), she allowed her youngsters to scream, interrupt and generally disrupt most adult exchanges.

But that was nothing compared with her attitude when OCD took possession of my brain and dragged me to the edge of suicide. Only once did she telephone me, and that was at the prodding of my mother. Otherwise during the month or so I stayed at a mental health facility in south Jersey, she never visited, telephoned, sent a card or exhibited any behavior you might construe as compassionate. She was too busy gloating in her subtle I-am-Woman-Hear--me-Bore way. (Ironically when she went through an anxious/depressive period of her own, she called me on the phone for comfort and advice. I was stupid enough to give it, not knowing the extremes to which she as the OCS sib would later go.)

A few months after my hospitalization my husband and I announced that we were relocating from New Jersey to Arizona. Basically the decision came about for three reasons: better weather, decent employment opportunities, and the sincere belief that our families would not miss us. Throughout the house sale, packing and final departure, my sib never called to say goodby. Mind you, we were not estranged at this point; we just had allowed OCS to distort our relationship.

Despite returning to NJ for my niece's bat mitzvah, I was treated like any other warm body who brought a gift. Sure, I got to light a candle on my niece's cake but that was the only acknowledgment of blood relations that took place. My sib always rebutted my invitation to visit Arizona, and the one time she did come was because she was on her way to a national bridge convention in Las Vegas--Vive Las Vegas--and couldn't avoid seeing her one and only sib. It might have disturbed the parents and cast a shadow over her Big Sister pretense. The next time she visited she was forced by an accident, but more about that in the next installment.


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