A beat up on myself or?

My sister’s impeding surgery for breast cancer is bringing up a fire storm and lots of flooding within my mind and heart and body this week. After I spoke to her yesterday I felt like my entire body was being pierced with knives and the pain was just so so deep, I literally felt scoured out inside. She has a bone scan this morning and as some of you may know, for this procedure you to the first appointment where they inject you with dye. You then go away and wait for 2 hours before returning for the actual scan. It at the hospital on the far side of town where my older sister died and its a little far for her to go and come back and go again so she said she will take her self off for lunch somewhere over that side of town.

This morning I went through so much guilt for not going with her but I have a therapy appointment today and all these thoughts are just running through my head of how alone she is and how much nicer and warmer it would be if I could be with her. Never the less some thing stops me and then I feel such guilt even though I know going will take me into that dark, dark world of medical and clinicians and all that cold, cold technological stuff. Truth be told I would rather be at home here with Jasper and going for our walks in nature but I am doing all that alone while my sister faces those hours alone and then I just cry and think my heart must be so shut down to keep the distance and not be there. Its a real inner battle going on. I am just sharing it here to externalise it.

Yesterday I told her I want to be there for her, but I just get overwhelmed with emotions and start to feel so small and that maybe it is better if she has friends around her who are stronger and more grounded for her instead of me crying all the time. And as I write this I remember how at her wedding I was only 14 and the only bridesmaid but I cried so much during the ceremony she felt embarrassed with me and kept giving me looks of disapproval. (as I write this out I may have it wrong – was it just my perception?).

I am just so confused at the moment in my feelings, in my boundaries. How much can I be there for her? What is this fucking force inside me holding me back from fronting up? Is it because I feel the treatment she has had at the hands of a psychiatrists and doctors has done little to support her own protest and the medicalisation of her condition? My niece and I both believe her immune system has been compromised by all of the meds they have had her on over years and years and years. I haven’t seem her cry much since Mum died. At the funeral she just sat there all numb but looking so dreadfully sad.

And it occurred to me too this morning that after Dad died she moved more into a fathering role with my Mother who was never adequately fathered herself. She also supported over years the siblings of her ex husband going through loss and cancer treatment. She was then abandoned by her husband who ran off with a much younger woman. She was always the good one in family running around after my older brother when we were much younger, never asking much for herself. When her ex husband used to laugh at her and put her down she would not say a thing. But she could also be shut down and rigid.

Anyway my sis my sis. The truth is despite not being able to connect to her easily in younger years, since Mum died at times I really really have been able to feel some love and tenderness between us (but not often) She has been the one person to support me over Scott and believe that he is real and not a scammer. She can be so soft and loving and wise.
So today I felt really ashamed and sad for myself I could not go with her and that she had to face this day alone. Another part of me tells me she is an adult.

Today I feel like a bad sister, while another part of me knows I am also struggling to take care of myself For I too have had breast cancer and hers coming back raises all kinds of fears for me. Today I am not in a very comfortable space….my head is tormenting me. I wish I could switch it off or know which one of the many voices speaking inside my head is real today but the truth is I cannot. The very best I can do is write about it. And pray in time I can be a person who fronts up to face the tough stuff, developing a capacity not to be so inundated by it. (Then an inner voice tells me that really I do need to guard my sensitivity and openness to psychic contagion.)