Giving up and letting go

I am sorely tempted to give up on my blog this afternoon.. the hurt is going deep over everything with my sister, the argument on the phone, the anger of my nephew at me sending the email saying how I thought the ECT my sister was being given was charlatanism and abuse and what I wrote about denied anger and other things.. I question now if it was right to send it, it obviously hurt him deeply and he was more hurt I had not called him and just sent it all via email.. Possibly I was mistaken in some way for feeling he was in responsible for not stopping it or agreeing to it which he told me today was not the case and that I would have known this if I had actually called him instead of shooting off the email.. This afternoon I am just thinking silence is the best way to go.

Maybe also the recognition of powerlessness over where my sister continues to end up is also hitting me so maybe its not so much giving up as giving in and surrendering to the feelings of grief that just seem to be pouring out of me like river. Possibly that is about hitting a bedrock of an emotional reality and is a humbling admission of what it may take to find serenity and sanity in the conditions of long term alcoholism and trauma that in the words of the AA Big Book can be so cunning, baffling and powerful.

I find though if I silence myself now it will be the worst thing but maybe its the jumping to conclusions about others that is the problem, since I do not know how they feel. I know my nephew is doing his absolute best and trying to be a good son in a very very difficult situation if he had to shout over the top of me today I had to go silent really as there is a time when it may just be kinder to listen and accept and allow, he did not find that easy to do with me, has obviously felt hurt by me and feels I was one way with him and wrote something different later but the way I see it that was just my way of grappling with the reception I get sometimes and even possibly with my own fears of rejection or trying too to make sense of certain behaviors that confuse me. I live alone, I do not have someone to speak to about things so often I do that via my blog. I tried to explain some of this, my blog keeps me balanced on the really tough days.

I apologised for my part today, and he said he doesn’t want to hear anything about the past trauma and on one level I get that, to me the knowing about the past is important only for us begin to make a conscious effort to loosen the grip of its powerful hidden hold over us.. at the same time I respect my sister closing down again and needing help was a sign she was not coping living in that unit of Mum’s where she made an attempt on her life, all alone, day after day not really seeing anyone, after all we are relational creatures and I am sure that lock down had an even more powerful negative effect on her too.. I also do feel guilty for not calling her as much the week before last.. but maybe i need to let that go too.

All I can do right now is pray, the sadness I feel right now its deep it really is, mostly I feel sad my nephew felt so unsupported but maybe he just needed to express that with someone who could hear him.. God knows struggling with a parent’s mental illness is very very tough.. I will continue to pray to find ways to be a better aunt.. at the same time as I recognize, that I too, as a vulnerable flawed human being, struggle to know how to support and be there for my sister too while trying to take the best possible care of myself and make some kind of rational sense of this complex interwoven web of family mental illness.