Man, I feel bad about only coming on here to rant...but I feel safe w/ you guys, so, well, here goes.
Two-three days before Christmas, my youngest sister had a ski accident that completely tore her ACL (main stabilizing ligament in the knee). She's going to need surgery to fix it, and six to nine months of rehab before she's able to go back to being as active as she likes to be. Oh, plus, they say that she might have sheared off a fragment of her femur, which may or may not require screws to fix and which will push her recovery time to the far end of the estimated period. Her ski season is shot to hell, her track season is shot to hell, and her senior year is shot to hell. I mean, who wants to go to prom on crutches?
So I've been trying to help her out as much as I can: get her stuff, carry bulky items for her, make sure she takes her pain meds, mostly just let her talk out her frustrations. She's really REALLY mad about this. Dad understands (he messed up both his knees bad when he was younger) and I understand, since I deal with orthopedic patients all the time through work. I know how painful it is, physically, and I actually bother listening to her fears and concerns, something our mother and other sister haven't. Mom actually had the gall to say tonight that she thought Erika was dealing pretty well with it. SHE hasn't bothered to sit down with her own daughter and listen to her, really listen to her. Erika's hurting, and the physical aspect is only part of it. She's lost a huge part of her life, and people are pitying her for it. She's so independent that she can't stand that, it hurts her almost more than the knee.
Alie is the worst of it (the middle sister). She's so wrapped up in her own issues, her own selfish notion of "I had to do the cleaning all by myself because Erika can't/won't ignore her pain and get up and help me." Shit, Erika's no slouch at ignoring pain. She ran her way through shin splints for a year and a half, and when they took the MRI last week to determine the extent of the damage, they could STILL see the fracture lines. She'd been running on nearly-broken legs. And Alie thinks that Erika's weak for not wanting to aggravate a seriously painful knee injury. "Oh, she can walk across the bloody parking lot, even though it's covered in ice AND she's on crutches...all she has to do is go early, but she's too lazy to get up early." BULL-SHIT! SHE'S never experienced pain like that, because "I take care of myself." Oh, yeah, I'm sure Erika MEANT to get herself hurt. It was completely intentional, right Alie, you go ahead and feel so self-righteous because you did the dishes all by your lonesome and didn't bother asking for help, you poor little holier-than-thou bitch. "She needs to control her emotions," right...like you were controlling them so well when you refused to join the family for a game after finishing the dishes because you let yourself get worked up over an imagined insult.
And then when I tried to defend Erika from Alie's attacks (Erika was getting upset, I could see it, everyone but Alie could see it), Alie punched me, tried to shove me down the stairs, then ran. I tried to talk it over with her later, get to the core issues (I know they're there), but she wouldn't. She accused me of favoritism, of hating her and Mom, and told me to take all my shit and get out of here, go back to college, I wasn't welcome here anymore. Then Mom and Dad both got into it, Mom on Alie's side, Dad on mine.
We're dividing over this, over who appears to support Erika and who doesn't. Afterwards, Dad said he was about five minutes away from taking Alie to the airport and sending HER back to school. Yeah, maybe Dad and I are coddling Erika, but it's what she needs right now. Putting pressure on her now will just break what few defences she has up. She goes out with friends because she can't stand to stay at home all the time, watching movie after movie to block out the emotions, not because she's fine. I've FELT her knee swelling under my fingers after those little excursions of hers, and I've seen her make a beeline for the pain pills after getting back. She does it because she has to, to keep her sanity, not because she can. Alie's an introvert, she's okay just sitting and doing nothing all by herself. Not Erika. She needs people, and Alie can't understand that.
Granted, eventually Erika will need to be pushed to move to get better, but dear God, not until AFTER the F-ING SURGERY, PEOPLE. Why the hell can't they understand this? Erika's still coming to grips with the fact that her life as she prefers it is over for the next nine months. She's going to have to find a whole new set of interests that involve sitting down, and those don't come overnight. "It's an opportunity," Alie says. NO IT BLOODY WELL ISN'T! It's an effing tragedy, one that I guarentee you Erika would have given just about anything other than her other leg to NOT experience. LIFE IS NOT AN AFTER SCHOOL SPECIAL, and Alie just doesn't seem to GET that things don't always work out for the best. She just sort of blithely assumes that things will work out according to script. WHAT EFFING SCRIPT???????? We don't have some screenwriter sitting behind the scenes telling us what's going to happen and what to do and say, or, even better, letting us skip all this waiting and get straight to the point where Erika becomes resolved to her injury. We just have to go on, one damn thing after another, and there's no guarentee, especially with Alie and Mom psychobabbling her and telling her exactly what she's feeling and why it's wrong and how it's going to turn out. She's a teenager; she's predisposed to wanting to disprove everyone's theories about her, even if it means going against her own best interests. I had to talk her around for half an hour before she decided to keep working on range of motion, instead of passing it off in an act of rebellion against Mom and Alie. HALF AN HOUR to fix the effect of one stupid comment by an unthinking dimwit. What scares me most is, I'm going back to school a few days after her surgery. I won't be around to fix stuff like this, and I know for a fact that it'll pop up. Phones and e-mails don't do squat, not with this type of talk. And Mom won't LISTEN to me. I know what I'm talking about, but since I'm just her daughter, I obviously don't know as much as she does. Shit, the woman messed me up good, completely destroyed my self-esteem; I will NOT see her do the same thing to Erika, not now, not while she's at her most vulnerable. Mom's always had high expectations of everyone but herself, and Alie is exactly the same way. I don't want to see Erika's spirit destroyed by having two of the women she looks up to the most tell her that she's being lazy because she won't do things she's physically incapable of. Just because they're too wrapped up in themselves to take an honest look at her doesn't give them the right to hurt her that way. She'll destroy herself trying to please them; she'll hurt herself permanently trying to live up to their expectations. She's a lot like me that way, and I did.
I thought it was mothers who were supposed to defend their children from everyone and everything. Can't Mom see I'm doing her job, and that I'm trying to protect Erika from her?
Two-three days before Christmas, my youngest sister had a ski accident that completely tore her ACL (main stabilizing ligament in the knee). She's going to need surgery to fix it, and six to nine months of rehab before she's able to go back to being as active as she likes to be. Oh, plus, they say that she might have sheared off a fragment of her femur, which may or may not require screws to fix and which will push her recovery time to the far end of the estimated period. Her ski season is shot to hell, her track season is shot to hell, and her senior year is shot to hell. I mean, who wants to go to prom on crutches?
So I've been trying to help her out as much as I can: get her stuff, carry bulky items for her, make sure she takes her pain meds, mostly just let her talk out her frustrations. She's really REALLY mad about this. Dad understands (he messed up both his knees bad when he was younger) and I understand, since I deal with orthopedic patients all the time through work. I know how painful it is, physically, and I actually bother listening to her fears and concerns, something our mother and other sister haven't. Mom actually had the gall to say tonight that she thought Erika was dealing pretty well with it. SHE hasn't bothered to sit down with her own daughter and listen to her, really listen to her. Erika's hurting, and the physical aspect is only part of it. She's lost a huge part of her life, and people are pitying her for it. She's so independent that she can't stand that, it hurts her almost more than the knee.
Alie is the worst of it (the middle sister). She's so wrapped up in her own issues, her own selfish notion of "I had to do the cleaning all by myself because Erika can't/won't ignore her pain and get up and help me." Shit, Erika's no slouch at ignoring pain. She ran her way through shin splints for a year and a half, and when they took the MRI last week to determine the extent of the damage, they could STILL see the fracture lines. She'd been running on nearly-broken legs. And Alie thinks that Erika's weak for not wanting to aggravate a seriously painful knee injury. "Oh, she can walk across the bloody parking lot, even though it's covered in ice AND she's on crutches...all she has to do is go early, but she's too lazy to get up early." BULL-SHIT! SHE'S never experienced pain like that, because "I take care of myself." Oh, yeah, I'm sure Erika MEANT to get herself hurt. It was completely intentional, right Alie, you go ahead and feel so self-righteous because you did the dishes all by your lonesome and didn't bother asking for help, you poor little holier-than-thou bitch. "She needs to control her emotions," right...like you were controlling them so well when you refused to join the family for a game after finishing the dishes because you let yourself get worked up over an imagined insult.
And then when I tried to defend Erika from Alie's attacks (Erika was getting upset, I could see it, everyone but Alie could see it), Alie punched me, tried to shove me down the stairs, then ran. I tried to talk it over with her later, get to the core issues (I know they're there), but she wouldn't. She accused me of favoritism, of hating her and Mom, and told me to take all my shit and get out of here, go back to college, I wasn't welcome here anymore. Then Mom and Dad both got into it, Mom on Alie's side, Dad on mine.
We're dividing over this, over who appears to support Erika and who doesn't. Afterwards, Dad said he was about five minutes away from taking Alie to the airport and sending HER back to school. Yeah, maybe Dad and I are coddling Erika, but it's what she needs right now. Putting pressure on her now will just break what few defences she has up. She goes out with friends because she can't stand to stay at home all the time, watching movie after movie to block out the emotions, not because she's fine. I've FELT her knee swelling under my fingers after those little excursions of hers, and I've seen her make a beeline for the pain pills after getting back. She does it because she has to, to keep her sanity, not because she can. Alie's an introvert, she's okay just sitting and doing nothing all by herself. Not Erika. She needs people, and Alie can't understand that.
Granted, eventually Erika will need to be pushed to move to get better, but dear God, not until AFTER the F-ING SURGERY, PEOPLE. Why the hell can't they understand this? Erika's still coming to grips with the fact that her life as she prefers it is over for the next nine months. She's going to have to find a whole new set of interests that involve sitting down, and those don't come overnight. "It's an opportunity," Alie says. NO IT BLOODY WELL ISN'T! It's an effing tragedy, one that I guarentee you Erika would have given just about anything other than her other leg to NOT experience. LIFE IS NOT AN AFTER SCHOOL SPECIAL, and Alie just doesn't seem to GET that things don't always work out for the best. She just sort of blithely assumes that things will work out according to script. WHAT EFFING SCRIPT???????? We don't have some screenwriter sitting behind the scenes telling us what's going to happen and what to do and say, or, even better, letting us skip all this waiting and get straight to the point where Erika becomes resolved to her injury. We just have to go on, one damn thing after another, and there's no guarentee, especially with Alie and Mom psychobabbling her and telling her exactly what she's feeling and why it's wrong and how it's going to turn out. She's a teenager; she's predisposed to wanting to disprove everyone's theories about her, even if it means going against her own best interests. I had to talk her around for half an hour before she decided to keep working on range of motion, instead of passing it off in an act of rebellion against Mom and Alie. HALF AN HOUR to fix the effect of one stupid comment by an unthinking dimwit. What scares me most is, I'm going back to school a few days after her surgery. I won't be around to fix stuff like this, and I know for a fact that it'll pop up. Phones and e-mails don't do squat, not with this type of talk. And Mom won't LISTEN to me. I know what I'm talking about, but since I'm just her daughter, I obviously don't know as much as she does. Shit, the woman messed me up good, completely destroyed my self-esteem; I will NOT see her do the same thing to Erika, not now, not while she's at her most vulnerable. Mom's always had high expectations of everyone but herself, and Alie is exactly the same way. I don't want to see Erika's spirit destroyed by having two of the women she looks up to the most tell her that she's being lazy because she won't do things she's physically incapable of. Just because they're too wrapped up in themselves to take an honest look at her doesn't give them the right to hurt her that way. She'll destroy herself trying to please them; she'll hurt herself permanently trying to live up to their expectations. She's a lot like me that way, and I did.
I thought it was mothers who were supposed to defend their children from everyone and everything. Can't Mom see I'm doing her job, and that I'm trying to protect Erika from her?
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