![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Some of my spinach have developed small dead spots on the leaves, and I don't know what it is. When I'm less tired I'll look up what it is - or maybe I should just take a sample to show Dad tonight when we go out to dinner for my sister's birthday. Asking his opinion always make him feel as if he is an important part of my life, and makes him feel good about himself.
Keeping my family marginally functional is a lot more work than it's worth. I always finish a session with them exhausted, upset, and/or convinced I have no worth. But slowly I'm getting better at not getting involved in their problems, especially when they try to make them mine.
Case in point: When we moved this last time, we finally got my wardrobe out of my parents' house. My sister had been using my old room as a dressing room / study space since two seconds after I moved out. So I rang repeatedly in the week before the move, letting the family know that I was going to be moving the wardrobe, and could my sister please move her stuff out of it. Apparently, my sister checked the answering machine not once in that week, nor did the written messages from my parents get read. So my friends and I arrived at my parent's house, to pick up and transport the thing, only to find that not only had none of the stuff been removed, but I also had to clean up the room before we could get at it.
Needless to say I was not impressed. However, I set to work, pointing my friends at the coffee machine and suggesting they sit down for half an hour while I dealt with the mess. Firstly, all the stuff on hangers goes on the door or over the back of the chairs. Then all the shoes in the bottom go under the table. Then all the shit in amongst the shoes (including delicate lingerie and scarves) goes in a large present bag that was in the storage space. The clothes in the storage space remain folded up; I just move them to the desk. Then I start opening drawers. Most of them I just tip out (trying to keep the clothes neat and on clean surfaces) but then I find one which I could see contained ID cards, important looking papers, and a fair bit of money (the $100 notes were a dead giveaway). That one I took out without touching any of the contents, placed it on the floor under the desk, and covered it so that it could not be seen.
Once the wardrobe was empty, I called my friends in to take apart and move the unwieldy thing and wrote my sister a letter explaining what I had done, and where all her stuff was, and making sure that she had my new phone number.
Two days later I get a call from her. She had just get home to find the wardrobe gone, and my old wardrobe in it's place with my letter taped to the door. I had no idea that Mum and Dad had done anything after I had been, as far as I knew they had been playing bridge all long weekend and then gone back to work on Tuesday to be their busy selves. So the accusations of stealing _her_ wardrobe and putting this shitty one in instead were kind of incomprehensible.
I was so proud of myself, I didn't lose it, I answered her accusations clearly and calmly, I responded to screams of deliberately causing her inconvenience and trouble with statements of when I had called and the number of times she could have got the message. I responded to 'stealing _her_ wardrobe' with stating exactly which birthday Dad gave it to me for (five years previous to that birthday, I had grown so that I could no longer stand upright in the wardrobe). I repeated exactly what I had done with her stuff, clearly and calmly.
However, when I got to leaving the drawer with the potentially sensitive stuff there, I mentioned that I had seen that there was money in it. Whereupon, I was accused of taking some of it (obviously, because I had seen it, I was not going to leave it there). I calmly told her that I had not touched any of the contents of that drawer. The response was: "Yeah, _sure_, we'll see, won't we" (nice suspicious and accusing tone of voice here) whereupon I calmly and clearly told her to get a life and hung up.
I repeat, I was so proud of myself, I didn't get upset, I didn't let my sister convince me that I existed for her convenience, and she had no recourse.
Keeping my family marginally functional is a lot more work than it's worth. I always finish a session with them exhausted, upset, and/or convinced I have no worth. But slowly I'm getting better at not getting involved in their problems, especially when they try to make them mine.
Case in point: When we moved this last time, we finally got my wardrobe out of my parents' house. My sister had been using my old room as a dressing room / study space since two seconds after I moved out. So I rang repeatedly in the week before the move, letting the family know that I was going to be moving the wardrobe, and could my sister please move her stuff out of it. Apparently, my sister checked the answering machine not once in that week, nor did the written messages from my parents get read. So my friends and I arrived at my parent's house, to pick up and transport the thing, only to find that not only had none of the stuff been removed, but I also had to clean up the room before we could get at it.
Needless to say I was not impressed. However, I set to work, pointing my friends at the coffee machine and suggesting they sit down for half an hour while I dealt with the mess. Firstly, all the stuff on hangers goes on the door or over the back of the chairs. Then all the shoes in the bottom go under the table. Then all the shit in amongst the shoes (including delicate lingerie and scarves) goes in a large present bag that was in the storage space. The clothes in the storage space remain folded up; I just move them to the desk. Then I start opening drawers. Most of them I just tip out (trying to keep the clothes neat and on clean surfaces) but then I find one which I could see contained ID cards, important looking papers, and a fair bit of money (the $100 notes were a dead giveaway). That one I took out without touching any of the contents, placed it on the floor under the desk, and covered it so that it could not be seen.
Once the wardrobe was empty, I called my friends in to take apart and move the unwieldy thing and wrote my sister a letter explaining what I had done, and where all her stuff was, and making sure that she had my new phone number.
Two days later I get a call from her. She had just get home to find the wardrobe gone, and my old wardrobe in it's place with my letter taped to the door. I had no idea that Mum and Dad had done anything after I had been, as far as I knew they had been playing bridge all long weekend and then gone back to work on Tuesday to be their busy selves. So the accusations of stealing _her_ wardrobe and putting this shitty one in instead were kind of incomprehensible.
I was so proud of myself, I didn't lose it, I answered her accusations clearly and calmly, I responded to screams of deliberately causing her inconvenience and trouble with statements of when I had called and the number of times she could have got the message. I responded to 'stealing _her_ wardrobe' with stating exactly which birthday Dad gave it to me for (five years previous to that birthday, I had grown so that I could no longer stand upright in the wardrobe). I repeated exactly what I had done with her stuff, clearly and calmly.
However, when I got to leaving the drawer with the potentially sensitive stuff there, I mentioned that I had seen that there was money in it. Whereupon, I was accused of taking some of it (obviously, because I had seen it, I was not going to leave it there). I calmly told her that I had not touched any of the contents of that drawer. The response was: "Yeah, _sure_, we'll see, won't we" (nice suspicious and accusing tone of voice here) whereupon I calmly and clearly told her to get a life and hung up.
I repeat, I was so proud of myself, I didn't get upset, I didn't let my sister convince me that I existed for her convenience, and she had no recourse.