#Becca’s depression is at an all time low and she just keeps going further down

[inthedarkestofplaces]

I don’t care if no one responds I just have to get something off of my chest:

Am I fucking stupid for being jealous that my best friend is out making other friends and not including me? Like I feel crazy and I feel ridiculous but it makes me feel so unwanted? There’s more too it. She currently lives in my basement which I spent the last year turning into an apartment for her so she could get out of a bad relationship. The deal was she pays half of my rent and half of the utility bills. She’s lived here since March and just now in November started paying her half. So in addition to feeling unwanted, I also feel super used and taken advantage of. She watched me go into massive amounts of debts to help her and then more debt trying to keep up with bills that doubled and we can’t even go record shopping? But she can go rock climbing, a thing she would NEVER do, with someone she met on fucking bumble? Cool. I get it. I feel like a fucking fool.

[curiousview-blog]

Wintering and the pandemic

I’m reading a rather nice book at the moment: ‘Wintering: The power of rest and retreat in difficult times’ by Katherine May. It’s partly a reflection on her own depression (although she never refers to it by that name) and partly a treatise on how people and nature prepare for, and live through their winters as a natural part of the cycle of life. Today I learned that the pagan year is divided into an ‘eightfold’ calendar, with a celebration every six weeks or so, because the druids considered that not having something within touching distance to look forward to would make the passing of time unbearable. As Katherine May explains, all living things have a pattern they follow throughout the year – especially in areas with distinct shifts in season – ‘wintering’ is as inevitable and necessary as ‘springing’ or ‘summering’. All have their place and function, and she gently suggests that re-forging our connection with that might do us all good, instead of battling on, business-as-usual, when the world around us is calling us to do things differently. We should embrace our winterings. 

Last week, the ‘route out of lockdown’ was announced here in the UK. A staged lifting of restrictions that could mean even the re-opening of nightclubs with no rules from mid June. I should be feeling excited but I’m not. I’m at best numb, and at worst anxious. I’m not scared of the virus, nor worried about the vaccine, and I don't even think I’m scared of everything feeling weird when we start gathering again. I’m scared because this pandemic has broken my trust in the future. As my lovely yoga teacher, Becca, said to me “When so much has been taken away over and over it’s difficult to have the confidence or drive to make more plans...”  My own personal eightfold year no longer feels possible.

It was as the hubbub of Christmas and New Year faded that I realised I couldn’t daydream about what I’d do in 2021 once all this was over, nothing came. It was like my mind’s eye was blind. I’ve always had a vivd imagination which schemes and plots in great visual detail, and I don’t recall a time where I literally couldn’t see further than the end of the week. It’s like being in thick fog. Disorienting and paralysing. It’s taken me a few weeks to realise this is why I’m feeling so low. I’m in the depths of a wintering as Katherine would say. Last year I was still making plans, thinking that everything would right itself in a few months, and that ‘life’ could continue again. Stubbornly making, and rearranging plans kept me positive, I was in control, fighting my own little war against uncertainty. I still had stuff to look forward to, stuff that I felt confident would happen. But at the turning of the year, I stopped kidding myself.

‘Life’ for me, particularly includes travelling, trips to London to get a culture fix and meet up with friends from around the country, weekend break ‘getaways’, surprise visits to hotels and fancy restaurants with my love, and just generally being on the move. These are all things to look forward to on the horizon that make the day to day slog OK and I’ve always said that I need this fix, every six weeks. Rather like the druids.

Image source: ‘The Eight Fold Year’ Druidry.org

Instead I’m wading slowly through the day, head down, getting on with as much as I can, and napping when I can’t. I no longer make to-do lists, or write a schedule. I refuse to set the daily goals I once relished (even though I rarely achieved them). I’m forgetting things, overlooking commitments, making mistakes and losing my grip. Every morning I list the things I’m grateful for, drink my ‘happy herbs’ tea, stretch, write in journal, and [insert latest self-care idea here], yet still I wake feeling dread, and cry at the slightest provocation.

Surely all this can’t be coming from the simple fact I can’t take a mini-break, or jet off for a week in the sun every few weeks? How crushingly shallow. “First world problems, for the modern self-indulgent woman” is carved down the side of the stick I beat myself up with. But what if my yearning for a regular ‘something’ isn’t the personal failing of a spoiled modern consumer, but a deep and ancient connection to a need to mark the passing of the time in a meaningful way? Over the past year I have realised – like the druids – this is my joy-system, the fuel that keeps my mental health on an even keel.

I don’t have young children to home school, I still have a full-time job, I have a loving, supportive partner, a space of my own and I live in a nice place where I can walk to both sea and countryside within half an hour of my door. Really, what have I got to feel down about?  But maybe instead of self-flagellating because my lot is not as crappy as someone else’s lot (how very British), I would do well to listen to the druids. We have all had our joy systems disrupted in ways that are personal to us, and we are all feeling those effects. The ‘human’ world we have created is asking many of us to carry on as if nothing was happening, much like we force ourselves to go through our lives ignoring the ‘natural’ world’s coming and going of the seasons with their different energies and impacts on us. As Philip Carr-Gorman writes on the ‘Druidry.org’ website:

“The old message of the cyclicity of life, of life as a circle or spiral, that humanity intuitively knew from the dawn of time, and whose symbols were carved on stones all over the world, was replaced a few hundred years ago by the symbol of the straight line: the male, linear, scientific world-view that, in distortion, worships progress and goal-achievement above wisdom and clarity of being.”

We are all wintering in our own ways, and we will all emerge into spring differently. Spring equinox is the next celebration on the eightfold calendar – ‘Ostara’ - a perfect balance between the dark and the light, when day begins to steal minutes, then hours from night until we are all ‘summering’ again. It will come. It always does.

[tally-my-words]

Dean had gotten a little past pissed. He was a little further than depressed. It was a bad month. Things had been bad with John, things had been worse with one bad hunt after another. He missed Sam. Things were a little worse and a bit more awkward increasingly so.

It’s not easy for Dean to admit … when he wants things. Lately, he’s been trying to follow what’s increasingly looking like bad advice. Bran told him that finding someone who mattered to him, really mattered, would help keep him and the wolf safe. It would give him comfort, purpose, a sense of place that would extend past four car tires. He’s considered having that a few times. Unfortunately, it always goes to effin’ Hell in a freakin’ hand basket. He thought, just maybe, something something would go right with Cassie. Then again, he’d thought it might be more than bendy sex with Lisa. Ronda Hurley won’t even answer his calls and he’s still not sure how he burned bridges with that particularly liberal lady.

He’s sick of missing Sam, sick of waking up alone. He needs a friend. He’d go see Bobby, but fuck it, John burned that bridge. Last time they saw Bobby, their Dad’s closest friend was threatening the senior Winchester with a shotgun. It’s starting to feel like a theme. His fingers twitch and he wants to call Mercy. She’s settling into her new job, though, and she doesn’t drink. That’s obviously not the worse thing, but it leaves her sober to judge his mental state. He’s not sure how much he likes that. The monster that lurks under his skin has been a bit moody of late. He considers stretching his legs for a bit, but a run will probably only increase the frequency that he inches his way out of his skin.

He thumbs through his phone and wonders how his call list turned into a list of favored booty calls. He laughs at that, twenty numbers down and he sees a decisively not booty call number. He knows his dad would probably throw a bitch fit. That might be what ultimately inspires him to hit ‘Send.’

“Hey,” he greets, trying to keep his tone neutral. “Working on anything? I could use a job.”

“Not my usual type, not your usual type either, really…. You caught me mending fences,” Eliot replies, snorting out a laugh. He doesn’t hear from Dean often, but knowing the younger man is okay, safe, still breathing always puts a warmth in his chest. Regardless of potential bad blood, Eliot always answers.

“Anything like mending bridges?” Dean jokes. He thinks it’s code for something. Something more complex or serious or permanent. He thinks maybe Eliot’s found something.

“No, I’m dead serious. I’m out in the middle of Texas mending fences in cattle country. Spent a few weeks working on this one, going to maybe take another month to finish here and take on a few smaller projects for other locals. Like most of these towns, local youth run away when factory and oil drilling jobs dry up move out to the cities and their folks end up not quite able to handle all the work by themselves. Doesn’t pay much, but it almost always comes with two meals and a place to stay… You need out for a bit?” Eliot asks. He hates that some small part of him was begging Dean to just walk away. He doesn’t want the life Dean lives killing him before one of the few people he trusts turns twenty-five. Life wasn’t fair and he’d seen a lot of dead friends.

“Give me an address and I’ll see what I can do. I’m not staying in some barn attic, though. It’s fun on occasion, but it’ll kill your back and I’m not having to tiptoe around whoever you’re staying with on the weird hours crap,” Dean proclaims. “Not having all those rednecks tell me I’m wearing the wrong boots or some shit.”

“I’ll send it to you in a text. Just as long as you don’t have fancy designs and don’t mind shit on them, I think we’ll be good,” Eliot knows he’s laying the teasing too thick, but it feels safer than saying, ‘I’m worried about you and I’m worried you keep getting in over your head.’ “Get your ass down here, I’ve got too much work for one person and I’m bored with this little town.”

Dean bites his lip. He knows better than to laugh. He can hear the lie. He knows better than to call out the older man. Eliot must have demons chasing him. When he’s open enough about caring, he’s been living too freely with them.

Eliot punches the ‘End’ button and pulls out a map. He sends a quick text ‘Brady, Texas. Take 44 South from Wichita Falls, down through. 281 to 183 to 377.’ He then calls and presses the pound button to straight to voicemail “Call me when you get in and I’ll bring you around town and help you find a place to crash. I can put you up here if you want, but it’s up to you. I’m not quite getting room and board - I got fostered off on an younger woman who’s got an apartment over her garage. Guys I’m working for have been paying her my rent. I’m probably getting screwed out of more money than most would like, but you know how I feel about putting bills in my name.”

Dean rolls his eyes when he listens to the message a few hours later, but the directions are solid and while he’s not coming strictly through Kansas, his mental map of the state makes it easy to find the suggested route. From there, with an atlas, it’s easy to follow down the southernly trail that runs straight through a small map dot. Looks like a good place for laying low.

Dean cruises into town after a day and a half in the car. He’s stopped for the pits and for a few naps. He flips open his phone and punches redial for the last number. Eliot picks up on the fourth ring. “I’m just starting to pull in, looks like I’m heading towards the center of town.”

“There’s around about just as you pull through that’s on main street, I’ll be on the corner. Pull off there and you can park behind the bar. Dinner my treat,” Eliot informs. He walks outside and takes a moment to adjust to the sun before squaring his shoulders to face north. He doubts Dean will miss him. He certainly doesn’t miss the big black impala as it gleams into view.

Eliot gestures Dean to pull the car into a parking lot beside the restaurant. Dean crawls out with the stiffness that owns to being eighteen hours on the road. He shifts and appreciates that Eliot doesn’t hover near the car door. He reaches across the front seat and grabs his jacket. He wasn’t expecting it to be in the forties this far south. He forgets Texas can get cold. Eliot huffs a laugh and Dean suddenly appreciates more the fleece lined suede the older man favored when they were last together in South Dakota.  

Dean huffs his way inside, never bothering to look up and assess the restaurant. Eliot has chosen it for one of two reasons. In either the category of booze or grub, Dean will refer to his judgement. He hopes he doesn’t look too out of place with the set of his shoulders screaming ‘uncomfortable’ and the solid black leather jacket screaming ‘rebel.’ He chuckles, wondering if John’s patches from Vietnam would win or gain him friends in the borrowed modern day armor.

Eliot scrunches up his nose and fights off a laugh. Dean understands things most won’t take the time for. He knows dangerous and he knows screwed over by the world, but sometimes just the fact that the kid also knows ‘fight for better, ‘ ‘Love those you’ve got.’ Eliot wishes, not for the last time, that he had quiet half so much as Dean gripes about being worried for. It’s almost enough to make him consider heading home. He knows Houston Texas is a death sentence, though, and he rather  dislikes the idea of dying. “Food’s pretty good if you can look past the name,” he notes as he passes Dean a menu.

Dean rolls his eyes at the restaurant’s ridiculous moniker ‘The Flying Moose.’ “This can’t be a real place, no fucking way!” exclaims as he pouts and looks over the menu. The pizzas look pretty good, but he was really thinking more a burger. He finally settles on ordering one when he reads ‘Blazin’ Saddles’ and can’t help but snicker. He’s considering ordering it when he can literally feel Eliot’s glare.

“Don’t come bitching at me when your date goes running. I’m pretty sure Sam’s not the only one who can smoke out the car,” Eliot gripes. He continues looking over the menu when another young man comes in and takes a spot one seat over to Dean’s left.

The stranger shoots them a confused look, like he’s evaluating whether or not the math equation’s right. Eliot swallows down the temptation to rise out of his seat and ask just what the local boy wants. He recognizes, then, though, that lost look. Eliot almost runs his hands through his hair on the same reflex that has the other checking where it all went. Yup, military hair cut and squared shoulders. Eliot would bet he’s fresh back home after awhile away.

“Hey Sally,” the man greets when an older waitress shuffles forward, cautious and then growing more excited as she rushes out and hugs the town’s wayward son across the counter top. He kisses her temple and falls into his seat effortlessly. “Can I get the usual?”

“What else would you get, Marty? Should I pack one of those ill fated birds for your Mama?” she asks.

Another sweet lady not far apart in age, but closer to tanned leather comes out and and whispers “Mijo!”

“Mamita Marie,” he whispers reverently, burying the side of his face in the elder lady’s hair. “¿Como está?”

“Bien y tú?” the old lady replies with the easy breath of knowing she’ll be understood. Dean feels a bit at awe in how easily this other man is welcomed home. Eliot can’t help but wonder if maybe being welcomed like that would be worth going back to Houston. He knows, though, that Dean wouldn’t like the self-destructive path. If he goes to Houston, John Winchester becomes right about a few things.

“Vivo,” Martin Riggs replies boldy. It feels good to be home and say ‘I made it.’ He’s still a bit sour that Becca let him leave so easily.

“Your Mama will be happy to see you back,” Sally replies and swoops down to peck a kiss on Marie’s forehead. “Back in the kitchen with you when you’re done or we’ll never feed all these boys!” Her scolding is wickedly warm, though, and Martin shares a smirk with Sally.

“Mom won’t care much that I’m back. She never cared much that I left,” he breaths out, admitting what’s eating at him when he thinks Marie as far enough not to chastise after him.

“Your mother walks Death. Stop holding her to your sense of time. One of these days you’ll realize she always wants what’s best for you and she thought leaving was that. Yes, you’ve done hard things and yes, you’ll do harder, but not everyone gets easy paths,” she counters harshly. The woman won’t be having one of her local boys speaking badly about his mother.

“Alright, Marie. Sally, I’ll take the usual, but I’m not bringing Mama dinner. I thought I’d surprise her by coming home on leave and she’s gone and rented out my room!” Riggs admits, his laughter like that of a wet cat.

Both women look to Martin in tandem and roll their eyes. Becca has never been big on hospitality, but she’s been lonely and willing to let people in a little closer with her charge away. “I’m sure you’ll get on just fine,” Sally teases.

Dean feels his cheeks heat when the local boy turns and gives him a full Cheshire smile, cat and canary all in one broad sweeping gesture. He shifts in his seat and turns to the local. “Dean,” he informs, extending his hand for the stranger to shake.

“Martin, Martin Riggs. Sorry to interrupt your mean. I know you guys were here first. I just came back into town. I grew up around here, so I guess playing local football makes me something of a folk hero or some other silly shit,” he replies, scratching the back of his head in a nervous gesture. Eliot tries not to snort. It reminds him how Dean fidgets under scrutiny. He shouldn’t find it cute.  

Eliot is about to say something depressingly serious about how dangerous he suspects the Texan is, but he’s interrupted by a short, elegant woman who crosses her arms and glares at Martin. “Language!” she exclaims before grabbing the six foot tall SEAL by the ear and pulling him to his feet. “This is not your home and these gracious women welcome you into their place. Respect that!” She lets him go and wraps him in a ridiculously tight hug. Eliot is confused for a long moment.

“Please don’t tell me that’s his mother,” he requests of Sally who looks about ready to fall over laughing. She nods. “Yup, Becca took him in when she was by our guess maybe seventeen? She can’t yet be forty.”

Becca crosses over and kisses Sally on both checks. Sally rolls her eyes and Becca laughs. “Someone has to make Marie jealous,” she teases before plopping herself at the bar with her boots tucked under her.

“Since I think my son and Eliot are going to be figuring out who sleeps where, I’m going to grab dinner. Get me a Big Red and a ‘Happy Mother Clucker’ since this one obviously had no plans to come home for dinner,” she informs.

Eliot tries not to glare at what he’s fast beginning to believe might be true to local circumspect. He’s heard one soul whisper things like ‘bruja de diablos.’ Not that he can quote Spanish all that well.

“What, boy, you’ve never seen power,” he feels the whisper against the back of his mind. “If your friend wants to kill me, fine, but otherwise leave me to my people and my family,” she hisses against the recesses before leaning her elbows against the bar to sip at the soda dropped before her.

This isn’t that kind of vacation. He shrugs it off with a shutter and turns to Riggs on her other side. “I’m Eliot. I only paid up ‘til the end of the month which was Wednesday anyway. I’ve got my bag, so it’s no biggie if you’re moving back.” he informs.

Riggs considers it and nods. He takes Eliot’s hand in his and shakes it. “I can appreciate Mom trying to do good with my space while I’m away, but her and I just tend to see things like that a little differently. She thinks it’s fun to mess with me like this,” he admits. The woman nods and shoots both Eliot and Dean a wide smile around her fries, which Marie has brought out early and tucked between Martin and Becca. Riggs pulls out barbeque sauce and dumps it over his fries while the smaller woman covers hers in ketchup.

“I have two purposes where you are concerned. To see that you are fed, which you mostly do for yourself, and to see that you are safe, which you also mostly do for yourself. So the rest of the time I get to derive personal pleasure from your existence, even if that means I egg you on every chance I get. It makes you durable to life’s stupid,” she teases. Her sandwich comes out, somehow, even before Riggs’ meal in a styrofoam box with a matching cup filled with soda. She drops a hundred on the counter. “I’m covering the boys’ meals. Let them get their own drinks, though. Don’t let them leave without pie.”

Dean looks a little awed by the displace of southern hospitality, but he is the quickest to reply. “Thank you, ma’am, you don’t have to do that!”

“Shut up,” she announces boldly. “You do what you need to do and I’m sure you’ll repay either me or this town ten times that. Maybe just the world in general. Sometimes simple, stupid good is the best kind. Don’t go growling around my neighbors, though,” she adds. She taps the straw against her nose. Dean isn’t quite sure if she’s admitting she knows just what he is.

“Is she a psychic?” Dean dares ask the crowd aloud. Eliot tries to swallow down the strange feeling this is a bad conversation topic.

Marie comes out with Riggs lunch, plops it in front of him to glare at the massive quality of food and then moves in front of both Dean and Eliot, sketch pad held up menacingly. “Becca is not more psychic than I am your daddy’s nursemaid and seeing as I’ve never seen either of you two boys in my life, you get where this is going.”

Dean blanches at that thought and rolls his eyes before Eliot shoots Riggs a glance. “Heard you’ve had cattle problems clear up in the last few days,” Eliot ventures. Riggs unfolds a paper and nods, noting that the mysterious cattle deaths have dropped off dramatically. It’s suspected according to local conjecture that someone was bleeding competing head to limit stiff grazing competition for the upcoming season. Eliot doubts it. Now is the time you’d cull the herds, anyway.

“I only saw it in the paper today. There had been some weird things in other parts of the area, too. We get weird things. Stuff other people don’t see in their backyards because strangers think we won’t notice in the boonies,” he admits. He gets up and passes Dean the paper highlighting that the cattle deaths seem to have finally stopped.

“Not coyotes?” Eliot asks. They kill sometimes, calves at the like, for more fun that food. He doesn’t really believe there’s any chance of that, but he wants to ferret out if he needs to incentivize or disincentivize Dean’s temptations to stick his unlucky nose into every problem.

“Not coyotes. I think I know what it might have been, but I also know enough that no one wants to see what we do to cattle rustlers,” Riggs gives an elaborate shutter. It’s somewhat for show.

“Stop making the man concerned he’s not doing his job right. Spencer here’s been fixing fences for Carmen and Smitty along with Blake and Wade,” Sally adds. She moves to stand before Eliot and Dean. She makes an equally menacing, slightly taller aberration with her own notepad and pen. “ORDER ALREADY!”

Dean gulps loudly at the order at the order and nods a short quick bob of his chin. “Yes, ma’am!“

TBC

@thesneakyhobo @starlightoffandoms

[tendaifmp-blog]

When siblings fall out

A hostile relationship with an adult sibling is a heartbreaking reality for many people. After 20 years of frostiness, Sophia Smith went in search of a solution

Her voice sounded so full of vitriol that I could barely make out what she was saying. ‘Hate’, ‘disgusting’ and ‘never want to see you again’ featured highly, though, as did other choice descriptors for me.

When I put down the phone, I was trembling. The shock of being told – no, screamed at – that someone despises you so much that they want to cut you out of their life for good is upsetting enough. The fact that the someone in question is your sister is even harder to bear.

I remained in shock for a few days, playing the phonecall over and over in my head. Waves of anxiety and anger tore through my body as I recalled the sibling venom. I meditated. I cried. Then I got rational.

My sister’s attitude to family has been pretty negative for the last 20 years, even more so since meeting her husband a few years ago. From our teenage years, she started distancing herself, keen to bow out of landmark occasions and holidays, with my other sister and I picking up the pieces of her often-hurtful behaviour.

Our interaction since then has been transactional and perfunctory. We don’t even bother to send each other birthday or Christmas cards any more.

As I emerged from the tailspin, I came around to thinking that actually, this sibling severing would not be such a great loss to my life. The relationship was causing me nothing but stress, irritation and upset so mixed in with the sadness at the fact I’d failed in the big sister stakes was relief. Huge relief. At least we didn’t have to keep up the exhausting sham of forced happy families.

So instead of attempting any kind of reconciliation, I embraced my sister’s proposal of estrangement. It was surprisingly liberating. Perhaps that’s why estrangement is on the rise, say experts in the field, with one in five families in the UK touched by it, according to charity Stand Alone. Many more, if you include people who are in superficial contact, but ‘emotionally estranged’.

Sibling relationships are highly susceptible to this ‘cold war’ type of disconnection, says Stand Alone clinical chair Dr Jason Robinson, where there is ‘increasing frostiness’ between two people. He believes that sibling abuse – physical and emotional – is rife and ‘massively under reported’ but, as a society, we shrug it off by saying ‘oh, that’s just siblings’.

Rewriting the script

I’m still confused about the events leading up to the relationship breakdown. The trigger – seemingly a few careless comments I’d made that she took exception to – didn’t seem proportionate to her extreme reaction. However, shortly after this when her vitriol transferred squarely to my parents, it became obvious the issue ran much deeper; her grievances with us were locked in the past.

Pages and pages of emails and texts, from my sister to my parents, rewrote the script of our childhood, recasting her as the Cinderella-esque character, sandwiched between two evil sisters and neglected by uncaring parents. It wasn’t a fairytale that I, or the rest of the family, recognised. Frustrated and seething, she then ceased all contact with my parents and sister, too.

This scenario is very common, says Robinson, when communication has become superficial, strained or non-existent. ‘We [all parties, not just the estranged] reconstruct a narrative from miscommunication to defend ourselves and reassure ourselves. But we build these stories in the absence of real feedback.’

It’s now been over a year since that phonecall. I’ve not had any further contact with my sister and it’s been a tough 12 months. Not because I’ve missed her, but because I’ve had to watch my parents wither and fall apart, heartbroken. They’ve been living through my worst nightmare: being told by your child that you have failed them as a parent. Witnessing their pain only served to validate my belief that this toxic influence doesn’t deserve to be part of our family. Throughout the year, I was uncannily at peace with my decision to give up on the relationship.

However, that started to change when our estrangement reached its first-year anniversary. As I realise how effortlessly one year could slip into two, 10, 50… I’m nagged by the thought: do I really want to sleepwalk into that? It’s as if I’m edging towards the point of no return with a devil on one shoulder (‘Go! She’s a bitch! You don’t want her contaminating your life!) and an angel on the other (‘What about empathy? Compassion? Where’s yours now?’).

I’ve decided to try and drown out the devil and listen to the angel. Because no matter how liberating, I can’t escape the reality that cutting a blood tie, particularly in such a blasé way, just doesn’t feel right.

Like it or not (and I don’t particularly like it) she is a link with where I come from and who I am. There’s also the guilt that perhaps, ‘estrangement is one of the tools we have in our toolbox as a family member, but it’s played too often and too quickly,’ says relationship psychologist, author and co-chair of the Council on Contemporary Families, Dr Joshua Coleman.

But where do I go from here?

According to experts, the first step in healing a rift is to honestly consider your role in causing and maintaining it. The next step is to try and see the situation from the other person’s perspective. Dr Coleman, for instance, recommends ‘empathy, empathy, empathy’ because ‘you’re not going to get anyone’s attention if you’re only criticising or blaming them; people don’t come back into families because you’ve shamed them to, usually it’s because they feel more understood. If you have it in you, reach out to them and take responsibility, even if you don’t agree with the intensity of their feelings.’

Struggling to take responsibility or empathise, I decided to explore the conflict using an approach called Constellations, where participants assume the roles of the family members, which I’d heard can help you see a wider perspective. Its premise is that deep emotions usually arise because somethingis out of kilter in the wider family dynamic. The process tries to reach a resolution and, in facilitator and philosopher Robert Rowland Smith’s experience, ‘as a general rule, it’s better to include the excluded; the cost of excluding them is heavy for everybody in the family.’

Fascinating insights

It was a gruelling, fascinating, uplifting, surreal hour. It reminded me that, not long ago, I was fighting the same demons from childhood that my sister is grappling with now – low self-esteem, comparison and catastrophism. Hours of therapy had helped me overcome them and see that, while our parents always wanted the best for us, inadvertently their strong influence left me feeling like I wasn’t good enough if I wasn’t achieving. Whereas I got depressed and blamed myself, my sister reacted by becoming aggressive, and blaming everyone around her.

But I no longer feel angry with her – just sad. I know how painful that headspace is.

Rowland Smith noted how much judgement there was loaded in the way I spoke, particularly about what a family ‘should’ be like. He made me realise that, while I may have worked hard to ease my self-judgment, I haven’t done this in relation to my sister.

Take what I said earlier about her not deserving to be part of our family. What gives me the right to decide that? She is part of my family and her relationships with other family members are just as valid as mine. Any fracture damages the whole. Being open about my sibling situation has prompted many friends to share similar woes of unsisterly (or unbrotherly) relationships, revealing a dark, stigmatised underbelly of family life. It’s comforting to know I’m not alone. They may not have severed the link as dramatically as my sister and I, but they’re very often emotionally distanced; the socially acceptable face of estrangement.

Ultimately, however, as Rowland Smith says, any kind of estrangement is ‘a futile gesture’ because even if you cut someone out of your life, mentally they live on in your head, cropping up in your dreams, worries and preoccupations. He offers me comfort, though, with his philosophy that conflicts like mine can ultimately strengthen the family unit if worked through.

‘If we have a completely successful, unblemished personal life we are slightly weightless, less real. We’ve got to learn to embrace the negative; it’s a stage in building ourselves,’ Rowland Smith points out.

‘Perfect family’ pressure

We’ve also got to relieve the pressure to have ‘perfect families’ and accept the reality of messy human relationships. As Becca Bland, journalist and founder of Stand Alone says: ‘It’s worth being open because there will be a huge number of people who may be experiencing what you’re experiencing.’

I like Rowland Smith’s idea that this annus horribilis could be a catalyst for rebuilding my sibling relationship on more solid foundations. If I could go back to my childhood and treat my sister better, I would. Like many siblings, we spoke to each other in a way that I would never speak to a friend and made no attempt to hide the fact we didn’t get on, or try to see the good in one another. She’s also one of the few people I’ve ever wanted (and tried) to physically hurt in my life.

But alas, as a 40-something grown-up who can’t go back in time, I can only deal with the present. I have often wondered what I would do if I saw her in the street. A year ago, I would definitely have walked the other way. Now, I think, I wouldn’t. I’d move towards her, a small step perhaps, and see what happened. That, at least, is progress.

https://www.psychologies.co.uk/when-siblings-fall-out