For readablity's sake the first half of this was written almost a month ago. The two subjects do intersect, though, so I'm including them in the same post.

The past few weeks I've been thinking about this quote. It has a series of statements like "people will be jerks, help them anyway. People will act selfishly, forgive them anyway." 

The context of the original quote is pretty interesting. Here's more about that if you care to do a lil more reading. https://quoteinvestigator.com/tag/mother-teresa/ TLDR-it wasn't Mother Theresa who said it originally.

The part that stuck in my head was "people will be mean, be kind anyway." I'd think about it whenever my sis's kiddos would be just little monsters. "Kids will be assholes, be kind anyway." The voice in the back of my head would say.

And that's fine, but pretty soon you feel like you're just the carpet, letting them walk all over you.

At the very least, do not make the situation worse. There are a million different responses I could choose to do right now. Approx three quarters of those choices fit firmly into the category of Shit-my-neglect-programmed-brain-spontaneously-thinks-will-shut-this-brat-up-but-really-is-just-abuse. The other categories are Shit-i-can-do-to-ignore-that-this-kid-is-just-being-an-ass-for-no-real-reason-just-because-they-think-its-fun-to-watch-me-cry and the elusive Methods-that-actually-work category. That last one is, admittedly, mostly empty. The stuff that fits in that category is mostly specifically event based... like "keep your hands to yourself. If you hit your sibling again I will call and cancel the sleepover." This is VERY event specific. Quite effective *on the way* to pick up a friend for a sleepover.  But the further you get from the specific event, the less effective it is.

I still don't have many answers that work. "Be kind anyway" is still popping into my head periodically.

Ffwd several weeks...

Hello again:)

I'm still losing my fuckin mind. The biggest changes recently are that the past 3 weeks with Lsis's kids have been miserable. I'd like to say that I'm a grown adult and being harassed by a 10 year old doesn't effect me. But that's bullshit. I started DBT therapy in an online group. Went to one session so far. It's not bad. I can definitely see where it will encourage me to practice some of the life skills that I managed to not learn so far. Naw, scratch that. It will help me learn life skills that I wasn't taught when I was younger.

So shits been tense here. The kids have been crapping on me basically every chance they get. Not literally, of course, but in about every other way possible. So in the next few weeks I have an opportunity to go visit my son for a long weekend. The very major catch is that in order for that to happen, Lsis will be having my biomom care for the kids while I'm not there.

Holy shit I did not see that coming!

I've talked with my T and Psychiatrist about it. This brings up so much shit.

Yes, I desperately need a break. But her?!?! There's a reason why my kids are both in their 20s now and have _never_ known her as grandma. But this is not my horse, not my rodeo. Lsis knows how I feel about it. And, genuinely, GrandmaJ has one kid left who hasn't disowned her (Lsis), and I'm positive that her relationship with Lsis and the grandbabies is far to precious for her to fuck it up. She has too much to loose.

My T keeps reminding me to check the facts, encourages me to talk to my sis about it. That's fine, but I'm still having major nightmares. The last nights it was I'm really little and I talked back to her. She screams at me to slap my mouth. I do. It's not hard enough, though. Finally after several times my lip starts bleeding. This is and actual memory of a punishment I used to get for talking back. I remember it clearly in the apartment we lived in when I was 3. To make the whole thing just that much more sadistic, ffwd about 9 years and it was one of the go-to funny stories my mom would tell at large family gatherings. What the actual fuck! It was always so funny, having a laugh about how "RR rarely talks back, but when she was little she used to slap her own mouth for saying naughty stuff. I'd say 'slap it harder' until she made her lip bleed." Yea - hahaha, ya know...the sadistic punishments you give your kids...

FUCK I would have been better of if I was raised by a pack of wolves.

There is no rosey end to this one tonight. I am dreading falling asleep because I don't want to wake up crying again. I want to see my son. I want to be there with him mentally and physically, instead of checked out having a panic attack the whole time worrying that in order to get me a well needed fucking break, that my sis is trusting the kiddos with a fucking monster.

I say my psy Dr yesterday. We talked a lot about all of this and he added a med. He also said I'm doing "good, hard work." Yea, it doesn't feel like it. It feels like I think I'm an adult, but the thought of her haunts my sleep. So that's fun. We also talked a bit about can a person really change or not, like is everybody just the sum of all the shittiest things they've done. He asked me what I thought about that. I said "well, I hope that I'm not just the worst thing that I've ever done, but I don't ever see myself forgiving her because it's really really hard to forgive someone who won't apologize. It hard to forgive someone who isn't sorry."

That's all for now. I'm just going to post this before I second and third guess myself into not posting.

RR