The key word on this one is or. I don't wish I didn't know her, at least not all the time, but I do need to let her go.
The person I am talking about is Bryson's younger sister. She is the baby out of his mother's children. She has no children of her own. She was the sister I never had, for quite a while. She is my daughter's favorite aunt. She is about 10 years younger than me. Since I am not going to ask her if I can write about her, I will just call her M.
Things started off on the wrong foot between me and her. Bryson's older sister, C, had already done her part to convince M that I was a horrible person that was going to be bad for him. By the time we finally did get to talking, we both had a lot of misconceptions about each other. Another factor was that M had a very controlling boyfriend and she was raised by her father, so she didn't come around a whole lot. When she started to, I really started liking her. She seemed very genuine and didn't have the common bad characteristics of her older sister and mother, which made them hard to trust and get along with.
We had many a fun times drinking and talking, laughing and crying, and just getting to know each other. Of course there was some of the drama that came along with drinking too much, but for the most part I thought we had a good relationship. We were both there for each other through some different medical things and she continued to be a positive person in my daughter's life.
Then things started to change. She started "dating" someone who was in prison (and that was kind of a complicated situation to begin with, because he has been part of the family before, but I will not go into details). Looking back, I think this is where things started going downhill. I needed to quit drinking and I didn't feel a lot of support from her, but she was getting very preoccupied with her life as a prison girlfriend, and so I didn't hear from her as often in general. I know that she had to be defensive about her choices, but she started being defensive period.
Around the time that I stopped drinking, is when I realized that she had been drinking more, and her tolerance had gone up. The last few times we did try to drink, I was a done deal and in bed long before the night was finished. I hadn't much thought about if our relationship was changing. With all of my good friends, we go through ups and downs and different things change in life, and it isn't a reflection of the friendship, it just changes how much time we talk or spend together. When things come together again, they come together like nothing has changed. I just assumed that was what had happened.
Even though things were looking different for us, I expected them to stay the same for her and my daughter. When they didn't, I made excuses and justifications for it, both to myself and my daughter. "M is just working." "M is busy taking care of her Dad or Grandma." "M is just busy, period."
More and more, time would go by and she hadn't called to take my daughter for an overnight. She used to take her almost every weekend, sometimes more. Sadly, my daughter had stopped asking for her. I wish we could just go back to that now, because she has major separation anxiety, always wondering if "see you soon" means a really long time.
I started realizing that we were gossiping a lot of the time we were together and I was turning into someone I didn't want to be. It seemed like if we weren't talking about someone, then we didn't have anything to talk about anymore. She was my go to person when I needed to go to the ER (something that was happening a lot), and I talked to her a lot about how hurt I was that her brother didn't go to the hospital with me. It seemed like she really cared, but I started fearing I was just the topic for when she drank with other people in the family. We weren't supporting good things in each other's lives anymore. I thought part of that might have been that she was getting to the party stage in her life and I was just getting old. lol
The thing is, something changed in M, and I am really worried that it is 'cause she is doing meth. There are a lot of things that point to it, and for a long time, I kept saying no way. This is the innocent little sister, the sweet and caring one, the one that was the first to graduate, the one that loves kids, the one who seemed to look up to her brother and love her niece, the one that would never do the things her parents did, that she despised when she was growing up... but reality is a hard pill to swallow sometimes.
I sat side by side with her brother while we did sooooo many things that we said we would never do. A big part of doing them was because we just wanted to have a "family" so bad, and there was a lot of fun to be had getting high with the "family." I made some serious mistakes when I was doing meth, and I quit when I realized my kids were in harms way. Now I am afraid some of my daughter's behaviors from when she comes home from spending time with her aunt is because she (yes she being my daughter) may actually be coming down from being exposed to meth in some way. I have considered drug testing her on several occasions, but have been afraid of the consequences being severe or of us being suspected because of our past, and of the truth.
I know I am in denial.... who wants to believe that someone they considered a sister and that their daughter sees as a hero, could not only be doing meth, but maybe even exposing a child to it?
I kept telling myself that her new attitude was just her dealing with some of the hard cards life has dealt her, but I think its more than that. She really has crossed the line from defending herself, to just plain out being a bitch.
I have realized that, for now, our friendship is dead. I think she still may want approval from people so bad that she compromises herself. She has also insisted some of her actions in the past had to do with children she so badly wanted to see. I can see now that she is a part of the web of lies that her mom and sister create and uses excuses that sound good to justify bad things. It should be easy for me to let her go, when I see so many negative things, but I miss the relationship we used to have, and I miss when she was consistent in my daughter's life.
Her attitude, her snottiness, and her inconsistency all around, have made it hard for several people to be in her life over the last year. The people she has been hanging out with, are ones that she had identified in the past as not being good for her, so it makes me wonder. To be honest, I am not sure which is worse, that she has changed so much because of drugs (because that sucks if she has them so present in her life....), or if she has actually become the person she is today without drugs, (because then I think there is less hope). If it is because of drugs, then I can hope she will quit doing them, and some of the old qualities that I miss and love about her will come back, and maybe we can be friends again, and she will be more consistent with my daughter one day.
I just need to let go for right now, because the uncertainty of judging how she spends all her time (that is- if she is telling the truth about being too busy), and why she rarely wants to see the baby, and never calls to check on her, and always checking her pupils when she does come for the baby, all are not worth her taking the baby once in a great while. It is also too painful to see Victorya upset for 3 days when she comes home, because she doesn't know when she is going to see her aunt again. I don't know when I will see her again either. Maybe the old her is gone for good.
