Trainwreck sister.

[gottawonder]

I'm starting to wonder if my Trainwreck sister just likes calling me up and telling me shit so that it ruins my day. It's possible.

Her life is genuinely pretty bad, but I can say that she is there due to her choices. She's not there by accident. I've watched her whole life, and the awful choices she made, even when she's had good things she could have chosen fairly easily. There's no reason to pity her. Her partner died over a year ago, and she's living in a hoarded up trailer that's very old and run down, in a shithole town that is really just a bunch of boarded up abandoned houses. She's living on disability, and really doesn't have a lot to do anymore. She doesn't have any interests or goals anymore. She had a "friend", but he was already dying when she met him, and has since died.

So, now she's looking at a different very old house in a different shithole town, that is exactly what she always buys. She finds some place that's very cheap (thus always in towns that are in the middle of nowhere and everyone is leaving or dead), buy a house that is ALMOST falling down, and she can pretend to get a ""new start". It will start by her saying she will only take the clothes on her back, and NEVER HOARD IT UP. She won't actually get rid of the old house, or the stuff in it. She'll start bringing truckloads of stuff to her new place, as well as filling the new place with stuff she finds. Then she'll have two houses full of shit. Then she'll lose the old house either by not paying back taxes or whatever. Or maybe this time she'll just have two houses full of shit. In a few months the new place will be hoarded right up, and soon be falling down around her because she doesn't do any maintenance. Even better, she might only rent this place, thus getting to ruin it and not even need to deal with the shit herself when she is forced to leave.

I almost don't even care anymore, but she tells you her plan like it's her brilliant way out. As if this isn't the fifth or sixth time she's done this. I really can't even pretend to be excited.

Then she starts talking about my Mom.

Mom IS a little weird about her clothes, in that she likes what she likes and won't wear anything else. She likes a certain kind of men's work shirt, basically it has to have long sleeves and a pocket, and a collar that is soft, not stiff. Then she wears plain loose pants with an elastic waist.

She hates anything new, because that's wasting money. So you have to buy them at a thrift store.

Why do I know all of this? Because even though I live farther away from her than anyone else in the family, I have somehow become the person who buys her clothes. Even better, is she never knows what size she is. I have to guess, even though I don't see her in person often.

SO, I typically buy many men's shirts and many pairs of pants in sizes around what I think she is. Usually some bigger than she was last time, and some close to what she was last time. Out of about ten shirts she might keep one. Same with the pants. So, even if I buy them at the thrift store I spend a lot to get her one or two things that will work for her.

My sister tells me that since I haven't been home in two years, Mom is wearing the same shirt and same pair of pants all the time now. Apparently the pants are the only ones left that fit that she'll wear. They're almost rags now, and she's still wearing them.

I told my sister to go through Mom's closet, because I KNOW there are clothes in there that will fit, but here's the thing; Mom hates wearing "nice" clothes around home. Anything that doesn't look like you could go do chores in it is "too nice".

So, my sister is saying she'll go buy Mom something at Walmart, as if it's a true hardship. Yet, how long has this been going on, that Mom hasn't had anything else to wear? There's a thrift store right in town, and this sister is a hoarder, how has she not found Mom anything to wear? This sister likely has four truck loads of men's shirts my Mom could pick from.

Then Trainwreck sister tells me about how my sister N is basically never leaving her house anymore, and has gotten to the point where she just lives in a t-shirt nighty but doesn't ever bother getting dressed anymore. Well, thanks. This sister has been more or less depressed and non-functioning for years and years now, and was only marginally better before. It's not surprising to me that she's just given up all semblance of decorum, but what am I going to do about it? This sister has always had mental health issues, addiction issues (prescription drugs, so it's okay!), and sleeps almost all of the time, but she'll say she never gets any sleep at all, even though you can walk into her house and yell at her and she doesn't wake up, and a day later she's still in bed, but she says she doesn't sleep.

Then my trainwreck sister asks how I'm doing, and I say "well, we've got most of the windows installed, we got the styrofoam insulation on and now we're doing strapping. The garden is coming up nice, and it looks like we should have a good year for raspberries. I'm almost ready to start putting the bricks down for a walk way" .

She snorts like I'm some kind of insane over achiever. Like I'm a show-off. No, this is just what functioning people do sometimes.

I try not to let my family stuff get to me, but it is hard.