Mourning Girl Part Two

If this post had a subtitle it would be subtitled untwinned.
If my life were a movie, you would think that the revelation and life changes that happened would be about my father, since he was the one dying. And of course, much revelation and composting and newness and agony was had about my dad, but it was the quieter sort, of the long grieved variety. I had been turning this pile a long time. I knew the parameters, what kind of refuse remained unchanged. In a movie, the twist would be that my relationship with my identical twin would finally reach some sort of feverish catharsis. I am such an empathy saturated loon when it comes to my family that I was blessed to be exhausted and reeling from my fathers request, aimed only at me. Not at my sister.
I will never know why. Most of my family believes that my sister had to play some role, but at this point, my dad made the decision, you know? I can grieve that one cleanly.
My sister has been a pathological liar since our early adolescence. More than once as an adult she has told me that she has a hard time caring about right and wrong.
She acknowledges her diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder, stating she also has sociopathic tendencies (both statements I validate and see evidence of)
But she only acknowledges these things to me. She has no plans of seeking treatment, ending the affair, telling her husband, etc. To the contrary, she has gone on three trips with her lover in the past six weeks. On the way to turn in papers at the funeral home, my sister tried to talk with me about her trip to San Francisco with her lover. About seeing the Grateful Dead play.
This was after hours of her curled up on my mothers couch, demanding my mother order pizza, asking me to bring her a pair if my moms socks. I demurred, obviously. She didn't ask how I was feeling. Not once.
Later she would say that this day, the day my father died, that I didn't answer my phone or was "unwilling to do the work". I was there in forty minutes from Winslow to sign papers that same morning. I also ran back to the funeral home, with her later. My sister chose to exclude me from funeral planning. She was still taking a lot of Xanax and forgetting herself and making up stories and calling to start crap. Some days I would have seventeen calls.
At the funeral she was hysterical. She called my dads girlfriend "mama". She tried to dominate me but I resisted.
My big wake up was that I can't fix a personality disorder. I can't love her enough, or be faithful in prayer enough, to make up for her free will.
I can now officially surrender this relationship, admit powerlessness to fix it, and work in healing the effects of years of repressed character assassination, worry, lies, and the most apeshit holidays you have ever witnessed
( this year my mom asked me to let her punch me in the face and my sister wanted to sing show tunes. Yeah)
I have not been able to practice the most effective tool in dealing with narcissists, which is zero contact, but I'd say I'm at 5% contact. I am much happier with that than the way it was before.
Tomorrow I will write about my actual grief about my dad.