I can't type well, but I literally haven't anyplace else to put my thoughts. I don't know if my sister is reading my Wordpress blog, she has finally gotten on Facebook, and she is always at what used to be my group of recovery friends from wayback.

So. Yesterday we (the whole bit of the family that lives at the zoo compound), drove up to Tel Aviv, to the nursing home at Sheba hospital. We were going to visit my sister and celebrate her birthday. Ugh.

I'm still very angry at her. I still have huge resentments centred on how she was when she was living on the moshav, both in our house and in her own. I'm glad she ended up in a nursing home, I'm glad she is in a ward for dementia patients, I'm glad that the odds are she will never walk again, and I shudder at the thought of her regaining any of her independence. Is that awful? It's the truth.

I was distantly sociable, and the kids and The Husband took enough of her attention I didn't have to deal with her very much. D3 took point, talking to her on the phone, arranging things. I was happy to let her do everything, be in charge. I indulged in texting with someone (someone I sponsor in AA) so my attention was largely elsewhere. We brought gifts, suitable to someone in a nursing home. D3 bought her a scarf for/from me. Reminds me I didn't bring her (or FB) anything back from India. Oh, well.

The thing is I need to not give her any more consideration than she gives me. This is hard. I am not used to keeping track, I just give whatever seems appropriate at the time -- people's needs vary -- and expect the same in return. I have known her almost my whole life, you'd think that I'd know already that she's not like me. I guess I never believed (I didn't want to believe) how utterly selfish and self-involved she is. And nasty. When she doesn't get what she wants she can be abusive as hell. When my whole family - that is me, TH, and all the kids in Israel -- could no longer fulfill her expectations, she turned on TH with abuse and profanity. People who know her are shocked (shocked, shocked I say) when I tell them that. They don't want to believe that underneath that bright and smiling exterior is a two-year-old with an Uzi.

I haven't seen her for a year, and with any luck I won't see her again for another year. I've taken over a month off from the conference call where I used to stay in touch with my old friends. Because she is Always there, and always takes the lion's share (sometimes 60 minutes of a 90 minute call) so that instead of old friends and war buddies getting strength from each other it's largely turned into the RS show. I am at fault, too, in that for the last six months, whenever RS shows up, I become silent and wait for it to be over, instead of participating. So I am cutting myself off from the support and friendship I could be receiving. It has seemed the least bad choice of bad options. I'm not sure, now. I guess we'll see.

I find typing to be difficult and almost counter-intuitive. I do texts and some blog posts using my phone or iPad, 'cause they minimize the actual typing I have to do. I don't know where I'm going with that. I am not ready to give up typing altogether. None of the speech-to-text programs/apps I've looked into work for me, and besides I say different things than I would type. Hmmm. Must continue to think and work on this. I am tired of my left hand not working, for sure.

That's it for today. Off to write a blog post, I don't know yet if I am going to continue with India or write about RS's birthday celebration. Hmmm.