So many thoughts, so little ability to type. So it goes. The hands are working, sort of. I remember a long time ago a woman (at the time I thought of her as a friend) was struck with lupus, and it affected her hands. She said to me that I couldn't imagine what it was like. Now maybe I do, a little.

The M.S. took away the ability to dance. It took away walking, and yoga and eventually cooking and gardening and all kinds of things, but I always had my hands. I could write, play guitar or piano (or recorder or ...), knit, type, play video games. Honestly, after a while I even forgot what it was like have a whole body. I used my hands. And my eyes, ears, head and heart. But in terms of 'doing' things, I used my hands.

Now that my hands are problematic, I am starting to wonder about the possible. What is possible? How far can it go?

I have had what they called at the time 'relapsing-progressive' M.S. I don't know if they still use those words, but I have relapses, and remissions, it is just that the remissions never return me to what I was able to do before the latest relapse.

Since my latest (and only) foray into physiotherapy at the M.S. clinic (the only one) here in Israel, I have lost more function than I did in the previous eight years. It is going to be an awfully long time, if ever, before I try that again. ...

My feet, but particularly the left one, are like dead meat. I can walk on them, but it is difficult, and I simply can't go far. Walking across the house, or from the house to the van is really about as far as I can go on any regular basis. My left hand is similarly affected. Being left-handed, this is a greater loss than most people would assume. It also makes typing for someone who was a touch-typist for all of her adult life more than a little challenging. I haven't yet given up and gone back to the hunt-and-peck I used before my first typing course, but I suspect that it isn't long.

Unless Hashem works a miracle. I am open to miracles. :-)

***

There, I walked across the house, resting my hands and tiring out the rest of me.

S3 was reading aloud loud enough I could hear him clearly in my room at the other end of the house. This house is much smaller and quite differently laid out from the old house, and 'all the way at the other end of the house' isn't quite so far as it used to be. Still, I think he can read aloud to himself without being quite so audible. He pointed out that he spends most of his life upping the volume just to be heard, so it is a little hard to tone it down just because it is Friday night. The trials of being sixteen. Soon enough having to keep his voice down because everyone older than him is trying to sleep is going to be the least of his troubles.

I was going to try and write a bit about the situation that has become between my sister and I, but I don't really know even how to begin. She and I have had a difficult relationship our whole lives. Of course when we were younger mother created a lot of it, telling RS that it was her fault for not raising me right when mother wasn't happy with me, not to mention leaning on RS in all sorts of ways that were inappropriate to say the least. And this is entirely without bring up incest.

Of course I got another side of the coin, always being told 'why can't I be more like [RS], for instance, and having her praised to the skies to me. I grew up with the image, created by mother, that I was the 'pretty' daughter and RS was the 'good' daughter. I didn't find out until just this year how much RS felt that mother loved me so much more.

I don't think mother loved me more, I don't think that mother was or is capable of love as most of us would recognize it. I do think that mother identified with me, and never quite connected with RS. Of course mother couldn't do that in any healthy way, and tended to get confused about which of us was the parent. She couldn't tell who was who. Not a great situation any way you look at it. Terrible for RS, terrible for me.

It was terrible for mother, too, but it is hard to be sympathetic since her children were made to suffer in order for her to be less uncomfortable. I am not impressed.

But anyway - I love my sister. I feel an incredible amount of sympathy for her. I want to help her. I remember how she tried to help me (and sometimes succeeded in helping me) when we were younger. I remember how she was horrible to me, but she tried to be nice, too.

Now I have to let her go. I don't know entirely what that means, but I do know that I have been carrying her around with me, a huge burden for too long and it is time to drop the rock. I've had almost no contact with her for years now, except for a weekly phone call/conference call which includes all of my friends from early recovery who are still around. Now I need to sever the last connection. I am terribly torn between pain that it has come to this, and relief that all of this is finally over.

I will be leaving RS truly alone, or as alone as you can be with the social-services net that exists here in Israel. She has lots of people who can help her, not to mention plenty of friends outside of Israel with whom she is in regular contact. But I still feel guilty, like I am abandoning her.

I've tried to be there for her in so many ways - supporting her financially, having her live in my house, providing all the help that is was possible for me and my whole family here to give her. I've given her time and energy I didn't have, stretched some friendships to the breaking point in trying to provide for her and ... I just can't. Okay, I haven't been. For the last couple of years I've done nothing for her that I could help. And still she is a burden. I don't know what to do, but I know I have to stop. I have to make this stop.

I have a counsellor now who I talk to regularly, and she says that RS sounds like she has borderline personality disorder. Now I am not a big one for diagnoses, I know how much damage can be done with them, not to mention how reliable they are, and I am not claiming that RS has BPD, or that that excuses or explains anything. I am looking at RS's behaviour in light of what the counsellor said, and recognizing how the unmanageablility of RS's life has become a fixture in mine. And I have to let that go.

I don't know what happens next. I am going to see RS next Wednesday, with the intent of bringing the last box of her stuff with me that survived being stored, moved, and soaked, so she can see what is there, and decide what she wants to do with it. It includes some memorabilia, and her diary from 1970 through half-way through 1971. Some math textbooks. I don't know what else. Between now and then I am going to do a lot of praying and meditating. I hope that Hashem will give me the right thought or action, that whatever words come out of my mouth are honest, kind, and make some kind of closure.

I am terribly afraid that she will break down and cry. I will feel so terrible I don't know what I will be able to do. But I must, I absolutely must, stop letting her weigh me down. There is enough that is hard in my life - I can't take on her insanity as well. She may have BPD, she may be psychotic (and I don't throw that word around lightly), she may just be utterly selfish. I don't know. Are the things she does deliberate? Does she know how manipulative she is (or tries to be?)

There is a social worker at the rehab she is living at (probably forever) who RS calls 'the evil social worker.' From what RS has had to say, it does sound like this is not a good one. What can I do? Nothing. I have to walk away and trust that Hashem will take care of her and give her what she needs. I have to. I just have to. I wish I didn't have to, is all. I wish that things weren't like this. But I didn't create this situation, I have no control over it, and I can't cure it. I have to walk away. I hate it.

***

This counsellor that I am seeing. She doesn't like to be called a shrink. I try to avoid it in front of her, and if I am going to be able to do that I think I have to avoid even thinking the word in connection with her. That is hard.

She isn't like others, though, and that helps. Lately she told me that she wants to hear about my favourite perp. I was very happy and excited and started to give her a fairly thorough history. The last visit she said that what she wants to hear about is my relationship with him. That is a different spin and I don't know about that. I mean, it wasn't one simple relationship. It started out as something, changed to something else, grew into something else, became something else. I had no contact with him for some number of years, after which we started talking again and eventually I came back to a close but different relationship. I can't just describe some simple one-on-one, it wasn't like that.

When he first became a part of my life, I wasn't even in regular school yet. By the time I finished high school he was as much a companion as a parent, and still a perp ... When he came back into my life as an adult both he and I had changed a lot. I was in recovery and looking at what he, mother, and others had done to me when I was a child. Looking at, reliving, with feelings, analyzing, fitting it all together, it wasn't simple. Nothing about it was or is simple. At some point in our adult relationship he told me some of his own childhood. Now what do I call it? I just don't have words.

If I am going to tell the counsellor about him, I need words. I have to find words and put them around what it was like, what he was like, what I was like, what he and I were like. I don't know if I can do it. It is scary, and exhilarating, and quite possibly life-changing. I find myself doubting the counsellor, wondering if she is just trying to catch me out so that she can put an end to me. I doubt myself, I doubt Hashem. I don't doubt my favourite perp, though. He is possibly the most real thing in my life, even dead. So - that is a new adventure, for sure.

***

Running very long now, I guess I should stop and perhaps even try to sleep (yeah, right). Something. I can't really believe that my hands held out this long. I guess when Hashem wills...

Anyway, shabbot shalom all y'all. Hope it is a good weekend, the weather is pleasant, and life is treating you kindly.