Frenemies

 

 

 

 Frenemies

Me and my sister Dana were set up by my Mother to be enemies...
For one thing we were treated totally differently to the point of Cinderella and her Stepsister...

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Since Dana was my mothers girly girl princess and fullfilled my mothers fantasies about having little girly-girls she could dress up and go shopping with, my mother made her the Golden Child and since I was a disappointment and was a tomboy I became the Scapegoat. Whatever my sister did bad, she was never punished for. It was as if it had never happened, and my mother ignored it. I on the other hand could never do anything right. And got blamed for everything whether I did it or not.

I knew very early on that I wasnt the favorite. My sister got to do what she wanted. She never was made to sit in the backseat, and everything she did, my mother glowed over and boasted about. This is evident in that a full 10+ years after my sister killed herself at age 21, my mother continued to shine with glowing bliss whenever she wore one of my sisters old store bought blouses or earrings or something, "This is Dana's top!" shed say with her face lit up with pride.

 

On the other hand I hand made my Mother a two piece tasteful outfit. Dark blue and dark gray 1980s style long cardigan with pockets and shoulder pads and a matching calf length skirt. It was beautiful. My mom never even tried it on. Never glowed or bragged about it. It hung in her closet and never was worn. I was so hurt. It deeply scarred me. Why did she hate me?  

 

I never got new clothes, always hand me downs or shit my mom bought that wasn't ME. When I did get nice things, they had to be stored in my sister's closet and I never got to wear them. My Christmas and Birthday presents were given to my sister or had to be stored in the living room.

 

Also, when I was 14 or 15 I was extremely hurt to find out that my Mothers bosses wife Becky (The boss she was shagging), who had come to our apartment to bring my sister a Get Well gift when her diabetes started getting bad, did not even know that I existed. When she knocked at the door and I answered, she said, "Hi I'm here to see Dana, are you her friend?" I stated matter of factly, "No, I'm her sister!" she looked confused and said, "Ohh....well...hhhmm, Jackie never said anything about having another daughter!" So for the 6 or 7 years my mother worked as her husbands secretary and chatted with this woman on the phone and at yearly Christmas parties she NEVER ONCE MENTIONED ME?

 

　
How heartbreaking do you think that was for me?
I WAS CRUSHED!
Needless to say, my mother had fostered a level of animosity between us.
The truly sad thing is that I do not miss her, do not love her and that is sad, I never got a real "sibling experience"... When I think of my sister Dana, I still get angry and upset...even though thru therapy I know now that Dana was a victim of my Mother as well. It could not have been easy to have been treated like a magnificent Princess who could do no wrong and have to constantly feel pressure to live up to that Ideal. When you are given everything so easy and without working for it or without consequences and everything is done for you, you do not appreciate what you are given nor do you value your own life.
 

 

 Ginny Baker, Sixteen Candles Snobette Supreme

My sister was a snobby, spoiled bitch Princess. She had equally snobby spoiled friends. Girls whose fathers owned Tv stations, Horse Stables...She drove a Mustang, got free range use of our Daddy's credit cards, and I never once saw her lift a finger to do one thing....

Her best friends were Bloomingdales, Chanel, Gucci, Guess, Lancome, Tiffany, Clinique etc etc
etc

She followed the latest fashions and read Cosmo and Vogue
Her favorite saying was, "Why do something yourself, when you can get others to do it for you?"
And she looked down upon everyone...
Dana was diagnosed as Diabetic at age 5, my mother claims that my sisters diabetes is why my
mother treated her specially. My mother always states, "I always knew she was gonna die!"
First of all, dramatic much?
Second of all I have known many other diabetics and NONE of their parents treat them any
differently than other kids. Quite the opposite! They want them to be independent, healthy and
normal, functioning adults.
So basically it was a HUGE cop out on my mothers part.
Especially since my mother is famous for saying she took all these classes to learn how to deal
with a diabetic child...

 

I think it was because DOLLS dont have diabetes!

My sister never tested her blood sugar
Never exercised

(She quit tennis after losing her first competition and cried)
Never ate right
Was a bulimic
Drank alcohol And went on dangerous diets

She was taught that she was Special and a Princess and when she lost her eyesight and developed neuropathy cause she did nothing to take care of herself, and bibitee bobitee BOO she realized she was mortal and turned into a pumpkin and everything our mother had told her about herself was a lie, she killed herself!

She didn't fight for her life, she didn't fight for her eyesight cause she decided it was too hard to lay still for laser surgery to save her sight and quit treatment, (Many people have neuropathy and they manage. Including Mary Tyler Moore) Simply put, many many people with much worse conditions than my sister do not kill themselves. Look at Christopher Reeve or Stephen Hawking! So basically my sister killed herself because the bubble my mother created for her burst and it shattered her illusions of "Royalty"
and omnipotence and she couldn't take it anymore! 

 

Over the years I have repeatedly tried to talk to my mother about the disproportionate and unfair treatment between me and Dana, to absolutely no avail.

"Shes sick!"
"What does it matter! shes gonna be dead in a few years!"
"You have such a vivid memory"
"Why do you bring up the past"

Were some of the excuses. All modus operendi for Narcissists to say when confronted.

But most of the time my mother repeatedly told me that I wasn't responsible enough to do this or that, and Dana was more responsible... But the fact was, that it was not true. It was actually the opposite. My sister wasn't responsible at all, and she got in far more serious trouble than I did...BUT...she just hid it better and played the game far better...
Aside from the lawn turfing and the car wrecks my sister got into, and the beating me up. My sister was a drug dealer... I knew my sister was selling pot and coke to people. She took me and my friend Tina to her
dealers house in Paoli near the train station a few times. Her dealer was a man named Floyd or Lloyd, he was a pimp. His wife's name was Tiny. He felt me up and got me and Tina high and gave us bottles of RUSH liquid "incense" (You inhale it and it gets you high)
 

 

 

So basically my OH SO RESPONSIBLE sister Dana took two underaged girls to a pimps house and got them high and supplied them with DRUGS!

One day my sister had to come to my school to pick me up from the school trip to Baltimore MD. She had had her license for a few months. Later that night or the weekend afterward I was talking to my boyfriend on the phone. JP He told me his friend Kareem had seen my sister at the school when she came to pick me up and he wanted to talk to her about her Mustang our Dad gave her. Kareem was at JPs house at the time. I got my sister on the phone and went off to watch TV or something. Next thing I know is that I get pulled into a conference room at school and my mom and sister are there and I'm being punished for something I knew nothing about and had nothing to do with which was my sister selling Kareem and other students a bag of marijuana. Apparently my sister had driven to the school one night to meet Car Lover Kareem and a few of the other guys and sold him pot. Somehow I was implicated because she was my sister and my mother never fought to change that. She let me get put in detention for a month and when my sister got home that night NOTHING WAS EVER DONE TO HER AS USUAL! She lost no privileges, didn't lose her car keys, nothing was ever said. It was as if it NEVER happened.

So in anger and disappointment at my mothers favoritism I told my mother everything my sister was doing at the time, the drinking, smoking cigarettes, Floyd and Tiny, the bulimia,
EVERYTHING I could think of...

My sister got so pissed at being outted that she threw my Elton John 45s and other stuff of mine out my bedroom 3rd floor window and packed a bag and took the money she had made from Burger King and selling dope and our Fathers credit cards and drove to Philly and rented a 1 bedroom apartment on 2002 Fairmount Ave in Philly over top of a then, Go-Go bar (now Fairmount Pizza & Grill). She then bought 3 cats and $5000 of Lucite furniture on my dads credit cards.
　
 

Home Sweet Home

My father found out and called the cops on her and cut off her credit cards and rightly so. My mother was very pissed off at him for doing so. Uhhh, what was wrong with this picture? SHE WAS 16 YRS OLD!

As all this was going on, there I sat every.damn.day in detention... 

Since she was never taught to do anything by herself and never taught to take care of herself (till my sister died my mother was giving her the insulin injections daily) her diabetes got bad while she lived there alone and drank all the booze she got from her stripper neighbor, and she had to go to the hospital.

My mom then had to drive on the Schuylkill Expressway (White Knuckle Time!) to go get all her shit and the cats and give the apartment back. The apartment was FILTHY! She then sent Dana up to a diabetes program in Boston for a month. She came home then went on the Beverly Hills Diet cause Boston had adjusted her insulin and she gained a lil bit of weight, My sister never tested her blood sugar daily. She claims to have tried it once and it hurt so my mother let her stop. Her blood sugar was probably sky high and out of control most of the time. The Beverly Hills diet was basically all pineapple, steak and sheet cake. No joke! She lost 20 pounds, her sugars were probably deathly high but shed have never known. Her eyes got damaged and she developed neuropathy and the next 4 years are a blurr as I was the invisible roommate in a house of Death, Denial and Codependency.

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My mother and sisters relationship is that of a TLCs "Toddlers and Tiaras" stage mom who cant see that her kid looks like Mason Reese.

 

My sister wasn't exactly a pretty girl, and I'm not just saying that. It's true, she was odd looking and even more so towards the end of her life, with her thick glasses and Diabetes induced chipmunk cheeks. But she honestly thought she was gorgeous and Model material. My mother spent years driving my sister to all kinds of auditions. acting classes, plays, art classes, music classes, and spent countless dollars getting her a professionally shot Modeling Portfolio and outfits.

 I'd be sitting in the backseat flirting with truckers and when they'd honk that Mack Truck horn at me and I'd clap, Dana would say, "They were honking at ME, not you, you are ugly"....I dunno, I don't think I'm ugly here, am I?

Never once taking me anywhere or showing any interest in anything I did. My mother worshipped my sister with rose colored glasses on. Where I was made to go marching over to our neighbor and my sisters friend, Rochelle and apologize to her for hitting her, even though it was Rochelle who had hit me. 

 

My mother had in contrast driven all the way to my sisters 1st or 2nd grade redheaded classmate, Gwens, house to tell Gwens Mother to make Gwen stop copying what my sister wears to school everyday! My sister came home crying that day because Gwen was wearing the same outfit! I sat in the car and heard everything.

When my sister didn't want cursing in the house, my mother went along with it. And everytime I swore she'd hit me.

They always had conversations I was not a part of. Like twins who develop their own language. When I kissed Danny B in lower middle school and he saw my hairy underarms and was repulsed and I went home crying cause I didn't know I was supposed to shave the hair off. My mother and sister both turned their heads in unison from the couch, again like twins, and said "We tried to help you and teach you, but you didn't listen" Which was a lie. No one was telling me anything about anything. I was left to my own devices mostly.
 

 

My mother always GUSHED over everything my sister did. Every day at dinnertime my mother would stand over my sister at the table, her left hand on the back of my sisters chair and her other hand on the table in front of my sister leaning hunched over. It was as if she was trying to be her in a way, so close so demented.

She developed neuropathy. So for the last 3 years of my sisters sad existence she laid on the couch and screamed in pain from the neuropathy. My mother demanded they give her Morphine! The Dr could not do that for ethical reasons that my mother refused to understand, so she cursed him and hates him to this day and wont ever go to that Hospital again.

All this time my sister still was not testing her sugars or exercising. She ate junk! One day my mother brought home a Lindt pistachio chocolate bar (amazing what the mind recalls huh?) for my sister to eat when she got "shocky".... My sister went into a rage and tried to stab my mother with scissors and til 8:00am the next day they fought and beat each other up.

I tried to get my neighbors to stop them and tried myself to get them to stop and they wouldn't, I was so frightened! I thought they were gonna kill each other. I hid in my room all night in a panic...Why did they not think of ME and what I was feeling and stop.

I decided to move to my father's house and work at my Uncle's restaurant. I was too scared and worried that while I was gone Dana was gonna kill my mother so I moved back in with her four days after I moved in. I should have stayed with my father! Had I done that I think Id have had a shot at a good life. I know it broke my father's heart to have me leave.

For the last years of her life my mother let my sister run up thousands of dollars on her credit cards on HSN jewelry and bridal magazines and imaginary wedding plans. Looking back I see how Baby Jane-ish that was and I can now see how truly sad and unhealthy the situation was...
 

 

 

One night after being forced to watch my sisters favorite movie, Harold and Maude, 3 times in a row,  I went to ask her something in her bathroom and she told me as usual to, " GET OUT OF MY FUCKING ROOM YOU FAT LOSER!"

(I guess it was okay if SHE swore!)

Next morning I awoke to my mother bursting in my room, 

 

"WAKE UP! DANA'S NOT BREATHING! SHE WONT WAKE UP!

The ambulance came but she was dead, she'd committed suicide. And left a note. I wasn't sad, I wasn't happy...Here my sister, my frenemy, my rival was dead and I felt absolutely nothing!

While the cops and EMTs were there....playing in the background on MTV was

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Don't dream It's over by Crowded House.
Hey now, hey now
Don't dream it's over
Hey now, hey now

 

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That night my mother insisted that me, her and my grandma sleep on the sofa bed together. I didn't want to, I wanted to be in my room, but I did it anyway. Earlier that day I witnessed my Daddy cry for the first time. But I never have, the damage my mother did in making us enemies was far too deep and I don't think it will ever reverse itself, even though I understand everything now.

Later after my mom got the phone call that my Daddy didn't survive the car wreck 4-5 yrs later and I cried she had the gall to ask "Why didn't you cry when your sister died, why are you crying now?"

Too deep

too deep

too deep!
　

　
My Mothers Princess Doll Daughter and her obsession was cremated and still sits in an unmarked cardboard box...Right next to my Mothers Mothers cremains in her unmarked cardboard box. My sister had no funeral, only one friend came, nothing... Her snobby friends had long since abandoned her...  After all, Illness and Death wasn't Chic.