It's been awhile

My sister. Oh, my sister. What are you doing? What are you thinking? Are you thinking at all???

Here's the background: My sister is very self-centered. She was always a "problem child", beginning when I was born - she was seven, had had my parents to herself all her life, and now they were daring to pay attention to someone other than her? NO WAY. It sounds funny now, but believe me it wasn't, when she would tell the babysitter she was taking me for a walk only to leave me somewhere and run off with her friends. Or, the time I was 3 years old and she told me she was teaching me to climb a tree. She lifted me into the tree (in the forest, we lived near the woods, with actual bears living there), told me she'd be back "in a minute", and left. Was at home eating a sandwich when Mom got home from work, asked the sitter where I was, the sitter realized my sister was there and I wasn't (she'd told the sitter I was sleeping, and the sitter never bothered to check - teenagers in the 70s, man), and they asked her and asked her where I was and she "couldn't remember". They finally found me, hours after I was first left in the tree, crying and covered in insect bites. I don't remember much after that, and my family never talks about it.

Anyway. My sister. Let's call her "A.", because that's her first initial.

A. is not only self centered, she's incredibly smart, but has no common sense.

She was 14 when she first started dating B. They dated for three years, we moved away and they broke up because long distance at 17 doesn't quite work. In the two years we were away, she ended up dropping out of school, doing whatever drinking/drugs she wanted (yes my parents tried to help her but her attitude was "I hate you and your fucking rules so fuck off" - she would accuse my dad of abuse, when he never raised a hand to her except once when she had attacked my brother with a knife in her hand) and when my parents finally kicked her out because she was a threat to my younger brother and I, she ended up getting pregnant by some guy. This actually got her to stop drinking and doing drugs so she moved back in with us, and then our family moved back to the area where B. lived. She had her son a couple of days after her 20th birthday. She and B. started dating again. They got married. They had two more kids (total: 3). Then her husband left when the oldest was 13 for reasons I don't really know (aside from the fact that he was cheating on her, and she finally told him to just stay gone - finally, something smart).
Her attitude toward parenting: If our parents had rules about something, then she wouldn't force her kids into following those rules.
So:
They don't have to go to school/do homework if they don't want to.
Bedtimes? Curfews? Pshaw!
Smoking? As long as they share their cigs with mom!
Does the 16 year old want to have his girlfriend move in? SURE! Stay in the same bedroom? Why not?
Drinking? Hey, as long as they're not arrested, it's all good!

My parents have co-signed her mortgage, gotten out loans for her, etc., because when her husband left, she "got depressed" and hasn't worked since. Her doctors and psychiatrists say she should be back at work, so insurance won't pay her - so she's on welfare. Our parents wouldn't do any of this for her, if it weren't for her kids, by the way.

Anyway. One thing I've found with her is that emotionally or mentally? something like that? She started dating B. at 14, and that's where she stayed. She doesn't know how to be in a relationship, really, aside from having sex.

A couple of years ago, after B. had left, she met a guy online, through mutual friends. After one week of talking online (never having met), they were telling each other "I love you" and "We're going to get married someday". He came to visit her (it was a long-distance thing - about 4 hours apart) and they were fuckin', right away. Like, screaming, yelling, sex. With her (at the time) 9 year old daughter in the next room. I got many phone calls that week from the daughter asking me if she could sleep over at my place because "Mom and D. are loud at night and I can't sleep". And one day, my niece was there, and my sister came in and said "Can't you go to a friend's place? I'm horny!"

So A. and D. dated for a year. A. actually went back to work because he said that he wanted her to be better and working on herself before they could get married. Then he dumped her, because he didn't like the long distance thing. Once again, she stopped working, started staying up all night and playing runescape or some other video game. Ignoring her kids. Doubling and tripling her doses of antidepressants.

Now before anyone reading this (no one's reading this, I know) gets up in arms - I believe that people should have access to pharmaceuticals to help them with mental illness. I believe that depression and anxiety are very real afflictions. I myself have been through a major depressive episode, and it was no picnic. The medications helped me. And then, I weaned myself off them (with my doctor's help) and today, I'm no longer depressed and no longer on effexor.
What I don't believe is that people should continually self-diagnose ("I'm bi-polar!" "I have OCD!" "I'm agoraphobic!"), make up symptoms because they read an article online, and con their GP into giving them more and more anxiety/depression meds, and then refuse to see a psychiatrist because they know the psych. will say "Actually, no, you shouldn't be taking all this stuff".

So for the past 2 years or so, since she and D. broke up, A. has been miring herself in a fog of cigarette smoke, antidepressants, and staying up all night playing on the computer and sleeping all day. Her kids (the oldest's 19 now, has no ambitions, the middle boy is 16, same thing, and the youngest is 13 and can barely read because "school isn't important") have basically been fending for themselves. She never cooks, their house is a mess, she collects cats like they were going out of style (at one point they had 18 cats living there. My brother went over and took all but 3 to the Humane Society because you couldn't walk into that house without dying from the cat piss smell).

And then along comes R.

R. is a guy who my sister went on one date with back when she was 15 (during a time when she and B. had broken up for two weeks). He took her to her 10th grade prom. The problem was, he was 20. My parents wouldn't let them date, because there is a huge difference between 15 and 20. She never mentioned him again, especially after she and B. got back together.

It's 24 years later now, and two months ago she found him again on Facebook. He lives 3/4 of the way across the country and he's divorced now, too.

Well guess what? They're IN LOVE! They've been talking on MSN every day! Our parents tried to keep them apart but now they've been foiled! Her MSN taglines are getting more and more ridiculous by the hour. The latest? "You know what true love is? Not being able to sleep at night because reality is so much better than your dreams".

Except? This isn't reality. This is some rewriting of history. She says our father threatened him if he ever came near her again. In reality (because I was there and I was a sneaky kid, hiding behind the door), Dad and R. had a conversation, perfectly civilized, with my dad saying "You know, I think you understand that I'm a bit uncomfortable with my 15 year old high school daughter dating a 20 year old guy who has his own apartment". That's all that was said. This is her building him up in her mind, jumping in too quickly, and exposing herself and her kids to yet another doomed relationship.