My recent burdens.....

In addition to the every day chaos I have two major additional issues that I have been plagued with addressing lately. The first is my wonderful kitty that has been a blessing in my life for over 12 years is in very bad health and is failing rather quickly. The second issue is I believe my sister is abusing her prescriptions from the doctor and there may be even more to that issue. The problem is she will not talk to me and when she does she isn't being honest. My heart is breaking for her and for her children. I can not even begin to count how many sleepless nights I have had over this. We were not brought up like this! We were not exposed to drugs but unfortunately she married a man that has had drug experience. He was clean and a good person when they meet so we believed that all his past was just that - his past. Please don't misunderstand me - I am not blaming him for anything my sister may or may not be choosing to do I am just stating where she could have been exposed to this lifestyle. Since I can not get her to listen directly to me I wrote her a letter to express my feelings at 3:00am when I was in a panic and couldn't sleep even though I had to go to work in a matter of hours. I hope she opens her email and actually reads this.....

Dear XXXXXX,

I don’t know where to begin this letter so I will start by telling you I love and care about you very much. The distance now between us breaks my heart since we have always been close. I am sorry that you feel like I am judging you or I am just being mean to you. That is not my intention. You have always been much better at the gentle approach at things and I have always been the more straight forward no sugar coating problem solver. I am at a loss these days on how or if you even want help. We have very little communication with the exception of occasional short phone calls where we just chat about surface subjects. I don’t understand the lack of communication since we have always talked to each other about everything our whole life. I think the only exception to that was when you first were with Steve but even that time of not talking was not for this long of a stretch. Even through the years when we have been depressed or angry or hurt we have always still had a relationship until now. I am not just blaming you for the distance because I know the issues in my life changed who I am and I am not as approachable at times as I stay focused in how to dig out the financial wreck. I am sorry for the times I come across rough. Some times when I am tough with you it is me trying to get you to reach down deep in yourself and pull out the inner strength I know you have. The reason I get upset is I know that you have what it takes in you to make it but you doubt yourself and don’t completely utilize it. It’s like you just don’t believe in you as much as I do. There is nothing out of your reach as long as you stretch yourself and keep moving FORWARD. (there is a difference in just moving and moving forward) I know depression better than many think but the difference is I refuse to let it own me or define who I am. I do not doubt that you are depressed but I am thinking there is more than just that going on. I think that other influences have also come into play such as drugs. ( whether prescription or not when it can even be heard in your voice I think it’s to much.) The anger that you hear in my voice is because I am upset with your decisions lately to just take the road of giving up instead of forging forward in the fight for better. I know that forging forward is extremely difficult and is exhausting but it also blesses us with rewards. I just never would have believed I would ever hear you talk about just giving up on your kids or ever see you put anything or anyone ahead of the children or telling me to just raise them. I can only imagine how difficult being a mom is but up until recently I thought you treasured the title. I do hold you to a higher harsher standard then others because you are my sister and I want you to give your children (our next generation) better memories, better examples, and better lives than we had. I want more for them than we had. I want them sheltered from anything happening like the negative bad issues that we faced in our childhood. God blessed you with your wonderful children and I believe he expects you to take good care of them in every way possible. God also blessed the children with you as their mom so I believe God expects you to take good care of you.

The bottom line is I love you and I am here for you so please reach out..

The reason I share this with you all here is because I just needed a place to share this without worrying about being judged or being afraid it will be repeated. Yeah, I know people can judge and leave negative comments here but "hello" that is what the delete button is for and since I stay rather anonymous in blog land I feel OK to open up some.

This life of mine has been rather stressful lately and I am drudging forward right now BUT I will get my groove back and I will write a sassy fun post or a politic rant or heck even something light and fluffy again and I will get the bounce in my step back.