A very hard thing. in A New Beginning

It is hard for me to tell people “exactly what I think of them” when what I am thinking of them is not good. I have to be extremely angry in order to do it, and I rarely get that angry. I don’t really even LIKE the practice of “speaking one’s mind” very much. It seems to me that people who say of themselves, “I speak my mind!” usually don’t care very much about other people’s feelings. And I DO care about people’s feelings, even if they’re pissing me off. I have a lot of compassion and the ability to understand WHY people are the way that they are, and because I can understand WHY they are the way they are and why they do the things they do, it usually seems either wrong or futile, to me, to “speak my mind” to them about it.
“Wrong” because....what actually gives me the right to judge them? And “futile” because....how many people actually try to change their ways after being “spoken to”? I AM thinking (regarding what I wrote about in my last entry) that I need to tell Brad, at work, that he needs to stop saying no to the kids all the time. In truth, he doesn’t do it “ALL” the time, but the next time he has a really bad day of it I’ll say something. I can say it in a nice way. He and I are friends.
But really what I’m writing about in this entry is the trainwreck-about-to-happen that is my sister Carol. She is 74 years old and honestly, there have been very few decisions she’s made in her life that were good ones. She’s not stupid at all! And she is very good, or always has been, about work, business matters, and finances. But about personal relationships, I tell you, she is dumb, dumb, D-U-M-B. It’s led her to be married six times and divorced five times! (Her last husband died; otherwise I guess it would be six times!) And none of her husbands were horrible. They were alright. Some faults and some good points, like anybody, ya know? She has just always made it her life’s mission to NOT HAVE TO PUT UP WITH THINGS. She told me once that when she was growing up, seeing and hearing Mom and Dad fighting all the time, she decided that she would NEVER be so dependent on a husband that she would have to stay with him. To that end, she always worked, always saved money, and always paid the bills herself. So that if she got fed up with anything, she could just kick the man to the curb.
She never NEEDED anybody. She took pride in that.
Well, at some point in most people’s lives, they find themselves NEEDING somebody for something, though. She lost her job at age 69 when the drycleaning place she was working for went out of business. She decided she could not afford to continue living on her own, so reluctantly she moved into her daughter Stef’s home. Stef had been wanting her to anyway.
For the first year or so she drove Stef and Stef’s then-husband Larry crazy with her alcoholic ways. She fell off a step and broke her shoulder because of being drunk. After that episode, thank the gods, she quit drinking. But then less than a year later she was diagnosed with COPD and bladder cancer. So she quit smoking, and had to have major surgery that removed her bladder and now she has to wear a urostomy bag. It took a LONG time for her to recover from that surgery....both physically and emotionally. But she did recover, and now she’s been cancer-free for almost five years.
But meanwhile Stef got fed up with Larry after 17 years of marriage, and divorced him. (Like mother like daughter.) Since then Stef actually NEEDS money from Carol in order to afford to live in the home they’re in. All Carol does is complain. And she’s got her name on the waiting list for low-cost senior housing in their town, even though Stef has told her over & over that she wants Carol to stay with her.
Well Carol insists on always making all the rules, so nothing Stef or anyone else says counts. She insists that she has to move into this other housing as soon as she can, and Stef needs to sell that house and move back upstate where her job is. Even though that would leave Carol down here with nobody close-by in case she ends up needing help of any kind but ME AND JOE.
And I have to tell you, I worry my arse off about this!!!! Because I do not plan on spending our senior years taking care of my impossible-to-live-with sister when she has a daughter who can look after her!! When the daughter even INTENDS to look after her, but my dumbass sister has just decided it can’t be that way!! Hell, a third of the time I am so damn sore from my spinal issues that it hurts me to MOVE; what the hell would I want to be taking care of her for????? She needs to stay right the hell where she is, with Stef, in that home, is what she needs to do! Used to be, my other sister Sandy drove Carol to her doctor’s appointments, but Carol can’t get along with Sandy anymore and tells me “What is between me and Sandy can’t be fixed.” Well SO BE IT. Joe and I both work fulltime. I have to take off sometimes when I am sick or whatever; I’m not gonna be using my sick days to take Carol to appointments simply because she can’t get along with Sandy and she chased her daughter Stef back upstate!

And lest this sound too horrible....Carol wouldn’t even take any time off from work when her last husband Bill was dying of cancer and under hospice care. His sons looked after him. She took the day of his funeral off and that’s it.
So by golly. She needs to be told that she SUCKS at making decisions, so she just needs to stop making them, and let somebody ELSE decide for a change.
But I cringe at the thought of telling her. She is a hateful venomous bitch when she gets mad, even though any other time she acts like this meek little demure thing.
I love her so much, though. I really do. I love spending time with her, and of course I would not mind helping her out, but I can’t become her PRIMARY caregiver in the event that she one day can’t take care of herself anymore. I have my own health issues; it would not be good for mine and Joe’s marriage; and she has Stef to do that.
I really wish I would stop waking up in the night worrying about it! :o(