The following is the exact e-mail I'm sending to my older sister on the heels of what happened recently. It is unchanged. I will add further thoughts on the situation afterwards.
Dear Lori,
As of this moment, you are not my sister. If anyone ever asks me going forward, I only have a younger sister. This is how much you've pushed me away and it isn't even because of anything you've done to me. It's what you've done to mom and Teresa. You've upset both of them so much that I can no longer consider you family because a family member doesn't act the way you've acted. A friend doesn't act this way. I don't know what to call you now.
I really don't care if you read all of this. I don't care if you delete it without a thought. I don't care if it makes you angry, sad, or whatever. I don't care. This is more for me to get this off my chest since you have decided that it's easier for you to play victim than own up to the fact that you continuously make mistakes in your life. In that regard, I hope you're happy knowing that you put mom in a difficult position; continue to shelter, care for, and essentially pamper her oldest daughter who shows almost NO appreciation for what her mom and sister do for her.
Instead, you'd rather present yourself as some tragic victim who was "hurt" by those who should've been there for you. Well, mom and Teresa were there for you. They housed you, they fed you, they helped you get the supplies you needed, and pretty much anything else you whined for. I can't think of one thing you did or bought for yourself. Not one. Everything you "own" was given to you or you were helped in getting. You had a cushy gig. All you had to do was respect that it was mom's house, mom's rules and not make a fuss. You couldn't do that though. You disappeared for over a week when they thought you were going to be gone for a weekend. You didn't seem to give a shit that your animals were suffering even though mom told you they were. Then you come back and act as if mom didn't do anything for them.
You have problems. I've known this for a long time but if mom was willing to keep you around, that was her decision. You finally pushed her though. You finally went too far with her, and instead of sitting and talked to her, you treated her like she was an evil witch throwing you out for no reason. I know what you've been posting on Facebook about us. Mom and Teresa know as well. You made such a HUGE fuss about her posting on Facebook, yet you're taking it 10 times further by posting jokes and eliciting sympathy from people who have no idea what actually happened.
You are more concerned with how you appear to friends and those who barely know you rather than how you appear to your own family. You are more concerned with your image than anything else, hence why you were more concerned about the Xbox (which Teresa helped pay for) than your bunny, who you claim to care so much about. If you'd rather lean on them than us, fine. It saves all of us the trouble of babying you. Truth is, the only time you ever seem to have energy is when it involves something you want to do. Any other time? You're too tired, you have cramps, you have some other excuse. You refuse to get a normal job because you're too good for it (and I don't want to hear about no one is hiring. I see "for hire" signs all the time; you just only want to do certain things).
You would have nothing if mom and Teresa didn't help you the last few years. Yet you couldn't appreciate that. You still can't. Instead, you portray us all as if we were completely evil and doing the worst thing ever to you. You deleted us off Facebook the moment she kicked you out. Who does that?
I'm tired of the woe is me stuff. Personally, mom should've kicked you out a long time ago. She works way too hard to put up with your shit, but you don't care about that. You don't care she sometimes puts in 60 hours a week or more to support everyone in that house. The only thing you ever care about is how anything affects you. If it doesn't, it's unimportant. Mom needs help? Oh well. If it didn't benefit you at some point, you were too tired or sick. Well guess what? Mom's 55. She's tired and her health isn't great. Does that not matter to you? Sure doesn't seem like it.
Oh, and the Zaphod thing? I still haven't forgiven you for the role you played in that fiasco. Yes, Tara was wrong to come at you the way you did, but you deserved it. I told you I was taking him and his brother to my future apartment. I told you repeatedly. So what do you do? You sneak him out while I'm working so I can't because your friend was more important. Well guess what? Zaphod would've been fine. Pook is a happy cat and would be even happier if his brother was with him, but because you didn't respect what I was trying to do, you took that opportunity away. All because of a friend. As far as owing you money? I don't owe you shit. You've been given enough. I have my own apartment with my own things inside of it, my own car, and can actually hold a stable job. I'm damn proud of where I'm at right now. I have my flaws, but when I've upset mom, I learned from it and didn't do it again. You are incapable of that. You instead treat her like she's a villian and you didn't deserve what happened.
What I've seen is someone who screws up, and rather than accept responsibility for her mistakes, turns around and blames everyone but herself. You never own up to anything. You blame everyone around you. It was this person's fault, that person's fault. You sit there and act like Cleveland is the armpit of the nation and that things would be so much better everywhere else. Well, if that was the case, why hadn't you gone before you were kicked out? Obviously you know people who would take you in, oh wait, that's why you were upset about being kicked out. You had nowhere to go.
Well, you should've thought about that before you went and pissed off mom. You lived under her roof virtually rent-free. If you needed a ride, she took you. If you needed supplies, she bought them for you. Everything was handed to you and you STILL couldn't appreciate it. You always want more. You want a better laptop, a better phone, a better this, a better that. Yet what have you done to earn any of those things?
Part of me wishes I could post on your wall and show everyone how you really are. But I already know it would be a waste of time. You have so many people fooled into thinking you're one kind of person when you aren't so I wouldn't bother with it anyway. I know you probably won't read this far into this e-mail. That's okay. This is more of a release for me anyway.
As a family, we love you and wish it hadn't come to this. Well, they do. Me? Not so much.
What continues to kill me is how everyone adapted to make things easier for you. Teresa trying to keep the kids quiet because you were sleeping. Mom buying you the supplies you needed. Yet God forbid you do the same for them. Staying up all hours of the night while Teresa and the kids tried to sleep. Always wanting more when they gave you things. You wanted people to be considerate of them, but you couldn't do the same for them. I suppose you have to be one of your inner-circle friends to receive that kind of treatment.
I hope you realize some day what you did to Mom and Teresa. I really do. But I don't think you will. You'll milk the "woe is me" angle until you find somewhere to settle, then after a while you'll wear out your welcome there as you have everywhere else you've gone. Then you might try to mend the fence with mom as you have in the past, but hopefully the next time she says up yours and refuses. You don't deserve it in my opinion.
What's sad is I do have good memories with you, but more often than not, I've wondered just what the hell you were thinking. So good luck with your life. Good luck with your friends. They've shown to be vastly more important to you than your own family. As for me? You are no longer a part of mine, which I'm sure you're fine with as well.
David.
*sigh*
I don't even know where to begin really. I'll be the first to admit that my relationship with Lori was often rocky, if it existed at all. We butted heads often and I've never agreed with how she chose to go about things. I've talked a lot about how her soap-making operation should be a side-job, not her main one simply because it's not a feasible way to sustain business.
She always had her flaws, she sometimes pushed our mom to the brink, but she always managed to avoid going completely over the edge in that regard. She'd find a way to mend things and continue to stay living at my mom's house. She even would occasionally show an ability to show some compassion and do what she needed to do, but it wasn't very often.
Well she finally pushed too far and my mom pushed back. Now she's staying with her dad because she has nowhere else to go (a hard fact to believe simply because she has so many people bending over backwards for every other reason in her life). She's since resorted to going on Facebook and villifying my mom and sister for what they did. This is on the heels of her calling my mom immature for posting on Facebook the need for her to figure out what she's going to do with her animals.
What she doesn't tell people is that my mom had to post online because NOTHING else was working. She had tried to text Lori on a few occasions and Lori decided it wasn't worth her coming back from her little trip to Detroit. What ultimately prompts her to react is the Facebook post since her reputation is now being damaged because she's no longer being shown as the strong, independent woman she wants everyone to believe she is.
Even now, she's trying to portray herself as some sad victim, thrown out for no reason by her unreasonable mother. She wants sympathy and she's getting it from people, some who have tried to get her to call the police on my mom for doing so.
Are you serious? Lori doesn't do shit around the house, whines constantly, and doesn't pay rent, yet these "friends" think she should call the police on my mom because my mom finally put her foot down?
Oh wait, they probably think she's been paying rent, paying for the utilities, bought everything she owned herself, and think she's the next coming of Mother Teresa. They'd probably bow down before her if she asked she has them all so convinced that she's an amazing person.
What they don't know is how Lori often wouldn't do something unless she really wanted to and it benefited her. If it was anything else, she was too sick and/or too tired to do anything and would just sit on the couch (that my mom paid for) and play on Facebook (on a laptop given to her no cost) and text on her phone (also given to her at no cost). Her supplies for her soap-making endeavor? My mom and sister helped buy her supplies. The Xbox she claimed was hers? My sister helped her pay for it.
Even her cats my mom was taking care of more than she was, yet they were her "children." When she finally came back, she practically blamed my mom for them being in bad health. In other words, someone else's fault other than her own. Everything was always someone else's fault. It was never because she made a mistake, someone else caused the mistake to happen.
It's sad in a way really. She's 36 and while she knows what she wants to do, she doesn't have a plan to get there that doesn't involve stepping all over people around her. She wants someone to take care of things for her, buy the things she needs without her having to do a whole lot of heavy lifting. She seems to genuinely like making the soap and all that, but she can't buy the supplies herself, which becomes a problem.
I'm glad my mom finally put her foot down. They don't need the burden of caring for a 36 year-old child like they have been. The kids don't need to worry that if they want to play at 11am, they won't wake her up and Teresa get yelled at for letting kids be kids.
Which is another thing that I didn't mention in my e-mail to her. She was more concerned with material possessions than how much the kids are going to miss her. For better or worse, they love their spooky aunt and she's removed herself from them in her actions and in her being more concerned with her stuff.
It's just a sad situation. I could see how much it upset my mom, but at the same time, how much it angered her.
I hope she learns and makes changes, but doubt she will. She's far too wrapped up in her image and how others see her to realize what she's done to those who were closest to her.
And that's the real shame of it all.
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