From what you say, it sounds like in addition to being quite manipulative, your sister is much more disturbed. We always need to take seriously a person’s threats of self-harm, but that doesn’t mean that a person doesn’t also need to know what the legitimate limits and boundaries are.

Keep setting those limits and boundaries.

The low spots in a person’s life can be remarkably instructive if we have the character to process the lessons life is trying to teach us. Sometimes, despondency is nature’s way of telling us that we simply can’t go on doing as we have been and need to change course. Hopefully, your sister’s case manager will not only work with her to resolve the despondent feelings but to reckon with some of the choices she may have made that might have “invited” misery into her life.

“I’m still homeless and I just don’t really care about what happens to me at this point, because I want to die. I just don’t want to live anymore. My life isn’t going to get better. My father, his girlfriend and my ex who should all be in jail are out free and safe while I’m homeless. My sister threw me out because I wanted to do something good for myself. I really am not meant to have a good life because I really don’t deserve it. So I really, really don’t care about myself anymore and I’m abusing myself so I can repent for what I’ve done. I let people I don’t even want to have sex with me. I gave my bank card away to my co-worker at **** and told him to just take my money which is about $10,000. I love you so much **** but I’m not a good person and you should probably just stay away from me. Maybe I’ll be a better person in my next life. Please be happy and keep love in your heart and stay a good person.”

My response to this was to call the bank and have the ATM card cancelled, and I moved the money to a different account , and asked her to call me. Her case manager soon contacted me instead and told me my sister wanted to know how to get to her money. I explained I had moved it into another account, so I asked her case manager to have her call me, and sent her a money order for some money in the meantime. I heard nothing, I sent my sister another email asking her if she did give her ATM card away and to call me, I got a message back saying that she doesn’t care about her money because she’s going to die soon. Which is a typical thing she does when cornered, but nonetheless I took it seriously and alerted her case manager again – I can never be sure if she is just doing it as another manipulation or if she really is feeling that way. Her case manager has said to me that “if even 1/3 of the things” my sister tells her are true. I tried to explain to her that it is more like 1/3 of each thing.

A brief example being that about 6 months ago soon after breaking up with her b/f she talked to me, and others, about how she didn’t really want to have sex with him, but did it anyway just because he wanted to. Then it was she was “too afraid to say no”. Now she has worked up to saying that she was raped, and depending on who you talk to, she has told them it was her ex, and in another case she named another guy she had actually had a one night stand with as her ex boyfriend and also claimed to have lived with this guy and been abused and raped by him.

About 2 months ago I had to force my sister to leave my home (for the second time, soon after she had moved in again). I had come to realize that all these years she has been manipulating me and many others relentlessly, and I told her she had to get counseling or leave my home. I still had doubts and questioned if I was right to remove her from my life or not. I see now that it was indeed the only choice I had to stop the abuse!

I am afraid for her state of mind when and if she does see herself sitting at the center of this blast crater! She has no one left really, she is living at a transitional housing place in the city here thousands of miles from where she grew up (though she does not have anyone left back there either, she burned every bridge). I should say she wants to believe she has no one left as I will be here if she gets help, as will the rest of the family. I think the problem right now is I have confronted her with knowing the truth, and she does not want to face me or that truth yet.

And now when I have emailed her asking her to call me(she has no easy number to call), she replies saying she "really doesn't care" and is going to "die soon". I have alerted her case managers to this and they just ask her if she wants help, she says no, and that's that. Is she a ticking time bomb? Should I push harder to make sure someone keeps a close suicide watch on her? Or is that most likely already being done? (I sent them about 3 messages she wrote recently saying similar things about wanting to die)

About 2 months ago I had to force my sister to leave my home. I had come to realize that all these years she has been manipulating me and many others relentlessly, and I told her she had to get counseling or leave my that. I still had doubts and questioned if I was right to remove her from my life or not. I see now that it was indeed the only choice I had to stop the abuse!

I wanted to add that, in addition to the standard Playing the Victim behavior, I’ve experienced being approached by a person who was actually victimized in his youth and tried to use the sympathy created by that topic to get money from me. It was a rather ham-handed attempt since the two things were totally unrelated. So, it’s possible for an actual victim of another person’s behavior to attempt to use their genuine victimhood to manipulate others. I feel sadness and pity for that person, but not for the reason he thinks. I suppose there’s a victim-becoming-the-(emotional)-abuser cycle going on with this. They learn all the wrong lessons from their abusers.

You are doing a lot of good things. Stay strong!

Glad to hear he passed the drug test.

God Bless You,
Diane

He took a drug test last week for a job he’s applying for. He’s clean. The Oxycontin also reduces/eliminates sex drive, so I honestly believe that her only interest in him will be as a facilitator or to join her club. No, we will not change our mind. We have changed the locks on the doors and he’s upset about that because it indicates we don’t trust the one he loves. Ya think? I went through the pity party stage, and this weekend, the furious stage. He won’t call. We don’t know where he is. So, pretty much the lines have been drawn. If he ever asks, we will iterate that the rules at our house are absolute: no drug addicts allowed, and the girl will not be welcomed unless she’s gone to treatment and is in some very, very serious counseling.

Difficult? I’ve asked myself several times: Which is worse? Burying a child or watching a child destroy himself? Right now, I really can’t say. I’m going into survival mode, which means back to Compassionate Friends. Praying is difficult right now. I’m in complaint mode, so I pray to be able to pray. I need to reread Frankel’s book to remind myself that relatively speaking, my load is light and I must above all keep in touch with my own humanity. Experience tells me I’ll get over the pity party and I’ll get over the anger. I do hope I somehow learn something important along the way. Right now that’s hard to envison. Sigh.