Tiny Beautiful Things (27 page)

Love and kisses,
C
.

Dear C.,

Screw Christmas. Something far more important is at stake. That would be your emotional well-being, as well as the dignity and grace and integrity of your life. It’s such a cliché, but it’s true: you must set boundaries.

Fucked-up people will try to tell you otherwise, but boundaries have nothing to do with whether you love someone or not. They are not judgments, punishments, or betrayals. They are a purely peaceable thing: the basic principles you identify for yourself that define the behaviors that you will tolerate from others, as well as the responses you will have to those behaviors. Boundaries teach people how to treat you, and they teach you how to respect yourself. In a perfect world, our parents model healthy personal boundaries for us. In your world, you must model them for your parents—for whom boundaries have either never been in place or have gone gravely askew.

Emotionally healthy people sometimes behave badly. They lose their tempers, say things they either shouldn’t have said or could have said better, and occasionally allow their hurt, fear, or anger to compel them to act in inappropriate, unkind ways. They eventually acknowledge this and make amends. They are imperfect, but essentially capable of discerning which of their behaviors are destructive and unreasonable, and they attempt
to change them, even if they don’t wholly succeed. That’s called being human.

The situation you describe is different, C. It’s a deeply embedded family system that’s entirely off-kilter. Your story reads like a hostage tale, one in which your destructive and irrational brother is holding the gun. He has taught you and your parents how to treat him and you all obey, even when it’s nuts to do so. In what universe does a man assault his mother, abuse her cat, and ransack her house?

Yours. Which means you must exile yourself from it or you will suffer forever. You must make a world of your own. You can take the first steps now, but the internal weeding out of so much familial dysfunction is going to be a years-long process, no doubt. I strongly encourage you to seek counseling.

So let’s talk about Christmas.

What a terrible situation you’re in. Your brother is a sociopath and your parents are his suckers. There is no way to extricate yourself from this without extricating yourself. You want to cut off all ties with your brother, so do that. Remember what I said about boundaries not having anything to do with whether you loved someone or not? Here’s where that part comes in. Your parents are good people who have lost themselves in a nightmare. I don’t agree with their continued support of your brother, but I understand their impulse to do so. Your brother is their son, the boy they’d have died for probably from the minute he was born. But they didn’t have to die for him. He’s killing them instead.

You mustn’t stand by, a willing onlooker. I’m not telling you that.
You’re
telling me that. So don’t stand by. Tell your parents you love them and then simply
love them
. Give to them all the gorgeous daughterness you have inside of you. But do not
participate in their self-destruction. Inform them that you will be cutting off all ties with your brother and map out a plan for seeing them on Christmas and beyond. Don’t let them try to talk you out of your decision, even if your decision means you spend Christmas alone. Let this be the first step of many in your liberation from the tyranny of your brother.

As for your niece and nephew, I hope you can continue to be a presence in their lives. How about approaching their mothers to make arrangements to see them when they are not under your brother’s care? (You didn’t ask about this, but I’m terribly worried about those kids. You say their mothers are “okay,” but you also say your brother—who is not okay—has partial custody of his children. Even if your parents take care of them “99 percent of the time,” it doesn’t sound to me like your brother should be the legal custodian of anyone right now, even for a little while. I encourage you to investigate ways you can protect those children by working with your niece’s and nephew’s mothers, and possibly your parents, to legally limit your brother’s contact with them.)

Your fear about your parents being hurt by your choices is valid. They will likely feel some pain when you tell them about your plans. Your cooperation in their wildly co-dependent behaviors has no doubt been a consolation to them. When you set new boundaries there is often strife and sorrow, but your life will be changed for the better. And maybe—just maybe—the example you set will motivate your parents to make some changes of their own.

Lastly, what I’d like to impress upon you is this: In spite of the complexity of your situation, it’s notable that you didn’t waver when it came to what you know to be the right thing to do. That’s because you know the right thing to do. So do it.
It’s hard, I know. It’s one of the hardest things you’ll ever have to do. And you’re going to bawl your head off doing it. But I promise you it will be okay. Your tears will be born of grief, but also of relief. You will be better for them. They will make you harder, softer, cleaner, dirtier. Free.

A glorious something else awaits.

Yours,
Sugar

Dear Sugar
,

I think (know) I have a serious problem with alcohol. It freaks me out; it even wakes me up in my sleep because I am terrified of this tunnel I keep going further into. No one has ever said anything to me about it, because I’ve always been professional, calm, laid-back, and in control. I don’t think I have control anymore, and it seriously scares me. I drink before work, when I wake up, drink during lunch, and drink as soon as I get home to fall asleep, when no one can see me doing it
.

But I also drink out socially, with my friends, and they are impossible NOT to drink around, and they actually prefer to see me “on,” which is the only state I seem to be comfortable with now. I don’t think I can give up drinking out socially, because without my friends, I would probably just end up drinking more at home alone
.

I know you are not a psychologist, but I would like to get some unbiased advice about this. I have tried to approach some people about this before (including therapy), but it has proved fruitless, and also really embarrassing. I guess I am hoping you have the magic, easy solution to this, and I am going to assume there probably isn’t one
.

Thanks.
Drinker

Dear Drinker,

My unbiased advice is that you know you’re addicted to alcohol and you need help. You’re right that there is no “magic, easy solution” to this, sweet pea, but there is a solution. It’s that you stop using alcohol. Privately. Socially. Morning. Noon. Night. And probably forever.

You will do this when you’re ready to do this. To be ready you need only the desire to change your life. To succeed, most people need a community of support. Alcoholics Anonymous is a good place to begin. There, you will find those who struggle in the same ways you do; people who once told themselves the same lies about what was “impossible.”

Addiction is a tunnel that wakes you up in the middle of the night. Everything else happens out here in the light.

Yours,
Sugar

Dear Sugar
,

I am newly civilly unioned. I love my spouse (wife?) dearly, though we have our issues. What appears to me to be our biggest problem—the one that keeps me up some nights—is that she won’t get a job
.

We’re a quite poor couple in our mid-twenties, both in school. We’ve been together for four years, and in that time my girl has had three jobs: one she was laid off from because the job ended, one she quit, and one she was fired from. All these jobs lasted fewer than six months
.

She’s made halfhearted attempts to placate me in the year and a half she’s been unemployed. Mostly though? We fight, she cries, she shuts down, she lies and says she’s been trying to find a job, even though I know she hasn’t. She has moderate social anxiety issues and says she can’t work any jobs involving other people because of it. She doesn’t even offer up excuses for not applying to any number of other jobs I’ve suggested (throwing newspapers! work-study in a low-traffic area of her school! selling her lovely quirky crafts online! dishwashing!). At one point, she suggested that she would rather donate plasma every week than get a job
.

Sugar, I’m a full-time student working two jobs. We’re barely getting by on what I’m bringing in. We frequently must rely on
my parents for money, and they’re rapidly losing their ability to keep up with my financial needs in addition to their own. I worry so much about this. I worry that my partner will never be motivated enough to hold a job. I worry about what her job prospects are going to be when she reaches thirty in a few years without ever actually having held a long-term job. I worry that, though she sees my struggles, she will never feel guilty enough to get things kicked into gear
.

What can I possibly do to get her to take job searching seriously? She’s emotionally fragile, due to years of social anxiety, sexual and emotional abuse from her father, and a recurring eating disorder. Because of that, I don’t want to threaten her with any ultimatums, because I wouldn’t mean any of them and I fear it would do more harm than good. My girl’s got a good heart, but she is so afraid of failure that she willfully ignores how much I sacrifice to keep our rent paid. I love her, and she loves me, yet I feel I’m without a partner in this. I don’t know what to do next. Please help
.

Working for Two

Dear Sugar
,

My husband makes me laugh every day, EVERY day, multiple times. He’s been my best friend for years and is still my favorite person in the world. He’s enriched my life in so many innumerable ways, and he has told me that I have reciprocated that enrichment. I do love him so. SO. And I am quite certain he loves me
.

The issue is that he’s been unemployed for over three years. He did try to find a job for a while (and I believe he still occasionally does), but now I think he feels unqualified for anything other than the job he used to hate and also that he has no reason to be
hired for anything else. Inertia has taken him over. He wants to write, but feels unworthy, so he doesn’t write. He is brilliant and funny and erudite, but he sees none of that. He doesn’t paint/sculpt/whatever might give him fulfillment or do anything that would move him forward in his life. I would be happy with him doing anything (and I truly mean that), yet he seems to be stuck. He’s also bipolar and self-hating and all of that
.

Fortunately, my job carries us financially, but only barely. The house is clean, the laundry is done, the dog is walked, but in three years he hasn’t been able to figure out a way to financially contribute to our household. He’s stressed out about the fact that we have trouble paying our bills, but he does nothing (truly nothing) to change it. If I had plenty of money, I’d be fine with this, but I don’t. I’ve been carrying this load alone for a long time. I have repeatedly tried to talk to him about this, to no avail
.

I love him so much and I’m so sad about this. I think my staying with him may be ruining both our lives. Perhaps my support is keeping him from fulfilling his dreams. What do you think, Sugar?

Responsible One

Dear Women,

As I’m sure you both know, there is nothing inherently wrong with a spouse who makes no money. The most common scenario in which it makes sense for one spouse to earn an income while the other does not is when the couple has a child or children who must be cared for, which goes along with a domestic life that requires constant vigilance of the cleaning, shopping, cooking, washing, folding, tidying up, taking-the-cat-to-the-vet-and-the-kids-to-the-dentist variety. In this situation and
others like it, the “nonworking” spouse is often doing more work, hour for hour, than the “working” spouse, and though on paper it appears that the one with the job is making a greater financial contribution to the household than the one who “stays at home,” if you ran the numbers and figured out what it would cost to employ someone to do the work of the “nonworking” spouse, it becomes apparent that one should probably shut their big trap when it comes to who is contributing what.