Still angry, after all these years?

Why?  I no longer enable. I have detached. I have been through grief counseling. I can speak civilly to my daughter. We still see each other. I allow the kids to have a relationship with her even though she undermines it behind my back, and that is difficult because she only gets supervised visits with me in the room.

I guess I just see the damage still, on a daily basis. I see the trouble her little sister is having in life. The little sister was just starting 7th grade when her favorite big sister, the one she idolized, became a heroin addict. I still see trust issues in her baby sister's life,  even though she is now an adult. I see problems in her relationships that I can directly tie to her sister's addiction.

I see the babies and the medical issues they go through. I see the rage. I see the pain. I see the 'acting out' that they do after a visit with their mother.

I see the confusion on Pint's face when Mom nods off. Mom swears to us she doesn't use (I don't even ask, but she tells the kids), yet she nods off when she is here.

I see the disappointment, when, like yesterday, Mom was supposed to be here with 1/4 Pint by 1 p.m. but didn't show up till almost 5. So the kids live in a 'stress mode' until Mom actually gets here. And no, I do NOT tell them what time she is expected, but Mom texts them and tells them.

Hard not to remember all the pain when you face it on a minute by minute basis. When the other kids are wanting to stop by and they have to text first and say "who's there", and I reply "Calamity and the kids" and they reply, "Nvrmnd". So they don't get to see their little nieces because they can't stand their sister.

She talks loud. She gets hysterical sometimes. She walks around talking to whomever will listen telling them how horrible it is that no matter how good she is I don't lover her.

I really wish I could just never see her again. But, since she has my other granddaughter, I have to keep her in my life so that I can see 1/4 Pint.

And, every time I see her, it opens the Pandora's Box of the past. Maybe absence really does make the heart grow fonder, but since I don't have absence, I wouldn't know?

Would her apologizing really mean anything? Probably not, truthfully. I wouldn't believe it was sincere. But the thing is, she doens't even acknowledge all the pain she put the family through. I guess I am at least waiting for that somehow.

When she speaks  of the past, it is STILL someone else's fault she used. Usually mine. I have to ask, if it was REALLY my fault, why aren't the other four addicts?

She tells her younger sister how horrible it is, how I ruined her life, how it is my fault she got married (I wouldn't let her and boyfriend live together in our home without marriage, I did have a 12 year old girl in the home and a 16 year old boy, and I didn't want to 'lower the expectation bar' for them by making it "okay" to have your boyfriend live with you in your parents house....) and that if she had not been 'forced' into marriage by us, then she would have left the idiot instead of using.

I just don't see it personally. To me, it is still excuse making and indicative of her refusal to acknowledge that she is truly an addict, or to take responsibility for her actions/addiction. She is still looking for someone to blame for it all, and there I am, the perfect villain for the story of her life.

And yet, after all the past 12 years, just typing this sent me into a massive panic attack. How am I supposed to close, when I am forced to live in it every day?