The Ignorance of My Sisters

The Ignorance of My Sisters is Infinite.
Three years ago, when my father had a bad fall, one requiring hospitalization, it was suggested that I should come home, to take care of my parents.
Now, I later discovered, that it had, in effect, been agreed without consulting me, without discussing it with me, that I was the right one to take care of the elderly parents because I was unmarried.


As it turns out, my sisters imagine that an unmarried person has no life worthy of considering, and no responsibilities---least of all responsibilities to one's own self.  (So if I have no job currently, or no health care, or no friends, or no chance to pursue my talents, all of that counts for nothing.)

The hypocritical aspect of the whole thing is this:  both sisters have adult children.  So, it's certainly not the children which prevent them from caring for my parents.  Furthermore, their adult husbands are not invalids.  So, they surely do not require the care and attention of another person.

Of course, the simple fact is that my sisters are incapable of even imagining the displacement and disruption to my life entailed by a move from Central Europe to a stagnant backwater of the USA.
First of all, because I lived by myself, with my own apartment--oh Silence! blessed silence!  No interruptions from annoying phone calls from bored sisters or health care workers or a thousand sorts of annoying unwanted calls, no shouting parents, not television noises echoing endlessly through a small house---- and in the process of moving I had to leave things behind----books and clothing.  I also left people--friends---behind, and electronic communication just is not the real thing!  All that represents a real cost, a real loss to myself a drastic diminution in the quality of my life.
But according to the book-keeping of my sisters, all of that counts for nothing.


Furthermore, I did have a job in Europe, and I have left that behind.  I don't say it was a great job,
but I had an income, and managed to survive.  Moreover, I had a routine, a schedule, which allowed me time for myself, time to read, write, and study.  And, I even had a research program of sorts.  I had managed to have one article accepted for publication just before leaving, and I had plans to continue writing.  But, all of that was interrupted and destroyed in the move to a different country.

Now, it is impossible for me to have any kind of consistent work schedule.--Here I refer to scholarly activities not activities performed for the benefit of the capitalist class.  I have no space of my own where I can work.  I am trapped in the home of two elderly persons, and it is filled with clothes that no one wears, books that no one reads, and assorted other items that are here merely because no one will throw them out.  And, I cannot simply throw them out---because they are not mine.  Indeed, the paradox is that the necessary things in the house increasingly don't work----e.g. toilets are always breaking, while unnecessary things which no one uses fill up every empty space, sitting idle and collecting dust, making it impossible to open a window and let light or air into this cave of hollow consumption.

I can only close this post by saying I would visit upon my sisters a plague of mammoth proportions as a punishment for their blindness and stupidity, their willful lack of consideration--- if it were in my power.

My only hope is that someday I can escape.  For now I am in prison, a prison not of my making, but one created by two sisters who gave not a thought to my happiness, and thereby managed to preserve their own habits and conveniences.  In order to preserve their comfort and convenience, they have---insofar as they were able----destroyed my life.