Phew - she's gone

Phew. Sister number 3 has now left the building. And the ense of relief and space is palpable. We dropped her off at my parents (only my dad was there). The dining room looks like a bomb has hit - with all the unsorted/sorted/charity boxes still in there - but she's gone. Her bedroom probably looks the same. As does the garage. But hey, she's gone.

My wife and I now have access to our laptops full time. We can sit in the living room any time we want. We can cook just for the family again. We don't need to think about child number three (we only have two girls). We don't have to be careful about what and how we say it. We can move around naked if we want (albeit when the girls are out!).

Most importantly - there won't be someone sapping our energy (emotional and physical) day and night. We are absolutely exhausted (both of us), knackered, tired and worn out.

She's lived with us this time for a month, and a week a couple of weeks before that. But the overall effect was pretty tiring. Primarily because she;

• Was physically wasted - so we had to do everything for her
• Was emotionally full - and needed to offload how she was feeling on a very regular (daily) basis
• If she didn't offload, then she was unable to handle anything (and I mean anything) resulting in detracting from us, then fearing she was rejecting us, and as a result bursting into tears whenever she tried to talk to me
• She needed taking everywhere - as she had no money nor energy to get there herself.
• We had to be really careful when we did talk to her, as if we said anything wrong (how she perceived it) she would get upset, prickly, agitated, contrary and very defensive. She couldn't rest, be at peace, let anything go by. She had to have a say on anything (including things she knew nothing about such as village cricket, bringing girls up, whether we would pay for our daughters to get married ("no - you don't do that anymore" - "well we are" says my wife).

On top of that she lived in our living room as she needed mindless TV on to relax too, whilst taking one of our laptops so she could be on the internet.

In short, despite the fact we tried hard not, it resulted in her taking over much of our lives. And that at a point when we were supposed to be recovering on my sabbatical means we weren't in a place ourselves to to do this.

But what choice did we have? At the end of the day it is a choice. Do you help someone, or do you let them go somewhere else? She could have gone to my parents - but she would have been unable to sort out the storage. She could have stayed in a B&B or hostel rather than with us - but she had no money. Regardless - it's something we chose to do - knowing that we would be impacted. And we have been. And now we can recover and move on knowing that we did something wonderful for someone else.