The funniest thing happened. I go to get my mail and there is a card from my middle sister. A Valentine's Day card. Now that's weird. She hardly sends me anything else. A Christmas card maybe, and e-card for my birthday(I don't think I've gotten an actual Hallmark type birthday card from her in a long time). I was quite close to her for awhile, well as close as our family could get, but since she remarried, we've not been as close.

I have issues with my family. All my life everyone thought mine was a perfect family, Father Knows Best or Ozzie and Harriet, but that was just the dysfunction.

My sisters are quite a bit older than me, and as a result, they were out of the house before I was 11.

My oldest sister and I are most alike, which is probably why we can't share our feelings with each other unless it's in anger. She's never "gone off" on me, but she has on the middle sister. I've gone off on her because, being 10 years younger, no matter if I'm 35 or 40, I will still be the baby.

So I have to wonder now if Jayme(the middle sis) is starting to have some ummmm family regrets or something. She's ignored me basically for several years, as I have her, and now she feels bad, trying to make up for it. She is the most emotional of the three of us.

Cindy and I keep our emotions close. We learned from the best...our mother. I can't for the life of me remember my mother ever telling me she loved me. She let me know I was an accident...apparently since it was nearly eight years between Jayme and me, and I have to wonder, did that piss her off? Did she think at one time she was done with dealing with little kids and then wham, here I came? Or was she always like that, keeping her feelings to herself.

Although she was "open" enough to let me read and listen to what I wanted (with a speech first on what's right and wrong in life), I only remember criticism and judgement.

At fifteen, when I was diagnosed with Crohn's, she went into protective mode, blasting doctors about my treatments and then she babied me, giving into me when lots of times she shouldn't have. Maybe it was guilt, because they thought that's the disease her father died from. And so she cut me slack on responsibility and babied me everytime I got sick. That's good to a certain extent, but I needed someone to tell me to be strong, to power through it and not to feel sorry for myself.

She still never told me she loved me. Never.

Now I think she knows what she's done and she's desperately trying to make up for it. As she reaches the last years of her life, she tells me all the time---everytime I speak with her on the phone.

I was raised under the banner of "Children should be seen and not heard" so from their examples, I've pushed my feelings down, and become numb. Now I'm full of resentment for everybody and everything. I have a deep seeded hatred for life that I can't seem to throw up. I've built walls around me and cover everything with humor. They are my shields, the cynicism and the humor. My shields that protect me from anyone who might hurt me. And if I can't feel, then I can't get hurt.

Only recently, I've noticed that I am my mother's daughter. I'm passing this same poisonous philosophy down to my son. I'm trying hard to bridge the distance I put between us before it's too late. Thank God I have my husband who picks up the slack a whole lot better than my father did. My father was just as absent, there but not really there.

I should confront my mother, but it's only been the last year or so that I've realize this is much of my problem. I'm not to that point yet. However, I think I may reach out to my oldest sister. I think she figured it out long long ago, and if she's willing to discuss it with me, maybe it will help us both.

The bottom line is, dysfunction comes in all forms, even in the most normal of families.