After her husband left her, Sandra went crazy with grief. She loved her husband very much, she could not imagine her life without him, and he so easily traded her for freedom from children and obligations. Her husband offered to pay child support so he would not be forced to see his children, and the stupid Sandra refused his money and threw tantrums all over the staircase. The children watched this and must have felt real shame.
At first Sandra dealt with her own problems by taking it out on her family and coworkers, and then she joined the company of her drinking colleagues, spending her evenings with them. She completely abandoned her two children. My son was thirteen and could eat his own food and order anything over the Internet, but I was very worried about my seven-year-old daughter. My brother looked after her, took her to school, and fed her cakes from the cafeteria, but was that normal?
Arguments with my sister went nowhere. She kept drinking and waving her fists, ordering me to leave her and the children alone. I told Mom and Dad about this, and the three of us decided to take the crazy step. So that Sandra wouldn’t be deprived of her parental rights and she wouldn’t drive herself and the kids to the brink, I took my nephews to my place, and my parents took their mother to the clinic. Sandra had to go to the hospital for five months to get over her addiction to alcohol and get over the breakup, and meanwhile I was raising my nephews.
Subsequently, it was very hard for me to separate from them, and they begged me to live together. Sandra didn’t support the idea at first, but when she was faced with motherhood again and realized how much there was to catch up on, she offered to let me stay at their house.
I don’t think my sister and I had ever been as close as we are now. As children we shared a room and fought all the time, but now we live in peace and quiet, we have a wonderful relationship, and for now I don’t plan to leave. I will do so when Sandra is ready to take everything on her shoulders again and move on with her life on her own.
