Dear sister.

I thought I would share this on here:
In my conflict resolution class we had to share a person that is hard to have conflicts with.
I wrote about you.

Don't hate me.

My sister is the ice queen of petty conflicts.

She's got the cold stare and stonewalling down to a science.

Her conflict resolution strategy is:

Ignore, ignore, ignore, forgive.

We never discuss the reason we got mad at each other.

She never likes to apologize.

Saying sorry is not her thing.

She would rather pretend that the conflict never happened in the first place.

Let everything settle back into a stable silence.

Where we can laugh in oblivion and wait patiently until the next small thing sets us off.

Biting necks and yelling out things we really don’t mean.

Was it really over the fact that she didn’t put the butter away in the refrigerator?

That really got us to the point of not speaking for a day?

That can’t be healthy.

And it’s not.

I realize that.

I am someone who likes to deal with conflict WHILE it’s happening.

I hate letting it sit inside of me like a cold tuna sandwich.

It makes my stomach churn.

So, I deal with things head on.

But, conflicts with my sister bring out the worst in me. 

I have been trained in Nonviolent Communication, empathetic listening and needs and feelings words for the last 8 years of my life.

Somehow, that still doesn’t stop me from yelling at my sister to put the butter away when she is done using it.

And, I still haven’t found a way to incorporate NVC into our relationship without her rolling her eyes and saying

“Don’t use that NVC shit on me.”