Would you guess

About six years ago my cousin and I had a conversation where my sister's name came up and my cousin responded in a very flippant way. I called her on her statement and then I told my sister about it because it annoyed me and I felt that she needed to know. Decades before, we had agreed that we would always be true to each other about anything that upset us about the other. In our family, we were the children of the most successful couple. To us, everyone else seemed to be successful as well. No one was lacking for anything. However, the other siblings and spouses would talk about our parents for sport. We grew up aware of the challenge and the duplicity. It was particularly upsetting to my sister and I because all of the siblings would act one way behind our parents back and another to their face. Thus the decision to never be that way with each other as we grew to adulthood. My cousin recently reached out to me to do some freelance work for her and I accepted. Last night my mother decided to discuss my project with my sister. The next thing you know, my sister is calling me and shouting on the phone and all up in her feelings about our cousin. She even calls me disloyal to take up a job with her. Waw! I listened, I stayed calm, I apologised to my sister. I confronted the word disloyal and then promised to discuss the whole kettle of fish (lol) with our cousin after I complete the job. This morning, now that a few hours has passed between the conversation and my contacting our cousin again, I am here writing about it. Listening to my sister, I hear her emotions stirring up in the most irrational way. But I can only write that here. She is feeling genuinely hurt. The story she is telling is one of wanting whatever construct she has designed to go as she wants it to go. So this means, I factor in her narrative in a certain way and so does our cousin. My seeing it from the outside gives me a certain vantage point. When I am in situations, I too of course am holding to my beliefs completely teeth clenching, white knuckling the matter. Thus I am really trying to put myself in her position to understand where all of the emotions are coming from. Yet, in so doing, I also see what she is not saying. I dealt with this last year with my friend who has called me a bitch since my father has died. Who knew that everyone is so tightly wound up? Perhaps I am also equally sensitive? Today, the needs people have to have their emotions attended to has left me a bit staggered. I question what it all means? How much of it is delusion and how much a simple response to who we are as human beings?