Narcissists can do an awful lot of damage. It can take a long time to recover from all they do to us.

Also, it took me years to figure out what was up with my sister, to get the fill 360 degree picture of her pathology. Once I did, I started reading everything I could get my hands on about narcissism; as much as I could handle at a go, because reading did become a challenge for me once I realized I was depressed. (I sometimes still find books to be daunting.)

However, I have discovered a wealth of information on Quora. There are Narcissist's Survivors groups on there---it's easy to sign up as a member. Then you just type what you're looking for in the search field, and you will find no end of accounts and assistance from other survivors.

Once I had begun the difficult job of trying to understand how a person who grew up in the same room, home, eating at the same dinner table, and attending the same church as me could behave as she does, it seemed all I wanted were more validations and explanations. Learning what drives her has been like lights coming on, one by one, in a darkened mansion. It's been a long journey of almost 20 years. But doing it has helped me recover from my own depression, which I now realize contained many more elements of being traumatized than I ever cared to admit.

My sister is younger and smaller than me, but she still was always very abusive to me; mostly emotionally. She was rather young when she figured out how to keep her rotten treatment of me from my parents. To them, she was their fresh-faced little baby doll, who could do no wrong. If I ever had anything to say about it, it would be viewed as jealousy of her, and subsequential lies, on my part. Because, as we all know, she was a "wonderful little girl", she was "far too young" to come up with the evil she routinely engaged in.

I still tend to haunt the book sections of thrift stores, and stumbled across a wonderful volume about the subject of Sibling Abuse, written by Vernon R. Wiehe. (It is actually an advanced psychology college textbook, written for people who are considering specializing in that area of study. It is hard to find, and when you do, it's very expensive. But if you can luck out on Amazon or e-bay, it might be helpful to you, if you think it might apply to your situation.) I could only approach the contents a page or two at a time, so it took awhile for me to find the answers I needed so badly. But I felt wonderfully vindicated and validated, when I finally did.

It did also put me on the scent of the possibility my sister was, and is, a covert narcissist, and that she was very likely born that way, judging from what an early age she started to exhibit these tendencies.

Now the difficulty I face is how to think about her. I have given it a lot of thought, and I know myself very well. I will never be able to forgive her for many of the things she's done over time, which range from quietly whispering de-valuing and humiliating things at me, all the way to full-blown, outright reputation-destroying campaigns within my own family. On the one hand, she is only partly responsible for her actions; she is mentally ill. On the other hand, she has expressed that she knows that what she does is wrong, and that it's like trying to fight an overwhelming urge, and give in to those tendencies. So how much can I forgive her for, when she has never sincerely shown any genuine contrition for it all?

I have not had anything to do with her since I became fully enlightened as to her pathology (15 years). In my case, I cannot be around her, because of the heinous and cruel things she's knowingly done to me. One sneer from her and I would probably become enraged. I am not the docile, depressed, passive person that I used to be, when I still believed in the philosophy of turning the other cheek. I am very aware of how much she contributed to my losing practically 25 years of my life to depression, and perhaps more to a decimated sense of self. She has convinced my niece that I am a horrible person, and has irreparably destroyed how many members of my family will always see me. There is now almost nothing she could ever do that would convince me she is worth one more minute of my time.

The general opinion seems to be that mental health professionals consider narcissists to be beyond the reach of therapy and counselling and help. They cannot/ will not reform themselves, at least not in the way their victims wish they could.

I would absolutely like to find some kind of Christian, super-high-moral-ground kind of way to forgive her. But it will never be possible. I just don't have that kind of time left in my life. I am still healing from so much drama, damage, loss, horror, and wreckage. I no longer have the energy, nor the patience that being in the same room with her would require.

I have to concentrate on me, on re-building what she so gleefully and continually tore out of me.