Apologies for the long post, families are difficult. My (35f) sister (30f) has been terrible towards me for the last 10 years. Because of this I spent this past Christmas home alone. My mother is have a big 70th birthday party in 2 weeks and I found out my sister is spending the entire weekend there. I do not want to go. My sister has physically and verbally assaulted me multiple times at past holidays yet everyone in the family says this is my fault because she “is jealous of me” and “I have power over her” or “it’s my job as the older sister to make it better”. Everyone sees me not being there as my fault, and that I am a terrible person for missing family events.
Yes my sister is not as together- she has never known what she wanted to do with her life, and has been floating from temporary job to temporary job, getting money from my parents, while I had to pay for college myself and supported myself from graduation. I have always been there for her, I give her $200 dollars every birthday etc, whenever she needed a place to stay she would crash at my apartment (but at those times consistently say she’ll be there at 8pm then show up at 1am, waking us all up etc so my husband would always be furious).
Some notable events of her treatment of me over the years if you're interested: the day after my ex-husband left me I was a suicidal hyperventilating mess and had to be medicated on xanax among other things and didn’t react to medication well. I called my sister to come over and take care of me as she is my only family in my city and was only part-time employed at the time. She came over with her gym clothes and laundry, brought me a glass of water in bed, then proceeded to do her laundry, use the building gym, eat allll of the food in the house, then left telling me she would come back with groceries. As you can guess she never came back and never called to check up on me in the days that followed. Last Christmas, after years of toxic behavior my parents berated me to “be the big sister” so I showed up with $150 worth of presents for her, including handmade art. The day after Christmas my sister walked up to me while I was eating breakfast and went on a thirty minute tirade of emotional abuse, saying terrible things to me while me mother stood by and did nothing, she even insulted all the presents I gave her. I packed up all of the presents I had gotten and walked out of the house leaving four days earlier than planned (I live 2 hours from my family). Six months later I visited my father on his birthday thinking we would be alone, but she showed up. She pressured me into taking all three of them out for a birthday dinner (my father didn’t want to go but went for her, which is typical). Then the next day when my father was getting in the car to drive me home along with a bookshelf we had purchased together (hence the need for the ride vs train), she attacked me “for killing her father” (because of the ride) and proceed to punch me in the nose and jaw. I broke all 10 of my fingernails defending her off (she’s 5’10 and a part time fitness trainer) before my father pulled her off of me, but never did I attack back. I mention this because my bloody fingers were the most painful thing and I could not type/work afterwards. This is the third physical attack in 10 years.
I do not want to be around this person! My mother’s upcoming birthday is giving me nightmares, and I find the emails pleading with me to come to be unfair. My parents keep on telling me that my sister is essentially a saint because she would “pet sit” my dog (who she loves) over the years. I think this is BS because she would *never* take my dog, would *only* watch her if she could stay at my apartment, (with the laundry and balcony and gym), and if I would pay her 2x what I would pay a dog sitter, AND if I would be forced to buy her groceries for the stay. And not only that, every time she “pet sit” I would find damage, (e.g. an expensive lamp smashed, nail polish spilled all over the couch I had spent a month reupholstering by hand, my best dry-clean-only dress in a ball in the dryer.) So I see those times as yet another example of her toxic behavior and not something that a "loving sister" would do.
I know my parents are old and my time with them is limited, but I cannot handle being around this woman and I don’t know what to do. It seems like no one agrees with my decision to avoid things and they all see her as this poor innocent victim. In my parents eyes she is their baby (my dad’s 5th child, my mother’s 2nd) She is 30! She had night terrors when she was little and slept in my parents bed until she was a teenager and I think that their babying of her has contributed greatly to the fact that I am an independent successful career woman while they still pay for her cell phone. I know all families are difficult but I feel like if my sister was a man this type of behavior would not be OK! Am I supposed to “suck it up” and go to all of my family events despite the fact that they don’t stop this treatment??
TLDR: My younger sister has physically and verbally attacked me over the years, taken advantage of my home and my money, and never done anything in return. I am scared to be around her and am avoiding family events. Yet my family sees this as a fault with me, not her, and I don’t know if I'm in the wrong.
Submitted January 05, 2019 at 08:26PM by EyesOfTwoColors http://bit.ly/2QqM5B9
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