Me [26F] with my family [20s/50s m/f], I am being called a bad person because I don't want to financially help my parents and sister

TL;DR spent years being the good daughter and trying my best to do everything right, parents only ever focused on my trouble making siblings and need me to help, I don't want to do it but I feel like I should because they're family

some backstory: I am one of five siblings. I have an older brother, I'm the second oldest and the other 3 are my younger brother and two sisters. Growing up my parents worked a lot and made a great amount of money. However when they were home they had to deal with my older and younger brothers as well as one of my sisters and so never had much time for my younger sister and I.

My trouble making siblings did everything from skipping class/school, fighting, having some really shady friends to doing drugs. My sister would trade sex for weed, my older brother had anger issues and would pick fights with people and was a bully though never to us. All sorts of stuff which probably made my parents go grey earlier than they should.

In contrast I tried to be the good daughter, helped out, studied and got good grades, even used my own money from my pay from age 16 to help out if my parents needed it though they really didn't. But they never had time for me or my sister and I grew resentful, they couldn't make it to parent teacher meetings because they were dealing with my siblings, we couldn't get christmas presents some years because 1 or several of my siblings were in trouble. I couldn't even get the fee to do martial arts or tennis because they were busy with my siblings.

So I grew up resenting my siblings for basically taking all my parents time and a lot of money while never getting any sort of recognition. I finally cracked and asked my mom about that when I was 20 and she just kind of hesitated to give me an answer but tried reassuring me that my sister and I were not the sort of kids who needed 'help' or needed my parents constant attention. OK fine but some attention would have been nice. I remember there were times I had award ceremonies at school that my parents didn't attend but if one of my siblings improved from a D to a C my parents would talk about that for weeks and say they needed encouragement so they'd improve more.

So I went off to college, did my thing, earned a couple degrees and at this point I have a pretty great job that pays well. I've sort of distanced myself from my family because nothing I do would ever get any sort of recognition and yes, I wanted that. I helped my parents out a couple years ago with some big bills that screwed my savings up which I'd been working on but I've made great progress since then at rebuilding. My parents are not as successful as they used to be, aside from poor saving habits/lavishing my delinquent siblings anytime they did something even a bit right, things took a turn for the worse in my country and they were among a large number of people who were laid off and struggling to get jobs in their field of work.

My sister got into some trouble recently and my parents are asking if I would pay for it. I thought about it but said no, I'm glad my sister has sort of gotten herself together but she still has a lot of bad habits and I want no part in the hand holding my parents constantly did for her and my brothers in our younger years. My parents also fell into some problems with some payments they can't make and want my help; in total, all of that would cost upwards of 100 thousand. I have the money and I'm not using it for anything in particular right now, my debts are all settled and so on. But I'm just tired and it feels like the only time in my life my parents have ever given me attention is when they need something from me. And of course it's not just them but my sister too. I refused and one brother called me and yelled at me for like 45 minutes. That's the older aggressive one and the only reason I'm sure he hasn't shown up where I live is because I moved some months back and my family hasn't been to my apartment since. I don't think it's surprising I don't care to invite them. My other brother is very disappointed and at least two aunts and one uncle have all expressed some kind of disappointment. FFS those are your brother/sister/niece, why don't you help them?

I love my family, I really do but I am exhausted with trying to get their attention and don't want to help them despite them badly needing it. Not going to lie it feels satisfying to see them squirm and I don't really care if someone considers me horrible for it.

And as sad as it is I don't want them completely out of my life? I'm sorry for this post getting so long but I am very uncertain about how to deal with this situation and my own feelings about it and them.

What should I do?

Submitted November 30, 2018 at 05:10AM by shitfamilythrowawayy https://ift.tt/2DSliuZ