I (25f) may have let my resentment for my parents ruin my relationship with my sister(23f), and I don't know what kind of relationship to pursue with her now..

Some family context: I'm the oldest of 3 sisters. The sister in question is M (23f). Our other sister is special needs so our dynamic is different.

Our parents divorced when I was 5. We saw our Dad on weekends and lived with our Mom during the week as she had full custody. We were fortunate enough to live in a middle class neighborhood with access to a well resourced school, but suffered financially as it was above our means and caused a lot of stress growing up. Both of our parents struggle with mental health. Dad held down a job but sufferred from some type of psychosis and depression, which ultimately killed him this past March. Our Mom suffers from an alcohol addiction that sends her into rages, frequent absenteeism, and the inability to keep a steady paying job for more than a few months at a time.

When my sisters and I were little we fought with each other a lot and violently, over mostly stupid stuff (our parents disciplined us with hitting, and I think we internalized that the appropriate reaction to anger was violence as children). however we did spend a lot more time together at least.

Additionally, our parents always came down hard on me to be more responsible and mature (our special needs sister saw me as a second mom when we were little). My parents said that it was my responsibility to watch over my sisters because I was the oldest, even though we were all close in age. They call this parentification now I think ?

When I started school I really wanted to keep my school life separate from my family. I was unpopular, bullied, and embarrassed. I struggled to make friends until I was about 11. I didn't seek any type of solidarity or support with my sister, I just didn't share details about my life with her unless I had to. I don't know why I don't want to have that kind of relationship with her, but I just became uninterested in having a friendship with her beyond our family realm.

When I did start making friends and saw how their parents treated them, I became a very resentful preteen/teenager. My mom always made acting like a parent seem so difficult. It was hard for her to do more than provide us with our basic needs. It was hard for her to spend time with us, take us places, sign us up for activities. Work so financially things would be better. She loved us in her way, but it was always obvious that she didn't enjoy being a mother the way my friends mom's did, and I was / am angry at her for that. Combined with her drinking, she was all around unreliable /untrustworthy . We would make plans and she would show up hours later, drunk and mad at us because we were upset about missing our event. She never picked up the phone and left us alone at home so she could drink frequently when I was only 10. Later on she would get a DUI and be on probation for all of my highschool years. I was very involved in school activities and sports and we lived in a place where there was no infrastructure or public transportation. I had to talk teammates into giving me rides to games and eventually they would ask why my own mom, who doesn't work, couldn't take me places, and I would have to explain that she had her license taken away. It was humiliating. I hated that it felt like our Mom chose to make our lives harder.

Instead of finding solidarity with my siblings, I completely shut them out. I think I lumped them in with the rest of my family as a burden I had to endure until I could get some independence. I never wanted her to hang out with me and my friends and never sought her emotional support. She's always been immature for her age (still is), and I've always been mature for my age, so I never needed her support, but it didn't occur to me until she told me recently that she felt I wanted nothing to do with her that it occurred to me she may have wanted mine.

Now, we have no idea who each other are. It does not help that she and I are very different people. She is a very pretty, extroverted, performing arts/creative type. She enjoys cultivating her social media, doing make up, fashion. I am a very introverted, organized, reserved type person. I work as a project manager and spend all my time planning and organizing events, or reading and playing games online from time to time. I'm in shape and young so I'm not ugly, but I rarely focus on make up or take fashion risks, and I could care less about it. She interprets my quiet nature as cold and unfeeling. She's the type of person who needs to feel all of her emotions out loud and right away no matter the setting, where as I prefer to ruminate over them and push through the current situation before breaking down. She finds this deprave, while I find her method inconsiderate. We communicate terribly and often end up fighting over who treated who worse, whose fault is it that the relationship is sour.

I want to move forward, but we don't like who each other are. She thinks we should be like best friends, and I don't actually care to have that type of relationship with her. I'd for us to support each other through family things, get dinner sometimes, have something to talk about, but I don't need or want her emotional support at this point, and she's hurt by this, even though in the past it's come back as cruelty from her when she gets mad about something.

Anyone else let their childhood circumstances poison their sibling relationship? What did you do?

TL;DR: I resent my parents for finding it hard to do right by us and shut out my sister in the process, don't know how we can start to fix it now.

Submitted November 28, 2020 at 04:44AM by ThrowRA_2020reddit https://ift.tt/33sdJY5