I've turned the other cheek for years now with my sister and mother, but I can't keep doing this anymore. Help me get out. More details inside.
I don't really have anyone good to get an outside perspective on this, so I'm hoping Ask MeFi can come through for me. There's a lot of context to try to summarize, so appreciate it if you end up reading this whole thing.
I've always had a pretty strained relationship with my sister and mother, who are both very similar people and both very close to one another. My family went through a really nasty divorce over 10 years ago and the side I'm closest to has definitely moved on past this and doesn't dwell on it, but my mom has never been able to fully recover from it. I am closer to my dad's side of the family and she's convinced they have poisoned me against her, when in reality there's a whole bunch of reasons I can't connect with her properly.
My mom has had significant financial struggles since the divorce and also keeps getting into emotionally abusive relationships and has done so since I've been in high school. As a consequence of that, I've really struggled to connect with her on anything, I was exposed to a lot of shit I just wish I hadn't had to go through, and she was largely an absent parent when I needed her. While we can connect on a few grounds (a love for nature and animals), I honestly feel like her foil a lot of the time - non-religious, not concerned with how I look, not constantly focusing on men, leftist, independent, etc. I can rarely think of things to talk with her about. My mom and her experiences are basically the reason I'm a feminist...and not for the usual reasons people say this.
I try to be a good daughter and help her through all her problems...but honestly, it's been over ten years of "having a bad year" for her and pouring myself into her issues feels like shoveling in a bottomless hole. It is not a reciprocal relationship at all. Honestly, when I describe my relationship with my mom to others, it's like describing having to parent HER. I do things like give her basic life advice about men all the time and she usually ends up doing the exact opposite, causing more pain and drama to deal with. For the sake of brevity in explaining all this, I'll just say I have effectively compartmentalized everything to do with her into a neat box because emotionally investing in it too much would basically make me go insane. I care about her, but it's just really, really difficult.
My sister is very close to her. They operate a lot like a unit, most of the time. My sister and I can connect on some grounds of mutual interests and can hang out and visit with one another, but there's also a long history of her being physically and mentally abusive towards me. There is a constant underlying animosity and jealousy towards me and she is always seems to want to put me down. I have literally never heard her apologize for anything she's done to me, ever. For as long as I can remember, she's been able to get away with things by being such a pain in the ass that people give in to what she wants because it's just easier. This all seems to have been worse lately, particularly because she just got married. A mix of me being busy, super depressed, financially struggling, and medicated to the point of not really feeling things deeply anymore (in addition to just being a really different person than her) basically made it so I apparently wasn't as excited about her wedding as she wanted me to be, yet she's never checked in on me and instantly goes into attack mode if I don't live up to her expectations. In the past six months she's basically only contacted me to shame me over things, specifically related to helping my mom, who is going through an abnormally shitty time right now. My sister has also repeatedly insulted me on a deeply personal level and completely diverted when I tried to hold her accountable for that. She does not self-reflect, nothing I ever do makes her happy, and she always seems to assume the worst of me. I am exhausted.
I have turned the other cheek and tolerated all this for years now just to keep the peace. But I just don't know how to step away, particularly because it's not currently like there's a singular event or overt conflict to point towards for why I just can't take this anymore. It's not a checkers game like they seem to think, it's like an ongoing chess game where the board has been stewing in gross sarcophagus juice for like the past 15 years. Everything's been poisoned but I'm still expected to come at things at 100% for them.
I'm 25 now and trying to deal with all this has seemingly come to a head. It was easier when I had the excuse of college busyness and several hours between us, but I moved back close to home following graduation. Recently, as I mentioned my mom has been going through some extra hard times (a divorce and my grandma/her mom being on the precipice of losing a prolonged battle with cancer) and I've been trying to help when I can, but I don't really have the resources to help out like my sister can. Since graduating college I've been going through both major depression and consistent under/unemployment. Sometimes my mom has checked in on me over the course of the last couple years, but it's rare and almost always glazed in immense layer of guilt. I don't know why, but it makes it even worse to try to reach out to her now, when she especially needs it. I need help and advice, because spending any prolonged period of time with these two seriously makes me contemplate moving far away from home. I'm trying to balance familial obligations, being a good person, and my own needs and it's consistently just hurt me or sucked me dry over and over again. I don't know what to do anymore. |
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