To start: I am the youngest in my family. I’m 19, and my sister is about to turn 27. She has a child, and he is autistic. She got her license last week, and since I was 17, I’ve been giving her rides to get just about anywhere so I was very excited for her.
I was beginning to get frustrated at taking her everywhere, but I knew she just needed a bit of support so I tried to be there for her. She asked me a week before she got her license to practice driving with her, and I agreed. We were supposed to go driving from 1-3pm on Wednesday as I had a pretty busy schedule that day but I cut out time for her and moved things around.
She ended up getting her license a few days prior but still asked me to drive with her anyways so she could feel more confident. Again, I agreed.
Wednesday rolls around and I text her at 10am, no reply.
Then I call her twice, 11am, then 1pm when I was near her house. She’s about 25 minutes away from me. She never replied. I went home, waited, then at 9pm I texted my other sister and asked if she had heard from her and she hadn’t – so I called two more times.
I later found out the reason my sister didn’t return a text or call to me all day and left me hanging was because of a flat tire. I understood, but was still pretty bothered because the least she could have done is let me know she didn’t need me to come anymore.
I texted her to let her know I was feeling upset.
Her response angered me and like any sibling – I fought fire with fire and while I do regret how I spoke to her. I feel like I was mainly being honest. I said a few harsh lines that I wish I didn’t say, but nothing I said was written purely to hurt her, rather out of frustration. I know where I am in the wrong here.
My family has done a lot to help her, including me, and she has taken it for granted. Our father gave her $600 to have her license reinstated and he never heard a thank you. She has only held a job for max 3 months, to which she then quit because she felt disrespected. She has been living at a felon’s house with his parents. (I wanted to mention this because he literally kidnapped a woman and tried to stab someone. He is not safe.) We all know her situation is shitty and do our best to help her, like I said.
The reply she gave back to me was genuinely one of the cruelest things I’ve ever been told by her. Our relationship has been pretty good for a few years now so I was really just hurt. She took who I used to be when I was 13 and used that to hurt me, almost like she has no idea who I am now. Her one text was able to destroy my confidence and self esteem as a person. I have worked endlessly hard on who I am in therapy for YEARS. Since I was 13, I’ve made extreme improvements in my life and have taken full responsibility for it by paying the bills my father asks me to, keeping up with car maintenance, having a job, cleaning thoroughly and picking up after myself, helping around the house, and I will be starting school soon. The ONLY reason I am still at home is because my dad and I think it’s a better idea to stay at home while I’m enrolled in college and I will continue to work. So, again, what she said fully destroyed me. I worked hard and it suddenly felt like all of my work went out the window.
I feel like she just went too far. Maybe I did too, but I really feel like it got put on another level that it didn’t need to be at. I was going to reply back, and originally my first thought was to try and hurt her too, but there was nothing that I could even think to type out that even compared to what she had said. I just can’t imagine how you can say that to somebody. I’ve been distraught and honestly, sobbing all day. I don’t know what to do. I just told her not to talk to me again and she blocked me on everything.
Our family is already strained. I have 4 siblings. The eldest one passed away and my 2 other siblings don’t talk to the other one already.
I love my sister of course but with what she said it feels almost unforgivable and I am just not sure how to navigate this at all. 🙁
I wanted to include the texts, so here they are:
I texted: “Dawg. I cut out time out of my week to come pick you up and was expecting to. I called you four times and you straight up ghosted me all day while being active on FB. I had plans and worked around you to HELP YOU. That was extremely inconsiderate of you.”
She then replies: “I wasn’t on Facebook all day? I was trying to get a new tire and taking care of shit. Yesterday was an extremely hard day for me and I’m sorry I wasn’t able to answer the phone but it wasn’t intentional and I really don’t fucking appreciate the shit talking either. Instead of asking me if I was okay or not you just immediately got pissed off and started talking shit, that’s not me ghosting you. I won’t ask you for your help again.”
I replied: “Your hard days are not an excuse to treat people around you like shit and you needed to communicate that with me. You would have done this with anyone fucking else, like at your job to your manager or [her child]’s teachers. At your grown age ???? Are we serious? Don’t ask me for shit again because I won’t be helping you. I don’t deserve your mistreatment because “life is hard” Your tire went flat and you’re an adult. Figure your shit out.”
She replies: “Go fuck yourself [my name], you’re a hateful little bitch and I have 0 obligation to explain shit to you. You do nothing but talk shit and complain about everyone around you while you act like you’re better than everyone else. You’d rather hangout with maggots than lift a finger and clean something around the house you live in for free 😂 take a good look at yourself before you shit on everyone around you.”
And that was the last thing we really said to each other before I just said “ok, don’t talk to me.” and got blocked. I would really appreciate any advice I can get. I’m just crushed she feels this way about me.
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Sounds like there’s really nothing to do here right now, friend. You need to cool off. She needs to cool off. Put all this drama on the back burner and step away for a few weeks. Do some reflecting on what kind of relationship you want with your sister moving forward. Then see how you feel after that. Maybe then you’ll be ready to ask your sister if she wants to talk about it. Or maybe not. Either way is fine. But the first step needs to be walking away and just chilling out. It seems like a relatively simple issue blew way out of proportion and you won’t be able to solve anything while you’re still so upset.
The words are said and done can’t beat yourself up over it too much. The bigger problem here is that it seems people in your family, including you, continue to go out of your way for her when she doesn’t appreciate it and doesn’t act like it’s a favor. She’s come to expect it. Her response was toxic and lacked accountability. Her words and lashing out are very common when you hold someone accountable for their actions like you did, harsh words on your behalf or not. I would refrain from helping her. I would keep your distance. It’s not your job to keep your family together. Strained family relations happen sometimes and it’s not your fault.
Are you seeing a therapist? It might help to see someone to process your family relationship and to set healthy boundaries with people like your sister.
As a general rule, when it comes to people who have issues keeping their lives together, don’t use that against them if you want them to stay on good terms with you. They usually know the score, and are often very defensive and emotional about it. You shouldn’t have acted like she was intentionally ghosting you, you definitely shouldn’t have said she was on facebook all day. That’s what set her off, because from her perspective, she’s been doing responsible shit (and probably genuinely didn’t see your attempts to contact her) all day and you’re accusing her of loafing. And yeah, she was snippy, but your very first message was accusations.
And then you fucking threw a haymaker. It seems like you were very deliberate in picking things you know she’s sensitive about. It was no longer about one incident. You were berating her. You sure look like you were trying to hurt her. So she went for it, too.
And yes, she did the same thing to you. And she was thoughtless to leave you hanging with no explanation. But fights like this don’t happen because people really believe what they’re saying. Fights like this happen because someone hit on a weakness that the other was already insecure about (intentionally or otherwise), and then both sides continually escalated it because they felt hurt and now want to hurt the other.
I watched my mother do this with her sisters for twenty years. Trust me, it’s not worth it. My advice: apologize for coming on strong initially, and especially apologize for the text laser-focused on making her feel like a piece of shit.
She’s a shitty person
You had every right to be annoyed. She needed to apologize and show gratitude, not be salty and defensive
Look how much easier your life is without her bullshit
Well, that is a massive overreaction by everyone. She should have called but you didn’t have to be rude and she didn’t have to be rude back. If that is the actual unedited messages then you need a new therapist because this one isn’t working. The message isn’t even bad and certainly shouldn’t be able to ruin 6 years of working on yourself.
Why do you get to assume that all of your responses are fine because of your intent (not purely to hurt, but out of frustration) but hers are automatically malicious. Hilarious considering you tried deliberately to think of something mean enough to hurt her just as bad but couldn’t.