family means much more than just blood

I just need to vent right now.

My family is dysfunctional. My dad is more than seventy years old, he’s had a shitty life and a family before us. Five children that don’t talk to him at all, and he’s grown to hate them. Mom and dad grew apart, too. They no longer sleep on the same bed, and they don’t love each other any more, but they have respect.

Let me tell you a story. It will sound biased but it’s the truth. My sister treats people like shit. For years she verbally abused me. I do not know how it started, but it just did. And didn’t stop. “Hey, maybe it’s just teens being teens”. She’s 20 now. Hasn’t changed a single thing. She would get mad at everyone and stop talking. She would ignore you. Make sarcastic remarks. When I was 11, every day she would call me mentally ill and retarded. I tried to cheer her up, to no avail. Dad didn’t understand her, thought she hated him, so he didn’t treat her well when she was angry. So she started to despise him. She got in contact with his former family and talked to them when she was fourteen. Apparently they filled her mind with stories about my dad.

She’s so double-faced. She will treat you like shit for weeks, and even months in the worst years, and then one day she’ll be in a good mood. She will be the most fun and sympathetic person. Until one day, it goes back to normal. I used to think that “normal” was “good-mood”, so I just hoped that she would talk to me again. I cared for her. I loved her. Most hurtful thing? When she has company, she’ll treat you well, even if she’s angry as fuck to you. Why does it hurt me so much? Because I know it’s fake. That person that is helping you, smiling at you, joking with you – she doesn’t mean it. You love her but she doesn’t love you back. The second the visitor leaves she’ll treat you like scum again.

And it isn’t just me she’s treated like this. She’s lost a lot of friends because of this. I do not know the exact reasons, but over the years she hangs out with different people. One time, I talked with a former friend of hers – something I probably shouldn’t have done – and she asked me about her mood swings. “Is she having problems at home?” I thought the opposite. Some days she went to school in a good mood and came back entirely different. And it started – it wasn’t about you. You didn’t make her angry. But she wouldn’t talk to you any more.

I tried talking to her. Mom tried, to. She just closes herself – she won’t listen to anyone. She’ll storm out and leave the room, yell at you, everything. You’re just trying to help her, because someone who behaves like that is clearly not happy. It’s just useless. Over the years you learn that she’ll eventually figure it out on her own. But I don’t see that happening any time soon.

After many years, I finally realised that she doesn’t care about me. Never did, never will. I tried to stay angry at her, like she did, to show her how that made me feel. But it didn’t work: for one, she didn’t show interested, and second, I loved her too much to do that. She hates my dad so much she’s becoming like him.

She mistreats my dad, my mom, my sister and everyone I care about, including my girlfriend and friends. When I invite friends over, and she’s in her usual mood, she’ll ignore the hell out of them. “Hi”, my friend says, and she just ignores him. She makes them feel uncomfortable. And it’s so well-known, that sometimes my friends joke about it (we’re in a group and someone asks me if she hates them, and they all start talking about it).

Things have changed. I don’t talk to her at all (not that she wants to, either). I won’t accept someone like that into my life. I don’t give a damn if she has the same blood as I do, or the same parents. Our values are entirely different.

She has a twitter account, and sometimes uses it to bash the family (because that looks so nice, you know?). What got me so mad and into writing this is that she posted “What makes me angry is that you don’t deserve it. She paid a lot and no, you do not deserve it.” She refers to a digital piano we bought recently. I’ve been learning piano for about a month or so. Mom used to play piano a lot, and wants to play again. Dad wanted to buy a piano a few years ago to learn, and he wants to learn now still. Dad paid for it (she believes mom paid). I WILL refund my dad, I’m working so I can pay him. It’s not like our mother, against her will, bought it because I made her. I talked about the piano to my dad and HE offered to pay for it, I said no, and he INSISTED, because he WANTED to buy it. What makes me so angry is how she thinks about me, and she’s entirely wrong, because she’s so detached from the family she knows nothing any more.

I’m actually mad. I’m usually a calm person, and she is the only one that can get me this frustrated, angry, and sad at the same time. It makes me sad because I only have one sister in the world, and some years from now she’ll be my whole family, and I won’t have a relationship with her. Our parents came from a similar situation, and I promised myself that my life would be different, and much better (learning from their mistakes, right?). But the world is crumbling before me, my expectations are far from reality. I don’t want to become a part of the vicious circle that is my family, I want to break it and I want to be happy. Because no one here seems to be.