I’m 21f and my sister is 28. Since we were young, she’s been mean to me. She would call me fat, ugly, or weird, and spit on me for years. She was just a young girl and was “joking” but because of our age gap I didn’t really understand it and it wasn’t funny. To this day she still comments on my appearance in front of everybody. She will still tell me I’m pale, have a big head, a double chin, flat chest, etc. Nobody ever stands up for me in these moments.
Thus me and my sister’s relationship has been rocky throughout the years and I’ve always had a blockage from feeling any real closeness to her. When I was 17, I moved out of my parents’ house and in with a boyfriend, which proved to be a terrible idea in the end and put me through the worst points of my life. (Financially abused so i was trapped, neglected, every boundary pushed, lied to on so many levels, etc.)
During these times i would go to my family for support, but at one point my sister told me she felt like giving up on me, despite her having been through the exact same thing and that’s definitely not the kind of response I gave her. I am a sensitive person who loves deep, there are just certain things I wouldn’t ever think to say to anybody, let alone my sister. This is where I believe my sister and I naturally differ in not only personality, but morals.
We are completely opposite. She is extremely extroverted and never been comfortable being alone, and she’s told me multiple times she thinks there’s something fundamentally wrong with introverts. I think this is mostly where her attitude of me needing “fixed” and being a “weirdo” comes from. We are just so different and it seems she can’t accept me for who I am. I’m artsy, she’s sporty. She thinks my hobbies and interests are weird. I show her my favorite song and she tells me it’s the worst thing she’s ever heard. I show her my art im most proud of and she calls it weird. I am expected to be interested and participate in her hobbies like volleyball, board games, and constantly being forced to “break out of my shell.” But she would never entertain any of my interests like playing video games, doing yoga, or just smoking a blunt. I come out feeling cute and she comments on my outfit/makeup/physical traits I can’t control. She also thinks I do “weird” things for attention that are actually just parts of who I am.
This has resulted in me not picking up most of her calls and not responding to her texts very well within the past few years. She is extremely angry at me for this and brings it up everytime I see her. She will get butthurt if I can’t hang out even if it’s because I’m at work or something where i literally can’t make it.
Anyways that’s just some backstory to what has now been my final straw with her. She got engaged and asked me to be her maid of honor. I’ve been a bridesmaid in a couple of weddings before and everything was paid for by the bride. I really just didn’t know maids of honor were expected to pay for certain things because I never had to before.
So I accepted being her maid of honor not knowing the financial toll that was expected and she didn’t warn me at all. My sister knows I’m broke right now. The economy sucks, I’m paying for college and an apprenticeship in full out of pocket, and I had all my savings stolen from me. Despite her knowing this, she made a group chat with all the bridesmaids and all the costs just started adding up little by little. At first I didn’t mind spending a little money because ofc i wanted to make her wedding special. It was $100+ for my dress, $135 for hair, over $1000 for Bach weekend trip, another $100 on decorations, and I still have to buy shoes for the wedding and more decorations for the shower coming up. All the bridesmaids split my sister’s expenses so she didn’t have to pay ANYTHING for Bach weekend. I agreed and paid everything because I felt I had to be there as maid of honor.
So we showed up to carpool to our Airbnb, and my sister instantly started with me. She came with her hair curled and I told her it looked pretty and asked her how she did it. She looked at me and said so snappy “what do you mean how did I do it?”
I said, “like did you use a curling wand or what?”
She replies, “what the hell is a wand… you mean a rod?”
And I was like, “yea sorry whatever it’s called”
And she’s like “yea obviously??? I’m so confused wtf?”
She did this in front of everybody so I instantly just went quiet and shy. I was just trying to compliment her, the reason I asked what she used is because i thought they could’ve been heatless curls. I didn’t bother explaining that to her and just kept quiet for most of the 2 hour ride to our Airbnb.
I try to get over this as we’re on our way to the Airbnb, but then we stopped at a gas station on our way. I have always wanted to try those old smokies sipping moonshine jars but never ended up buying any, but this gas station had them as little shots which I had never seen before for only $2.39 so I thought it would be perfect time to try a little sample. Everyone was in a huge rush so I asked my sister “hey I left my ID in the car can you buy me one of these?” I was in the middle of telling her I was going to pay her back in the car when she interrupted me and said firmly, “I don’t have any money for this trip.”
This honestly made my blood boil. I am the one who didnt have money for the trip. She is the one who got all her expenses paid for. Since bach weekend that was a month ago she has also taken a week long vacation to Colombia and has one to Italy in a couple months. She is the most religious person you’ve ever met but wont spend a couple dollars on her little sister who just spent my entire savings account to make her wedding special. She is so materialistic. She is having a big beautiful wedding in a mansion, she lives in a big beautiful house, buys fancy clothes, is always on the go doing expensive activities and eating out, she’s not exactly struggling. She is ALWAYS spending money.
She’s also had 7 more years of life than me to establish herself and her savings, and also started her adulthood in a better economy than me. This was just so selfish. I have friends who would give me their last $2. My sister scoffed at me like I was insane for asking the bride to buy me anything. I was literally going to pay her back. I feel she has just used her friends and family to subsidize her wedding and make it as picture perfect as possible. She has asked broke family members to spend so much extra money on her for no other reason than “she’s the bride”
This snobby behavior never stopped through the whole weekend. I just kept getting more and more quiet because I was so over exhausted from constantly having to defend myself or over explain what I actually mean because my sister is waiting to leap on an opportunity to make me look stupid in every conversation. I ended up crying myself to sleep 2/3 nights we spent there because I was just made to feel embarrassed of who I was.
Because I kept getting more quiet, my sister kept pointing it out more in front of everybody. I would be sitting and listening and there were multiple times my sister was like “wow you’re a more quiet person than I thought, can you talk more?” Which just made me red in the face with everyone staring at me (a shy habit I had gotten over for years before this trip with my sister that really triggered a lot of old feelings in me) to the point that I’m beginning to wonder if my sister is part of the reason im so meek in the first place.
She had also asked us to set up a lingere activity where we all bought her a set and she tried to guess who bought what. Afterwards she had pulled me aside to start talking shit about how one of the bridesmaids set was cheap. I replied saying “mine is too” and she tried to save face by saying “no, but yours is nice, hers is like actually cheap.” I kind of just changed the subject to something more positive because she did receive a Victoria’s Secret sparkly bra and panty set easily worth $80+ that I pointed out she should be grateful for. I was angry but biting my tongue to not ruin her trip.
Throughout the entire trip she was constantly doing this pulling people aside to talk shit about someone else in the group thing. One of these times being her coming into my room at 12 am to talk about how annoying some of the other girls have been during the trip and that she doesn’t agree with some of their religious views. We spoke back and forth for a short while before a lot of the other girls started coming in and joining the gossip session on 2 of the girls who were asleep in their rooms.
The other girls kept looking at me weirdly because I wasn’t engaged much in the conversation. I was tired and didn’t care. Because of this, they ended up all going to a different room where I could hear them whispering about me. I texted my sister and asked what they were talking about, she said “oh just stories of when we were drunk lol” like I’m stupid and gonna believe that. I didn’t reply and just went to bed upset.
There was also an instance during the trip where we went to dinner and my sister in front of everybody said “I want to tell you guys about my sister.” She started it off nicely saying, “she’s beautiful, the most hilarious person you’ll ever meet.” She paused and I was sitting there so happy before she finished the rest. It was something along the lines of “But she’s also a weirdo and never responds to anybody and gets mad if you show up at her doorstep because she’s not responding to your texts and can definitely be a little bit of a bitch which is why she’s still single.”
I just rolled my eyes and said okay. I let everybody sit in the silence and I’m pretty sure they actually felt kind of bad for me in the moment but also didn’t have the balls to stand up to bridezilla on her special bach weekend trip.
Guys this is only a handful of things she did during the weekend. There’s so much more that happened where she was just insanely rude for no reason but I know this is already so long. I still am expected to write and perform a speech at her wedding reception but I just don’t have any positive feelings towards her. She asked me to watch her cats during her trip to Colombia and paid me absolutely nothing for it. (I’m a professional pet sitter for a living and she’s usually paid me at least something in the past.)
Her and I have always had our issues but since she got engaged they’ve been exasperated. I am thinking about doing the wedding since I’ve already paid for so much of it and then honestly cutting her off and never speaking to her again because I cannot understand or tolerate her behavior. She is too old and smart to have any excuse to act so mean and I really just feel she doesn’t like me no matter how hard I’ve tried to perform for her throughout my life.