TLDR: do i go to my sisters graduation, who i have a terrible relationship with, and inconvenience myself with the driving so i can make it to my boyfriends? or do I just go to my boyfriends and skip hers?
basically, my boyfriend of 8 months graduates saturday afternoon in Cincinnati and my sister graduates friday evening in Pittsburgh. If I want to make it to both Id have to drive five hours from pittsburgh to cincy, where I live, overnight so I have time to unwind and get ready for his grad. Or I could drive the next morning for five hours then go straight to his graduation after that drive. overall it’s a huge inconvenience and sounds like hell. this doesn’t include the two hour drive from my parents house, where i’m staying this week, to pittsburgh.
my boyfriend and i are very close, and he’s going though a lot right now. i think me being at his graduation would mean a lot, and i really want to be there for him, I love him very much.
now for context, my sister and i have a terrible
relationship. she really wants me there because she has absolutely no one, she’s pushed everyone out of her life. including me, but i’m family so i guess she still tries to have a relationship with me. she is extremely emotionally abusive and genuinely ruined my mental health as we grew up together. i didn’t realize how bad it was until she moved out for college and i was free and could recognize the anxiety i felt every day at home was a byproduct of her. she is a terrible person, she takes every insecurity she knows about me and uses it against me to instigate. she has threatened to kill me multiple times. summer of 2023 i will never forget, she assaulted me then called the cops on me to try to get me booked into a psych hospital because i had previously confided in her that i was doing terrible mentally but did not want to go to an inpatient center because i thought it would ruin my life.
she was supposed to graduate last year, but got addicted to painkillers and took a year of medical leave. she has had many medical issues and surgeries that got her to be addicted and began pulling stints at the ER to try to get more, using my mom and i as collateral. during this time, she stayed at home and genuinely tortured my parents and I. she called the cops on my mom multiple times to claim that my mom was stealing her drugs, she was violent and downright scary. she had to be admitted to inpatient.
the whole dilemma i’m facing is very silly as it’s really just about having to make a long drive, which i do frequently to come visit my parents. but i’ve done night drives after a full day and it was so bad, i thought i was getting tunnel vision. but it comes down to me not considering this inconvenience to be worth her feelings. my parents have told me that it would mean a lot to her now that she’s on the right track for me to support her, but i just genuinely don’t care. she never owned up to anything she did EVER. still won’t admit she had an addiction. and because of that i’m a person who values accountability highly, which she has none of. i know she was very mentally unwell all the times she treated me bad, but i live by the idea that that is an explanation but not an excuse. they also say that me not showing up would throw her off her path. and that in 10 years maybe i will want a relationship with her.
this whole situation is really only complicated because it brings up so many deep seated feelings that i have to confront. i don’t want a relationship with her right now, ive ghosted her on everything for well over a year. I want to be there for my parents, but not her. just seeing her pisses me off. i really only care about what my family would think of me if
i didn’t go, and i do still feel empathy for her so i would feel bad.
I don’t know what to do. do i suck it up and go to both? do i skip hers and just go to my boyfriends? or do i skip his and go to hers?
it almost feels like not going to hers would be a way of setting a boundary for myself, as ultimately it’s up to me.