u/resentful_heart

\*\*TL;DR;\*\* : I(20f) decided to take some space from my older sister(36f) after she betrayed my trust. Now I feel like a horrible human being that feels easy to cut people off, even family members.

This is connected to my other two posts about my family because after my relationship with my brother completely shattered, I started relying heavily on one of my older sisters emotionally.
And honestly I think losing her hurt me almost just as badly.

After me(20f) and my brother(22m) stopped speaking, I felt incredibly alone inside my family.

I already struggled trusting people because of the way I grew up. Everything in my house always felt emotionally tense. Secrets. Silence. Judgment. People talking about each other behind closed doors. People pretending things were okay when they weren’t.

But my older sister(36f) felt different.

She felt safe.

She was the only older sister I genuinely felt emotionally comfortable opening up to.

She knew everything about me.

She knew how badly my breakup destroyed me mentally. She knew about the resentment and guilt I carried involving my brother. She knew how trapped and sheltered I felt growing up. She knew how exhausted I was mentally from constantly trying to be the “good daughter.”

And during my relationship with my ex-boyfriend, I made a lot of stupid decisions that I deeply regret now.

I gave him large amounts of money because I loved him and genuinely believed in him. I rented Airbnbs so we could spend time together privately because my parents were extremely strict. I lied to my parents saying I was working when really I was spending weekends with him. I skipped school with him sometimes during high school.

There were also more personal things she knew that I had never told anybody else.

Things I trusted her with because I genuinely believed she would never use them against me or expose me.

I remember going to her house with him sometimes because she would encourage me to “work things out” with him whenever we fought. She knew how emotionally attached I was to him even though the relationship was destroying me mentally.

Then when we finally broke up, I completely fell apart.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that breakup ruined me emotionally.

I remember crying almost every day. Feeling physically sick from heartbreak. Not eating properly. Rotting in bed. Wanting him back even though I knew the relationship was toxic.
And during that time, my sister became protective and angry at him.

Without telling me first, she messaged him confronting him and demanding he give me back the money I spent on him.

But the problem was… at the time I still loved him.
I still wanted him back.

So instead of feeling protected, I felt exposed and embarrassed.

Eventually me and him briefly started talking again before fully ending things later.
Then months later, my mom suddenly started acting weird around me.

I remember her saying she had “heard things” about me.

And immediately my stomach dropped.
I remember feeling my chest get tight instantly because I already knew.

I knew somebody told her things I had never told her myself.

So I confronted my sister.

I remember texting her asking her directly what she told my mom about me.

About my life. My business. The things I trusted her with.

And honestly I don’t think I’ll ever forget that conversation.

She admitted she told my mom some things involving my ex-boyfriend. The money I spent on him. The fact I “did everything” for him. The fact I got places for us to stay.

But what hurt me the most wasn’t even just the fact she told her.

It was the way she defended herself afterward.
I remember her basically saying that if she REALLY wanted to hurt me, she could’ve said worse things.

Meaning she could’ve exposed even more personal things she knew about me.

Things involving my relationship. Things involving high school. Things I trusted her with because I thought she was the one person in my family who wouldn’t judge me.

I remember sitting there shaking from anxiety reading those messages.

I remember feeling physically sick.

Because suddenly every conversation we ever had stopped feeling safe.

Every vulnerable thing I had ever confessed to her started replaying in my head.

I started wondering if she secretly judged me the whole time. If my family secretly talked about me behind my back. If my parents suddenly viewed me as dirty or irresponsible now.

Especially because in my family, reputation means everything.

Being the “good daughter” means everything.
And I already felt like I destroyed that image years ago after what happened with my brother.

The anxiety this caused me was horrible.
I genuinely became terrified my parents were going to take away my car, stop helping me financially, use my dreams against me, or force me to suddenly figure everything out on my own.
Because despite being 20, I still depend on my parents financially for a lot.

Tuition. Car insurance. Groceries. Basic living things.

And at the time my work hours were unstable, I had barely any savings, and my second job hadn’t fully started yet.

I felt trapped.

Like my entire future could collapse because private things I trusted someone with were suddenly becoming family discussion.
The worst part is I genuinely don’t think my sister was trying to destroy me maliciously.
I think she thought she was helping or protecting me in her own way.

But the trust still broke.

And once trust breaks in a family like mine, it changes everything.

I remember eventually sending her a long message telling her I loved her but needed distance because the trust between us felt shattered now.

That was three months ago.

And we haven’t spoken since.

Honestly I think that’s what hurts the most.
Because after losing my relationship with my brother, I truly believed she was the one person in my family I still emotionally had left.
Now I feel emotionally unsafe with almost everybody in my family.

I barely tell anyone personal things anymore.
I constantly feel watched. Judged. Observed.
Like any mistake I make will eventually become family conversation.

And honestly I think growing up in this environment made me terrified of vulnerability altogether.

I think people assume once you become an adult things magically get easier, but honestly I think I’m just tired now.

Tired mentally. Tired emotionally. Tired of carrying responsibilities all the time.
Because now at 20 years old, I’m trying to balance college full-time, working part-time, helping raise a child, helping my parents constantly, figuring out my future, and still dealing with all the emotional damage from everything that happened growing up.
And sometimes I genuinely feel like I’m drowning under the weight of everybody else’s expectations of me.

I made another post explaining what my life looks like now because I honestly think years of family trauma and pressure are finally catching up to me.

This is connected to my first post about my childhood/family trauma because I think what happened here finally destroyed whatever relationship me and my brother still had left after years of resentment, fear, and emotional damage in our family.

After everything that happened in our childhood, me and my brother still somehow managed to coexist. Things were awkward sometimes, but I still loved him. I still tried.

Then after high school, I went through my first real heartbreak.

I had just gotten out of a long toxic relationship with my ex-boyfriend. That relationship completely ruined me mentally and emotionally. I felt devastated, embarrassed, desperate, lonely. I didn’t want to be home. I didn’t want to think. I just wanted to stop feeling miserable for one night.

At the time, my brother had a girlfriend whose family partied a lot and drank a lot. I remember begging him to get me alcohol because I wanted to drink and forget everything for a little while.
Instead, he took me with him to his girlfriend’s family party.

At first, it was actually fun.

There was music playing. People laughing loudly. Everyone drinking. It felt loud and warm and distracting in a way I needed at the time. I remember finally laughing a little after crying for weeks over my breakup.

Then her younger brother started giving me drinks.

Shots. Mixed drinks. Random things.

I wasn’t blackout drunk or anything, but I was definitely emotional and vulnerable. I remember feeling sad underneath everything. Like I was trying really hard to act okay while still grieving my relationship.

At some point I made the mistake of going back inside the house with him away from the party. We sat on the couch together.
And I kissed him.

Or he kissed me. Honestly I don’t even know anymore. I just know I kissed back.

And I regret that so much because I feel like that one moment changed everything.

Afterwards he started trying to touch me more and do more physically, but I remember immediately becoming uncomfortable. I kept pushing his hands away. Moving away from him. Trying to stop things from going further.
I didn’t want that.

I was literally on my period too, which made me even more uncomfortable with someone touching me like that.

Then my brother came inside with his girlfriend and noticed what was happening.

At first, he got protective.

I remember him getting angry and tense immediately because he could tell I was uncomfortable and trying to push the guy away. Everything became awkward and chaotic after that.

But the moment he found out I had kissed him earlier, everything changed.

It was like the concern disappeared instantly.
Suddenly I wasn’t someone uncomfortable anymore. Suddenly I was just “a slut.”
I remember leaving the party and getting inside the car.

And then he exploded.

Screaming at me. Calling me disgusting. Calling me a slut. Asking me why I would do something like that at his girlfriend’s family’s house.
Then he grabbed my hair and shook me.
I still remember the feeling of sitting there trapped in that car while he screamed at me.
And honestly I think something inside me broke that night.

Not just because of the screaming or the insults, but because it confirmed something I had always quietly felt growing up:

That as a girl, especially in my family, your value disappears the second people think you’ve done something “wrong.”

I think that moment destroyed years of trying to be “the perfect daughter.”

After that, me and my brother stopped speaking almost completely.

It’s been three years now.

And somehow my parents still constantly pressure me to forgive him. To “be the bigger person.” To fix things. To talk to him first.
But I genuinely don’t know how.

Things can’t just “go back to normal” because normal doesn’t exist anymore.

The worst part is that despite everything, I still feel guilty.

Guilty for kissing him back. Guilty for putting myself in that situation. Guilty for still harboring resentment toward my brother after everything our family already survived.

But another part of me is angry because I genuinely believe no matter what mistake I made that night, I still didn’t deserve what happened afterward.

And honestly, I think losing my relationship with my brother affected me more than I admit.
Especially because later on, I started relying heavily on one of my older sisters emotionally after all this happened, and that relationship eventually shattered too for completely different reasons.

I made another post explaining that situation because I think that betrayal affected me deeply too.

I think I’m finally realizing how much my childhood actually affected me. I think it’s shaping me into a resentful and angry person. I want to finally get this off my chest after many years of harboring this.

When I was little, everything felt normal. I remember being happy. I remember my old elementary school and how nice it felt. I remember being excited to go to school and just feeling like a normal kid.

Then one morning everything changed.

I remember waking up to screaming. Not normal yelling. Screaming. Crying hysterically.

It was my older brother screaming that he didn’t want to go to school.

I remember laying there confused trying to understand what was happening. I remember my mom trying to get him out of the car while he screamed and cried that he didn’t want to go. I remember her dropping us off and me having to walk into school alone while hearing him screaming behind me from the parking lot because he refused to get out of the car.

That memory has stayed in my head for years. Sometimes it still shows up in nightmares.

After that, everything changed so fast.

I stopped going to school regularly. We switched schools. My house suddenly felt heavy all the time. Constant crying. Constant stress. Constant tension. My mom crying in her room. My brother screaming and crying. Silence filling the house afterwards. My dad barely being home because he worked out of town almost all the time except weekends. My sisters never really being home either.

I remember just feeling confused all the time.

Then suddenly I was spending my days in courthouses.

I remember this small yellow room in the courthouse where they would take the little kids that couldn’t sit inside the courtroom. I spent almost all of second grade in that room alone watching old Disney movies on one of those giant box TVs with the huge movie discs.

I still remember the yellow walls. The old toys. The smell of the room. Sitting there by myself for hours not understanding why my life suddenly felt so weird and scary.

Later I finally found out what had happened.

My bother was being SA’d, and was being threatened to harm me…

Everything in my family revolved around that afterward, which I understand now, but as a child I just felt invisible.

I developed horrible anxiety and panic attacks. I remember screaming and crying not wanting to go to a new school because I wanted my old life back so badly. I wanted everything to go back to normal.

As I got older, I became obsessed with being “the perfect child.”

I played violin. Did robotics. Got good grades. Did whatever my parents asked. Helped around the house constantly. I think part of me genuinely believed that if I became perfect enough maybe my parents would finally look at me the same way they looked at my brother.

And this is the part that makes me feel horrible.

I started building resentment toward him.

I know what happened to him was not his fault. I know that. And I hate myself for even feeling resentment because of it.

But after everything happened, our entire lives changed because of fear.

My parents never let us go out. No sleepovers. No field trips. No going places. No normal teenage freedom. They were terrified something bad would happen again.

And I understood why they were scared, but at the same time I would look at other kids living normal happy lives while I felt trapped inside my own house.

I also grew up in a very traditional Hispanic household where the girls did everything.

My mom is a full-time housewife and knows very little English, so from a young age I became her translator, driver, secretary, and emotional support person.

I filled out paperwork for her. Booked appointments. Helped with technology. Read things for her. Ordered things online for her. Drove her places after I got my license. Helped raise my niece. Helped cook and clean constantly.

My dad works in construction out of town and only comes home on weekends. And because he’s the sole provider, everyone basically serves him. If he wants coffee, someone makes it. If he needs clothes washed or folded, someone does it.

A lot of those responsibilities became mine.

Especially when my parents argued, my mom would emotionally lean on me and almost push me into this “second wife” role where I was expected to cook for my dad, clean for him, serve him, and keep the peace emotionally.

I feel like I became mentally and emotionally tired at a really young age.

And honestly I think all of this slowly started changing me into an angry and resentful person even though I try so hard not to be.

There’s honestly way more to this story, especially involving what eventually happened between me and my brother and how it completely destroyed our relationship.

I made another post explaining that situation because I think that moment completely broke whatever relationship we still had left.