Sibling Rivalry matures into BPD

[Shindig]

Our Mom has formally diagnosed BPD and I'm worried my sister is graduating from conventional sibling rivalry behaviors to full-fledged BPD. She's always been a little off. Our parents are older, she's the middle child and I'm her junior by 10 years. She was always crushed that I have a smaller frame and wore a smaller size. She wanted to be a doctor, but failed math because she's dyslexic and used her dyslexia to place out of math starting in high school. I'm also dyslexic, but I spent 4 days a week at my high school and then my university's learning center to figure out how to work around the learning disability.

 

She's always been competitive with me - when she was getting her masters in fine arts, she told me I could second-guess her when I got my masters degree. I eventually got my PhD in molecular microbiology and she skipped my graduation. I'm not much for ceremony and I didn't attend my college or high school graduation, but I attended this one and asked family to join. She was posting on facebook that day about a last minute surfing trip.

 

These sorts of things tend to happen with her. I've been vegan for over a decade and she sends me pictures of half-eaten carcasses and tells me that for whatever reason the meal reminded her of me. I have told her on more than one occasion just to send me a picture of her smiling face instead and when she doesn't get the rise out of me that she wants, she escalates. Most recently she sent me a book of taxidermied birds (I have a special place in my heart for birds, I have several as pets and have done bird rescue for over a decade) and then swore to me that it was on my Amazon gift list. I assure you that it was not.

 

Subsequently, she escalated I ended up having to shell out $500 to a lawyer to have a contract rewritten for a business she and I own together over a semantics issue that would never have become a problem unless one of us raised a stink. She raised a stink EVEN though we'd planned for me to buy her out - the wording she took issue with was about what would happen if one of joint owners passed or became incapacitated. The wording suggested that the property would go to next of kin. She asked to change it to a hierarchy where children of the owners would be listed before next of kin as recipients (next of kin would be our brother) and here's the kicker - she's biologically sterile since birth and I elected to be sterilized when I was in college because of a genetic issue related to my sister's sterility. Neither of us has children.

 

I'm getting to a point where I don't want to have a relationship with her at all. I haven't spoken with our mother for decades and it saddens me that I don't have a relationship with her, but I know that a healthy parent would want me to lead a happy fulfilling life and I just can't do that with BPD in my life. It's a black hole.

 

I don't have patience for the tests to see how awful she can be to me and have me still come back when she creates a crisis. I've thought about talking with her directly, but in the past she's tried (clumsily) to turn the conversation to her victimhood. For example, after I deflected the conversations for how I'd rather she send me a picture of her smiling face than a partially eaten chicken, she brought it up in a phone conversation. I told her I said what I had to say. She asked me to expand on that and I started to tell her that the title of the email, "I know you don't eat meat..." was where the email should have stopped - she knew well enough at the start and did it anyway. Before I finished the thought she interrupted me, telling me how hard it was to be spoken to that way. I admonished her and told her it wasn't fair for her to ask me to speak only to interrupt me. I asked her if that made sense and there was a long silence. I asked her again and she flippantly said, "I didn't want to interrupt you." I told her it was poor form to mock me in addition to everything else and that the conversation was over. I wasn't going to participate if her intent to learn and work things out wasn't genuine.

 

I suppose that's where I am now. Whether it's BPD or just ****ty behavior, I am done and I'm just planning how I'll navigate family gatherings where I don't speak to my mom OR my sister. I don't think I'm over reacting, but I'm curious if my reasoning makes sense given the limited scope I'm offering here.

[amaysngrace]

I think it makes a lot of sense to cut people out of your life who don’t respect you or your boundaries.

 

You may love them but you have to love yourself more.