Found out my sister gave birth last week. No one even told me she was pregnant.

Found out my sister gave birth last week. No one even told me she was pregnant.

obviously i feel unwanted and vilified. in my eyes, they couldn’t want me to be in this child’s (or their) lives if they would hide his very birth from me. not just my sister and her husband, but my siblings, their families, our mutual friends, my parents… i just started my diagnosis journey last year, and this is such a slap in the face. i feel so alone. (TLDR at the end)

For Context: i’m the youngest of four (33F), and my sister and i are one year apart. our brothers are about 15 years older than us (same parents); they were born before my parents immigrated to the US. my sister was an accident, well after my family was settled. and growing up, i was told that they had me with the intention of “keeping her company.”

however it started, i ended up suffering a lot of trauma for these intentions. my family is staunchly catholic, does not acknowledge mental health, and wanted nothing more than peaceful assimilation in the US. they could not begin to comprehend a neurodivergent child and largely see me as something to be ashamed of and hide away. i grew up hidden from the public eye, but ignored and ridiculed at home, by one older brother in particular. the financial toll of two unplanned daughters bankrupted my father, and he took his frustrations out on me. he would take lights, pillows, and other comfort objects from me and give them to my siblings, locking me in closets and saying i didn’t deserve them because i “chose” to disobey his orders to “behave.” my siblings would revel in this, even sucking up to him to get him to buy them things they could rub in my face or barring doors shut from the outside. beyond material possessions, i was not allowed to participate in activities unless my sister wanted to, and being very competitive, she was quick to refuse to participate in anything she couldn’t easily beat me at. we once took an art class where she threw a tantrum because our teacher had praised me with a yellow ribbon. my dad refused to leave until the teacher gave my sister a ribbon of equal or greater value so she could rub it in my face.

as we got older and i emancipated myself, i kept my distant from my siblings. i knew my oldest brother did not condone how i was treated, but he had a family of his own before i was 10. i also couldn’t bring myself to blame my sister for my fathers dysfunction, however much she continued to profit off of the dynamic he cultivated. i love her, after all. i even once thought i saw a tear in her eye at a family holiday dinner when my one asshole brother was mocking my childhood self’s autistic behavior (which is typical of these occasions and why i would rarely attend). in that moment, i was so certain that she was sorry, and just didn’t know how to say it. i have always been ready to forgive her.

we were never friends or even close, she was there for me a couple of times i needed it, though seemingly begrudgingly.
—i got into a car accident on the night her now husband was going to propose, and she was the one who picked me up, even on such an important night. i later overheard her gushing about the proposal to friends, including how embarrassing i had been at the venue (i had been so happy for her and clapped, which apparently she didn’t like).

—in the pandemic, i confided in her about my loneliness and SI, and she invited me to attend a weekly video chat she had with her friends. when i showed up, none of them even knew my name or who i was, and my sister stayed silent and off camera the whole time. i stopped attending, and she didn’t attempt to follow up with me.

—when i revealed my CPTSD diagnosis to her and tried to tell her about the things our dad would do to me, she said she didn’t know about any of it, but that she believed me. but she kept sucking up to him for gifts, and didn’t stand up for me the next time i was bullied at a gathering. i walked out, and she neither followed me nor attempted to contact me.

— i had intense burnout last year. i started being sexually harassed at my job, in the midst of trying to find treatment and a diagnosis. i ended up having to quit to avoid the gaslighting and retaliation (i’ve filed a claim with the the EEOC about it), and suffered an episode of skills regression and suicidal epression. i begged most of my family to try to be understanding and help me get things together, and she once brought groceries over and helped with dishes.

i have tried to reach out to her from time to time this past year, usually needing help and wanting to knew if i could expect it from her. but we never learned how to talk to each other. she tells me i need to stop thinking of myself as a burden, but she treats me like i am. it seemed to make her uncomfortable to be around me, and she doesn’t ask me questions or say any more than an empty platitude or two when i try to reach out to her for support. she never initiates contact. when she got married and moved out of my parents house, i practically had to beg her to invite me into her new home. it felt like she would have rather put me behind her.

between the lawsuit with my former employer, battles for treatment options with my insurance company, the trauma of the harassment, its aftermath of financial insecurity, i began begging her to be a better sister, reminding her of the ways i protected her growing up, how much more our father would give her, asking her how could she be so selfish in my time of need. it wasn’t the best look, but my SI was sky-high, and because she had shown up that one time, i thought she would want to help. she texted me not to hurt myself, that she wouldn’t know what to do if she lost me. i told i thought that mourning me would be easier than helping me if my asks for support were too much for her to act on. she hasn’t responded to any of my texts since.

TLDR: we grew up in a dysfunctional household where we were pitted against each other for her neurotypical benefit. she’s never been to therapy and, though she can acknowledge that i am treated unfairly in our family, she shows no interest in my life. when i have asked for support, she provides close to the bare minimum, but it’s more than anyone else gives me, so it means a lot.

how am i supposed to react to this exclusion from her life? i can’t be sorry for being born different, and i can’t blame her for me being too much for her or for wanting a simple life. i love her too much for that. i just don’t know how to tell her if she can’t even tell me she has a child.