Let's start at the beginning.
A year ago I put my faith in a charismatic business partner, and invested my savings in what turned out to be a hopeless cause.
Eight months ago I found myself absolutely broke. After multiple attempts to get back on track, I finally realized that I needed to take a step back and recoup.
Seven months ago I contacted my mother. She agreed to put me up for about a year. Like me, Mom has an anxiety disorder and mild depression. And, like me, her main trigger is household clutter. So before I moved in, we set up a schedule of chores. I agreed to washing dishes, vacuuming floors, and running errands for her. We also agreed that I would pay rent, and decided on a fair amount.
Five months ago I moved into my mother's basement, got a new job, and had a plan in place to get back on my feet. For two months we lived together quite well. Mom even commented several times that she thought we made great roommates.
Then three months ago, my Sis showed up in the middle of the night and told us she was getting a divorce.
She couldn't stay at the apartment with her husband of 3 years. It was just too much. So, she was going to stay with us until their lease was up in April. Maybe longer.
Sis and I don't get along.
Don't get me wrong, we love each other dearly. If she needed to bury a body, I would grab a shovel without a second thought. We just can't be in the same room making small talk together. World War III will break out during a quiet discussion about silverware. It's happened before.
Sis has always been a dynamic people-person. She tends to get people on her side. So when someone tells her anything bad about herself, she ends to blame the other person. No one else is telling her she needs to change. Clearly the other person is at fault.
I’m a quiet, shy, introverted, socially awkward, bookish lady. The perfect punching bag, in other words. It was hell living with her through the rough parts of her teen years.
And now we're all living together again.
To her credit, Sis has been trying. Life has kicked her around a bit, and she's grown up a lot. We've had multiple family meetings, and we've agreed to make compromises. For a while this crazy situation was working.
Except for one thing.
Remember how I said that mom and I get triggered by clutter?
Well, Sis finds great joy in expressing herself through food. It's her main form of stress relief. She fixes elaborate vegan feasts with organic ingredients and dozens of spices. But she's usually tired afterwards. Really tired, you guys.
So she leaves huge amounts of dirty dishes in the sink. And on the counter tops. And pretty much everywhere else. For days, if you let her.
And she saw no reason to change her methods just because she was living in a new place.
The messes started within two days.
Mom felt overwhelmed almost instantly, so I started doing the dishes for one to two hours everyday. Sis noticed. And got mad that I was doing her dishes. Because I should have known that she would do them when she felt like it.
And that's when the fights began.
Calling Sis out on the mess didn't help. Because when we brought it up, Sis started throwing a fit.
We just don't UNDERSTAND what she's going through with the divorce. (Mom and dad divorced a decade previous, and Sis' divorce is unusually amicable.)
Moving was just so STRESSFUL WE DON'T EVEN KNOW. (She has two friends that have been helping her with the move and the divorce. And she offered no help when I was moving out of my apartment myself.)
It's not like she's the only one doing WRONG. WE keep MOVING her things around! WE put pears in the REFRIGERATOR! WE put potatoes in the pantry WHEN THEY SHOULD BE ON THE COUNTER. Why can't SHE complain about THAT? (I'm the only one regularly cleaning and putting away her things, and sometimes I get the exact location where she wants something wrong.)
And god forbid you ask her to limit her cooking to once or twice a week.
Since Sis moved in, Mom's had to up her depression meds and I've started having panic attacks at work.
We’ve told Sis that there’s a correlation between our anxious states and her housekeeping. It has come up in at least 12 family meetings so far.
But nothing has changed.
Two weeks ago I was woken out of a dead sleep at 6am. Sis was standing over me.
The day previous had been her last day in the apartment. So, she had been cooking up a storm to process her feelings. She had also pulled out all of her art supplies and spread them over every square inch of the kitchen table. So I had had to do three hours worth of dishes, and take an extra hour to CAREFULLY clean up her art supplies, then CAREFULLY put them in a visible corner of her room so she wouldn't accuse me of purposefully misplacing them. Again.
So the last thing I expected to hear her say at 6am was, "I want you to know that we're going to have a family meeting this weekend about how you treated my artist's chalk."
And I... went off.
Up until that moment I had been trying to be sympathetic to everything that she was going through. And I had been trying to see things from her point of view. Divorce isn't just something you can walk off.
But there was no way in hell I was going to let that slide. Not after more than two months of childish behavior.
I started screaming every obscenity in the book at her, and telling her what I thought about her behavior.
She went on a massive rant about her feelings, and told me off as well. Then she flipped me off, and left the house.
Admittedly, not very constructive.
Mom pretty much told both of us that we were going to sit down and hash it out that Saturday. But when the time came, Sis refused to leave her room.
And she's been avoiding me ever since.
The dish situation did get better after that. I think she realized that if she kept leaving dirty dishes out, she'd have to talk to me again. But things are starting to slowly backslide into the status quo.
For the 13th time.
I feel utterly powerless. This isn't my house. I have no authority. I'm living here because I failed hard at life. When I do speak my peace, I'm shouted down.
And mom doesn't want to speak up. When she does, Sis throwing a fit because she 'choose sides'. Hell, Mom even stopped helping me with the dishes. Sis felt bad when she saw Mom doing her dishes, and she started to complain.
I talk to Mom about my frustrations, and I keep asking her to stand up and lay down some ground rules. But Mom keeps saying that we're all adults. Sis and I can work something out.
The problem is, Sis only acts like an adult when it suits her.
She doesn’t even know when she's going to move out. She promised us that she'd find a new apartment after the lease was up on the old one. But renting's just not for HER anymore. She's considering buying a house, but that takes FOREVER if you want to do it right, and we shouldn't rush her.
I should point out that Sis makes 2.5 times what I make, and was just promoted to an international branch of a prestigious organization. And that I'm currently working as a file clerk.
Look, I don't want to minimize what she's going through. I know she's going through hell. She’s been seeing two therapists (one as a couple, one for herself) for months now, and it’s been hard for her to come to grips with what her life has become. It wouldn’t surprise me if all the bratty behavior was a manifestation of deep depression.
But having depression doesn’t excuse the fact that she's actively trashing the house and getting mad at anyone who wants to clean up.
If I had any money, or resources, or any friends I could stay with, I would already be gone. If I had been able to find a new job, or a second job, or a freelance gig in the past three months, I wouldn't be posting here.
As it stands, I have enough money for three month's rent on my own. Six month's rent, if I find a roommate. And a car that desperately needs it's suspension fixed. What little extra funds I have are going to be going to the counselor I'm going to start seeing next week.
So, yeah. I need help. Please help.
tl;dr: Sis and I ended up living with Mom after our lives went off the rails. Sis is deeply depressed, and she expresses this by making piles of dishes and throwing tantrums. These disruptions are causing discord in the household, with no end in sight.
Submitted May 09, 2016 at 08:05AM by angrysibthrowaway http://ift.tt/24FMFNB relationships
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