Dear Anita,

Thank you for your thoughtful and detailed reply. I have come back to this forum often to re-read your post. These posts have helped me greatly to find the stregnth I need to keep pushing forward. I’m so grateful to have found such a supportive friend in you. Your message has helped me to move on from this. Thank you so much for everything you’ve said. Your words shed light on what I can’t see. I would be so lost and confused without your guidance. 

I’m writing today to ask for additional advice. Well it has since been 8 months since i last spoke to the ‘monster’. In the last 8 months I have tried to my best to avoid talking to my sister. I don’t think I mentioned this but 10 months ago in March I moved from california to Austin (where my sister resides), and in June I got married/pregnant. I only invited my sister and her boyfriend to my wedding and at first she rejected the invitation because I didn’t invite the monster. Sister had a change of heart and decided to begrudgingly come to my wedding. When I moved to Texas she said to me that we should be closer and have a more open line of communication. So I confided in her and told her why I didnt want the monster at my wedding, only for her to back stab me.

I told her why I moved away from california (where the monster lives) I said it was because I wanted to be closer to her as I considered her my family and I was planning on starting my own family. Her response to this, she called me a hippocryte and that I had no right calling her my family because I didnt have any values due to the fact that I cut the monster out. I said “can I call you half family then?” She said things that the monster had said to me before. Things like, “So now that you’re married you think you’re better than the rest of us” and “Now that you married a rich guy you think you can just cut out your family like that” and ” you dont deserve to have your own family because you treat your current family like crap”  I was deeply hurt when my sister said these things to me because none of it is true. When i first met my husband 8 years ago his income was just average, and I worked full time as a hairdresser. When I was living in California (within driving distance of the monster) monster never once came over to visit us, when I was sick she didn’t feel like driving to my house to see if I was okay even though I said I wanted her to come over. Her reasoning was she didn’t know how to drive 40 miles to get to my house. So my boyfriend and I eventually moved closer to her but she still didn’t want to come visit us when I invited her over for thanksgving, or ever. She never wanted to see me except for when she needed me to do paperwork for her. I was basically her lawyer, tax filer, accountant, translator, and personal assistant. I just got tired of being used by her for all of her paperwork. When I visited her on Xmas 2020, all i wanted was for her to not bring up paperwork and bills. But it was all she ever talked about. Every Xmas I would visit her and she would unload her bills, mail and various paperwork on me. I have never had a conversation with her where she didnt bring up money and bills. She never stopped by my work to let me do her hair even though it was in the same town as where she worked.

I was looking for something more meaningful in my life in terms of family. Xmas 2021 went well. I didnt call the monster but my sister reached out to me to hurt me some more. After not speaking to her since my gender reveal party in September she decided to ask me via text out of the blue. She wanted to know if I was planning on telling the monster about my pregnancy. I flat out said to her that I didnt see why it mattered to her whether   or not i told the monster since she didn’t ever reach out to me to ask me how I was doing during my entire pregnancy (even though i reached out to ask her how she was doing, she ignored me). Her reply was “why should I ask you about how your life is when you called me your half sister and mom a selfish b***h?” This happened at Xmas.

So today, my sister sent me a text she said ” mom wantes to visit both of us, would you like for her to come see you and if so when is good? ” I ignore her and she is texting me again ” Can we talk?”

I don’t know what to do at this point. I don’t want to talk to my sister and I don’t want the monster to visit me. I have basically moved on. The monster had so many chances to visit me but never did and now wants to visit me all of a sudden, it doesn’t make sense. I went to university for 3 years and the monster never visited me not even once. One time I asked the monster for a ride back to my dorm room and I was denied that ride because she didn’t know how to drive the route. I got a ride from someone else. It wasnt a long drive just 1 hour to the University. It doesn’t make sense that she didn’t know how to drive from Berkeley to Santa Cruz or from Berkeley  to Sacramento but all of a sudden can make a trip across the country from California to Texas to visit me.

I am 8 months pregnant and things are looking up for me I am so excited to meet my baby and have so much to do before the baby arrives, I’m so worried about getting sucked back into all of this drama which I extricated myself from in the last year. What do I say to my sister? Do I just ignore her or do I tell her I dont want to talk to her? I dont want to be hurt anymore by what she has to say, so I dont want to say anything that could make her hurl vitriol at me.

Sincerely,

Moonlight