Alright. There is a family get-together this weekend, so I will be forced to be around my narcissistic, hurtful, angry, victim-playing sister.

For our entire lives, she has always treated me as a bit inferior. She was always more important — but then she’d say things, when depressed, about how she always wanted the best for me? Yet, she has a very hard time being happy for me when something good happens to me. She just gets jealous and angry.

Anyway. Over the years she’s gotten worse. Whenever she’s drunk, I am her favourite person to just start screaming at. She’ll bring up something that happened a year ago. More years ago. She’ll say I looked at her weird; I must have been talking about her; I didn’t have her back (translate: my own opinion was different from hers, and this means I didn’t ‘have her back’). She’s got so much anger inside her that she just spews it at me. It’s started happening in public now. She yelled at me in the fucking street outside a bar this summer.

Quick background: we grew up with an extremely narcissistic mother. She controlled our father, and she decided to disown all of her children and most family members, so neither of us have seen either of them in years. Just straight up, we are basically orphans.

Somehow, she has become exactly like our mother. She is always the victim. She is blameless. She deserves first everything; no one else’s needs/feelings are as important as hers.

A few weeks ago she was snooping through my stuff and read my diary.

Our mother did this. The violation of privacy was a huge hit for me, back then, so when my sister did it, it was like something snapped and I couldn’t keep doing this anymore. Couldn’t keep being her target. So I told her, very clearly and not rudely and really calmly, that I felt like we needed to not talk to each other for awhile because our relationship had clearly become really toxic. I needed the space, because my own mental state was floundering all over the place. Only my “family” brings about this sense of insecurity and like I’m unsafe and have nowhere to go and no one to trust.

She kept trying to message me, getting aggressive and trying to fight, so I blocked her number.

My best friends and my cousin knows what happened, with the diary. My sister texted my husband and told him that I’ve been “spreading lies” about her.

Her version of the story is that she opened the journal “just to see what it was, so I knew where to put it”. When I asked her why she kept reading when she realized it was a journal, she said, “Wouldn’t you read if you saw your name?” My response was a clear and thorough, “Fuck, no.” I said it’s none of my business what someone else writes about me in their private journal. It’s none of YOUR business what I write. At that point, she made up a lie about needing to get home and quickly left my house.

So.

This weekend. She will be there. She has a few weird “beefs” in the family, also. Shocking.

I’ve been doing a lot of self-work lately, and trying to create a safe, positive headspace for myself. It’s tough. I grew up in a very abusive household where I was taught that I was basically human garbage, so learning to change my self-talk is a work in progress. The fact that I set a boundary with my sister is a huge step for me.

But how do I handle her this weekend?

What if she tries to start something? Makes a snarky comment? Causes a scene? Starts hunting me down when she’s drunk?

I need some techniques to plan out, so that when I’m there, I don’t drown in her negative energy and feel like my chest is caving in. I don’t want to feel like all of the work I’ve been trying to do for myself, with handling my anxiety and fear and emotions, just comes crumbling down.

I’d love any insight or help!

• This topic was modified 5 years, 7 months ago by Eva.