I’m 12 years older than my sister and effectively raised her (and my brother) after our mother was killed when I was 15. Our father worked 80-hour weeks to provide for us, and I spent all of my teenage years and early 20s as a surrogate parent. My dad got remarried when I was 25 and I was finally able to go to college. My sister did not get along with our stepmother and spent weeks calling me and begging for me to come back home.
Now she’s 26, married, and expecting her first child. Our father and stepmother retired to Arizona, and our brother is in the military. When she called to tell me she was pregnant, I was so excited for her. I later told her that I’d finally gotten the promotion at work I have been waiting on for years. It’s my dream job, but it also means moving out of state; her exact response was, “You can’t move—what about me?” She told me I had to “stay for the baby,” things got heated, and she accused me of abandoning her like I did when I went to college. I told her to grow up and hung up on her.
My sister has always been clingy but I figured she’d gotten past that after graduating college and getting married. I am so angry I can’t even imagine looking at her right now. I resent the fact she claims I abandoned her when I sacrificed my own childhood to raise her, and our father killed himself working to provide for us. Things weren’t perfect, I was a teenager, but I did my best. For her to fling that back in my face now—I honestly don’t know how to get past this.