Prudence
My parents both had multiple marriages. My father is on number five, while my mother learned her lesson at three. Unfortunately, it took her most of my childhood, which I spent dragged around and shoved in front of strange kids and told these were my new siblings and to “bond.” That never happened because I had already learned that none of this was real or was going to last.
“Chelsea” was my stepsister from marriage three on my mother’s side while I was in high school. I moved in permanently since my father’s latest fiancée had a gaggle of kids she wouldn’t control and expected me to babysit. Chelsea was a year younger than me and had issues. She was probably on the spectrum, but all I knew was she was intensely socially awkward and couldn’t pick up any cues at all. She would babble about her interests to anyone for hours and believe anything anyone told her. She was prime bullying material.
I never bullied her, but I certainly never tried to protect her either. I would ditch her as soon as we got off the bus and ignore her at school. As much as my mother and her husband would lecture me about looking out for Chelsea, I would ignore them and take the grounding. They got divorced the summer I graduated about a decade ago. I never saw Chelsea again or gave her much thought until now.
Recently, she sent my mother and me a long, rambling letter about her need for “closure” after all the trauma she endured, especially including us. I tossed it in the trash, while my mother ended up calling Chelsea and even going to her Zoom therapy session. Now my mother is pressuring me to join. Chelsea especially wants to understand how I could act so callously and cold towards her as a teen—because we were “sisters.” I told my mother that was stupid. We weren’t sisters. We were never sisters. We barely qualified as stepsisters considering her marriage only lasted three years. If she felt guilt that was on her. Not me. My mother keeps bringing this up, and I don’t know how to get her to drop it. Help.
— Only Child