I need help guys.
My younger sister (A) was diagnosed with BPD about a year ago, and I feel like things have only gotten worse with her since then. She has always been a person who is quick to offense, and quick to anger, and her sense of justice is ridiculously acute, to the point of being problematic.
She also has a history of infantilizing me in her behavior and speech, to the point where I have had to tell her I would minimize contact if she did not stop correcting me in front of family and friends. She was living in Michigan until a few years ago, and I often feel like I have to be very careful of what I say or do around her since she moved back.
I will admit to babying her a bit, and I have tolerated a lot more than I probably should have over the last few years. I was talking to one of my other sisters (E) recently, and she expressed that she felt like A did not respect me and that I had let her walk over me for a long time, and I think I was aware of that but I deeply love her and I hate conflict so I let it go.
Over the past year, she has completely cut my parents out of her life because they refused to allow her to force her own boundaries on them, which has caused a lot grief for the rest of the family. She also got mad at E for communicating to my parents what A specifically told all of us she wanted from them. She cut her off for that for almost a month, and while she came back around, their relationship has not been the same since.
To set the scene, A is friends with a girl at the leasing office at my complex since A is also a leasing agent.I am also friendly with that girl and she had given me her personal number. One day recently I had tried to call the leasing office, and their phone was down so I texted the leasing agent about it. She told me she was on vacation so I apologized and just went in to talk to the office. Apparently she told A that I had texted her, which A took personal offense to.
She repeatedly called me on FaceTime to talk about what happened, and she spent the whole call scolding me for daring to text the leasing agent about her work on her personal phone. She made the whole conversation about her and how she had been traumatized by residents doing that to her, and how I had crossed a huge boundary by doing this. What I don’t understand is why she felt the need to correct me about this at all, since it had nothing to do with her, and she told me the leasing agent had not asked her to say something to me about it.
I listened to her the first time she told me her concerns, and I agreed that it hadn’t been the right thing to do. I explained why I had done it, but also said I wouldn’t do it again because I understood her concerns. However, she either didn’t hear me or wasn’t finished correcting me, because she kept repeating the same message over. The way she was speaking to me made me feel like she thought I was a child, and I told her I was done with the conversation, and I was going to go. She kept talking over me, so I hung up the phone and texted her that I had deleted the leasing agents number and I would never contact her again outside of official channels, and that I didn’t want to discuss it anymore.
Reeling her that I was done set A off into a spiral. She texted me a novel about how I had invalidated her trauma by dismissing how she felt, and how she needed space from me until I was willing to talk with her more about it. I work third shift, and I am in the middle of packing up my house to move, so I have been giving her the space she asked for. I don’t have the time, energy or emotional bandwidth to have that talk with her right now, so I hadn’t contacted her about it.
In the meantime, A has been venting to everyone she can get ahold of about how horrible I have been to her. She is
PLEASE READ talking me to my other sisters and my roommate, which makes me very uncomfortable. My sister E told me a bit about what A had said to her, and it was all super derogatory. I also feel like she is actively trying to drive a wedge between me and my roommate, which whom she is also friends. The whole situation makes me feel incredibly hurt and a little bit victimized if I am being honest, and her timing feels intentionally awful. She knows I’m in the middle of a ton of upheaval right now, and it feels like she picked this time and this hill to die on just to cause me as much pain as possible.
Tonight, A texted me right before she knew I was going into work and gave me an ultimatum that if I wasn’t the one to reach out to her to make things right, she was going to cut me out of her life. It’s incredibly frustrating and confusing, since she started off by telling me that she was clear in wanting space, but was also demanding I contact her make plans to talk. I am at my wits end with it all. I have compassion fatigue from all the times over the past few years that she has caused drama or spiraled and threatened self harm. I don’t want to lose her, but I cannot keep going on like this.
How can I talk this out with her without allowing her to continue walking all over me? I need to set a boundary about how she is allowed and to speak to me, and what behavior I won’t tolerate. I also feel like I need to tell her that the way she has been trashing me behind my back to my roommate is not okay and if we are going to fix things, she cannot continue to do that. I just don’t see a good way out of this. I can swallow my pride and apologize for some things, but I won’t sign up for being emotionally abused the way she usually does. Any help or suggestions is greatly appreciated.
