I’m drowning while living with my BPD sister and enabling elderly mother

[sunnysunglasses]

Hello everyone. This is my first time writing a post here. I came across this website while googling about BPD and coming across Reddit pages dedicated to family/loved ones who knew people with BPD. After reading just a few posts about other’s personal life experiences and stories, I deeply related to what I read. I had always had so much confusion and question behind why my sister’s personality and behavior was so vastly different not just from me but from almost everyone else I ever met. I feel a strange sense of comfort for the people here who have lived through and understand exactly how painful, exhausting, draining, and frustrating it is to have a sibling with BPD. For context: I’m 26F, my sister is 25F and our mom is 63F.

Backstory: I grew up in an abusive household with my dad as an irresponsible, controlling, angry father and husband. He was physically, verbally and sexually abusive to our mother. While verbally and emotionally abusive to me and my sister. I actually now suspect he may have BPD too. My sister is VERY similar to him. They both blame the people around them for their lives being ruined, they’re both greedy, willing to lie and take from others with little remorse or ounce of gratitude. Growing up together, I understood early on to hide and obey my father, it kept him more or less calm and satisfied and that kept me safe. I had to learn extremely early on how to read his moods and tone. So I never understood why my sister ignored the obvious signs and kept speaking out with her complaints and criticisms of him and our home life. He did come very close a few times to beating her and broke a door or wall as a warning.

I believed for the longest time that we were just two very different people. I was smart, good in school, polite, quiet and learned to perform the role of the golden child. Meanwhile my sister wasn’t doing well in school, would steal money from my parents or my things, was desperate to be part of the popular kids. We’re a Korean-American family, my parents are immigrants though my dad has been here since he was a toddler. My mother came in her 20’s. So the Korean culture was part of our upbringing. I rejected most of it (the mostly vain, superficial parts) while my sister embraced it. Growing up, she was obsessed with comparing her body and face with KPop idols. Daydreamed of becoming one herself or marrying one and becoming fabulously wealthy. I remember at one point she said she was a princess and we had to treat her like one and I laughed because I knew she 100% meant it and it was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard her say. (She was 16 at the time)

When we reached high school, our father left the family for his girlfriend in another state and we managed to live in our tiny 2 bedroom 1 bathroom apartment with his financial help from long distance. I’ve currently moved back in there after I was kicked out of my roommate’s family home but that’s another story.

I have gone completely no contact with my father, he doesn’t even know I’m living back with my mom and sister again. I’m working a full time office job, I recently got my first ever car and overall I’m just trying to survive and help pay rent as my mom only gets older and older. However I feel like I’ve reached my limit living with her and my sister. I’ve only been back with them for 1 year and a half.

Overtime, being forced to share space with my sister again has caused me to eventually break my usual non-confrontational demeanor and unleash my years of resentment and uncork the bottled up rage in me. I’ve not been able to control myself when my sister makes a nasty comment, insults me, complains, takes none of my thoughts or words seriously, mocks me and tries to constantly guilt trip me.

She’s also become a hoarder in the time I was gone. She got financial aid money during her time in community college, $10k to be exact, and spent it all on herself. Buying every kind of -- SPAM FILTER ACTIVATED -- cheap product she could find. After growing up in poverty, her response was to spend every last dollar she got her hands on and waste it away filling our living room with garbage bags that got up to the 8 foot high ceiling.

She was with her ex wife during this time as well, but at some point early during my move back in, they broke up. She had guilted this woman into taking care of her. The ex wife was supposedly going into the military and my sister had planned to move across the country with her. Those plans obviously never came true and I could see it happening a mile away. But my sister had deluded herself into believing the ex wife really would take her away from her horrible life. And that by starting fresh she could finally be happy. While entirely taking advantage of this woman and using her. All believing it would happen because she deserved to be taken care of by someone.

I had no sense of how bad it had gotten while I was away. I didn’t concern myself with it either because I didn’t live there and never imagined I would. As selfish as that sounds. I truly believed I had moved on with my life and gotten finally free of my family’s toxic enmeshment.

My sister cannot get along with people long term. Every time she makes a new friend, they stop talking a month or two after. Either because she said something insensitive, or they said something that offended her. She would constantly go from praising and gushing about this friend to saying they were fake and two faced and never that nice to begin with. Once, a friend blew up her phone when she admitted to the friend (a black girl) that she had voted for Trump in the recent election. She didn’t take any of the girl’s feelings into consideration and didn’t understand why she was so angry, and just told me that it doesn’t matter how angry she gets, she didn’t “deserve” to be treated that way. This is just one of many examples of my sister not understanding why I or my mom or anyone else would be rightfully mad with her for saying or doing inappropriate things.

She believes herself to be the true victim in every situation. She tells me and my mom constantly that we abuse and mistreat her. Once, she told me that if she killed herself, she’d name me and my mom in her suicide note. I don’t know if it was some kind of threat or a test but she’d done things like this before. Like hanging this threat of suicide or reminding me of her plans of being euthanized. To show us how drastic her pain and suffering is with her self diagnosed OCD.

I’ve tried to stick by and be here to help my mom. Be a good supportive daughter and look out for her in ways no one else has. But I’ve also realized I’ve reached my limit with living here. And I’m afraid that if I stay too long, me and my sister will end up hurting each other and take it too far. I used to be afraid of the thought of living alone or with roommates, but frankly I would take any of those problems over the ones I have at home right now. I have to take care of myself first and build my own safe space and foundation. Having enough money and being housed are my two biggest concerns. I’m constantly worried of losing both of these things and winding up on the streets (my dad used to threaten me that he wanted to leave us so badly and rub in my face that we would never survive without him).

I just really needed to get this off my chest for the longest time. I’ve been desperate to find people who know what I’m going through and offer me some advice or comfort while I navigate the grief of realizing my sister will never be the person I hoped she’d become with time. It’s so strange to say I still care about her overall wellbeing, as with any person. But I do not like her, as a person on a personal level.

[CC43]

Hi Sunny,

I commend you for making it through a disordered childhood and showing great success in adulting, including getting your own car and holding down a full-time job.  It must feel like deja vu landing back with your disordered sister, and now in a messy home as well.  Sometimes I think that a messy environment is a physical manifestation of a disordered mind--chaotic, non-functional, disagreeable, wasteful, overall a very negative vibe.  A home is supposed to be a sanctuary, not a toxic waste dump.

Is there any way to get your own place?  Your mom and sis are adults, they are responsible for themselves, not you.  It sounds to me like you deserve your own space right now, and that it could go a long way to giving you some peace.  Could you find another roommate--not somebody with BPD and hoarding tendencies?  Could you find a temporary house-sitting situation while you look for a better living situation?

It's possible your mom and sis have a plan to compel you provide for them the rest of their lives, and they might be guilting you into it, leveraging your "golden child" status.  I'd say, you're 26, you're the boss of you, not your mom, not your sis.  You might feel guilty for going your own way and "abandoning" them.  But here's the thing--it sounds to me like they don't have your best interests in mind.  It sounds like they are exploiting your good nature.  They are supposed to look out for you, but they can't, probably because they've been traumatized, just like you.  You've got to be the one to save yourself.  I think you have to put yourself first right now, because nobody else is going to do that.  How does that sound?

[CC43]

Growing up, she was obsessed with comparing her body and face with KPop idols. Daydreamed of becoming one herself or marrying one and becoming fabulously wealthy. I remember at one point she said she was a princess and we had to treat her like one and I laughed because I knew she 100% meant it and it was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard her say.

P.S.

The pwBPD in my life shares that sort of thinking, which shows some narcissistic traits (on top of BPD).  I used to call it her "magical" thinking.  Granted, she's pretty, and that's a wonderful gift.  However, given her disordered BPD and narcissistic thinking, she believed she'd be "discovered" as a top model or top online influencer, and she dreamed of living a Carrie Bradshaw lifestyle.  She seemed entitled to it, as if she expected others to make her wildest dreams come true, for example by setting her up in a luxe apartment and paying for her travel abroad.  Thus she set herself up to be continuously disappointed.  The disappointment quickly turned to anger, even rage, directed at others who failed to make these dreams come true for her.  Most of all, she refused to take responsibility for herself.  This looks like blaming others for ruining her life.  She's constantly mad that she doesn't get what she wants.  Now she wants plastic surgeries to change her physical features, and she has asked her dad to pay for them.  At one point it sounded like she expected him to pay as compensation for making her look the way she did.  And the irony is, I think she's beautiful, she shouldn't change a thing, and even if she did, she still wouldn't be a model, not even close.  She doesn't have the personality(!), and she's far too old, short and heavy (in model terms) anyway.  Plus she couldn't handle the lifestyle, with all the rejection, critiques and stressful routines.  She seems oblivious to the actual work that famous people do.  It's the classic black-and-white thinking, where she idealizes the Princess life while disparaging the lives of "normal" people.  Does that ring any bells?

The narcissim manifests in some beguiling ways.  One example is during a job search.  The pwBPD in my life seems to think that certain jobs are beneath her.  She doesn't want to start at the bottom; she wants to skip a few rungs and get paid a lot, and yet she doesn't want a "stressful" job, either.  Her resume lists more aspirations and exaggerated roles than actual accomplishments and credentials.  In some regards she lied outright on her resume (for example saying she was a candidate for an advanced degree without having taken any classes yet, let alone be accepted into a program).  But I suspect that in her mind, if she wants something, it's the truth?  Or maybe she thinks, everyone lies on their resume, and she should, too?  Her online profile lists "moving to New York," but she hasn't done anything to move to New York yet.  Does this sound like your Sis?  I think it's the magical, narcissistic thinking coming through.  There's some identity confusion as well.