Is it my fault my sister abandoned me?

I’d just like to say Thankyou to anybody who has the time to read this and possibly give any advice! I just need to get 8 years worth of heartache off my chest and just to hear that hopefully it wasn’t my fault. Trust me when I say I am getting professional help for this, but I’d just like some REAL opinions from real people! Hello everybody, I’m not really sure where to start really…so I am a 20 year old female living in south east uk, I live with my boyfriend but when growing up I was living with my mum, dad, my older sister by 2 years (we will call her Charlie) and my younger sister by 6 years, Gina. So growing up me and Charlie were close like any siblings, we grew up playing games and having laughs, but we were always quite different. I was always hyperactive and on the go, very impulsive, I would nick things from people and end up breaking them, usually Charlie’s stuff, I was a daydreamer and my mouth got me into trouble. Charlie on the other hand was always an organised person who never lost anything, was always organised and prepared for things like school, was well behaved, but always seemed to have this moodyness/anger, She would be very defensive if our family laughed at her and wasn’t able to laugh at herself. So usually when I was young I would go into her room and would take for example a lipstick, and me being me I would either break the lipstick, mess it up, or loose it altogether and this used to enrage her so much to the point she was wish for me to kill myself or wish for me to die (as much as it hurt/S I understand as kids you say things without thinking) I’ll try to keep this short but I do struggle, From year 4, I would say, to year 6, I had trouble with a friendship group, there was 4 of us (all girls). 2 and 2 would go off and there would be a rivalry, and then eventually 3 girls would go off and 1 would be left out. I was a nightmare at home, I already had a fear of school since the day I started, but I would cry loudly every night and was upsetting my mum, which then led my sister to become distant and angry with me for being the reason my mum is upset, but my mum would let me know she didn’t like the way I was being treated sometimes at school. Fast forward to high school, year 7 was good, I had trouble because of my fear of school but I would speak to my sister in the corridors and got friendly with a couple of her friends and can remember laughing with them and having fun and feeling cool because I had an older sister I would go and speak to. One day, still year 7, I was walking to a lesson with friends and being 12 years old, you say stupid things. My friend was joking about setting his brother and my sister up who were in the same year, and because my sister had never had a boyfriend and I was an idiot, I said something along the lines of calling her a lesbian. I feel the need to explain myself over this, this was not said maliciously, I clearly remember joking about it. Later on that day I get into my mums car, my sister gets in soon after and is shouting that I called her a lesbian, and it turns out her friend was walking behind me when I was talking about her. After that.. it’s a blur. I don’t remember anything specific other than she would leave the room whenever I was in it, wouldn’t be around me, wouldn’t talk to me, and that was it. Soon after I got into drugs, but I wouldn’t consciously say it was because of her because I’ve always been an impulsive person and liked to show off and prove I was cool. It started smoking with cannabis in year 8 with some of the girls in the year above us who ‘taught’ us how to smoke. Months later one of the girls in our groups older brother, who used to sell us the cannabis, got some Xanax pills and from then on every weekend we could get hold of the stuff, we did it. Soon we were mixing hardcore drugs together every weekend at the age of 14, I was round my friends house everyday smoking weed after school for around 2 years after that, spending every weekend at hers doing drugs with our friends and her family. All while in the process of this, I had completely cut out everybody in my family, I stopped seeing both grandparents, I would do the same thing to the family I lived with, that my sister did to me, and that was if I walked past them in the house I would look down, and get past quickly without conversation. At first I still spoke to my younger sister Gina and we would have laughs in her room at night, but eventually when I was too into drugs and was destroying my family we eventually stopped talking too. It’s like I completely tried to erase the people I was living with from my life, which as you can imagine is bizarre. I had this new family, my friends which were my sisters. So I think because of this I never actually sat down and thought about the fact my sister disowned me, any friends I told thought it was crazy but it was completely normal to me by the time I was 15. I had been grieving for years for my big sister who was still very much alive. But the thing is, I only realised less than a year ago how much it probably has effected me, the only person I am 100% comfortable that won’t leave me is my mum, the rest of my family I feel like I’m going to be cut off at any moment. We are now a quiet family who rarely joke about with each other, but are there for each other. Me Charlie haven’t been in the same room for years, and I’m trying to mend my relationship with Gina who is now 14. I find is so hard to go round to my mums sometimes, it gets to me so much that we don’t have that close bond that I want so bad, but I’m just too scared to be anything other than quiet and timid around them.. that’s another story! Thankyou so much if you even got to the end, I honestly don’t even know how this form site works like do you just write a few sentences? Cause I seem to have written so much I’ve actually copy and pasted it to send to my therapist!🤣 I would just like to know honest opinions on if you think it was deserved for my sister to stop speaking to me. I think it’s just hard because I usually research topics that relate to me to get advice but I can’t find anything relating to this! Any thoughts would be helpful, thanks for listening.

Unfortunately, I cannot grant your request. Your initial behavior was pretty poor, but that can be explained away by age (for those willing to accept it). Getting into hard-core drugs and alienating your family, was probably a big reason that your sis has had enough. She has chose to avoid you as a toxic person. You can continue to go to therapy, and to improve yourself. Hopefully in the future, things can be mended....but you certainly had a hand in creating this rift between you two, and that is something that you are going to have to accept and remedy.

Hi, It sounds like you know yourself pretty well and that you understand the things you did were not right. Yep the lesbian comment would of impacted your sister and she distanced herself from you u from then on. Drugs at 14 and alienating your family - that sounds like you were escaping? But was probably pretty stressful for them. Doesn’t matter how many years ago this is was it does still effect you as an adult and taking some responsibility is a good thing. But you were really young too…so no I don’t think all the blame falls on you. Instead of blame, I would be thinking about how to move forward. Think about how to improve your relationships with with your family and sister, with help of your therapist if that’s what you want. Your sister might not want a relationship and that would be her choice, if she does then take it slow.

Was also meant to say a toxic person wouldn’t care or try to understand, wouldn’t take any responsibility and probably wouldn’t go to therapy so keep doing what you're doing :-).

Agree. Hi IDT2001, You're just (or, WERE just) highly reactive. And with a mental-emotional in-tray that was so full it left you too little brainpower to be focused on what naturally was on your developmental plate: the suddenly heavy social demands (Dos and Don'ts) of high school or Let's Pretend land (home). Which was because, by the sounds of it, your family was unhealthy. Dysfunctional.... (And where was your dad in all of this? You haven't mentioned him ONCE.) ...Which the sensitive, intuitive yet verbally inarticulate child (with time on her hands since she`s mostly overlooked) notices and acts out on. She has NOT been home-schooled in terms of emotional parlay (and actually addressing/discussing issues). Your older sister completely overreacted. Fine. But to continue reacting (I did note the fact she rejected you and THEN you turned to drugs (self-medicating your pain) year in, year out?? Methinks you cramp your pretentious sister's style, and she needs this excuse, this past (shock-horror!) "crime" (how DARE you act 12! LOL). And she thinks she's still at school. Must do if she's still acting like it. "that’s another story!" It's not, actually, it´s just page 2. Please do tell. Whatever, there's way more to this than meets the eye (or in your case, the lips).

I mean - good god, if my child had hated or dreaded his school so much he was crying almost every night,...even after just TWO nights, I'd have dealt with it IMMEDIATELY! And if his sibling had verbally abused him so badly in front of me that his brain basically locked the memory of it away to protect him because it had sent the Trauma-o-Meter that high - christ! One, I'd have been on the elder sibling's case faster than you can say IF YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY TO YOUR YOUNGER BROTHER, YOUNG MAN, THEN DO SO LIKE A RATIONAL, DIGNIFIED HUMAN BEING!, and probably lots more! And your mother went all dramatic, "couldn't cope!", whenever presented with the normal, perfectly natural and expected duties of a mother - to the extent and frequency that she took it out on your elder sister (who then in her childish lack of understanding, resented YOU for it and took it out on YOU with punishment and emotional blackmail...basically delegated PUNISHING you for being scared of school??? Oh, my god. See what I'm saying, IDT? Stop automatically laying the blame at your feet like you were trained to do all through your childhood. The training was upside-down and back-to-front. Put it this way: "It's all your fault mum's in a bad mood!" Equals: "It's all mum's fault (or behind her - dad?) that you're upset - BECAUSE SHE WON'T MOTHER YOU!" Correct me if I'm but that's what this smells like to me. Including the obvious Sword of Damocles in the form of 'Don't bring up the dirt from under the carpet now you're old enough to realise it was ours, not yours, because as you can probably sense - you're one wrong foot away from being fired'. Please continue re-watching all the tapes under this here new light and see what else - what other crimes of "yours" (hah!) - you can flip more logically and more in line with Normality like I've just done. Forget the self-recriminations bit and just trace each so-called crime backwards, like I've just done re. 'where was the mother/father in all this'. Go to where the buck TRULY stops. Me, I think that when you rejected them all it was instinctual. When you're ready to sit down and re-read through that sky-high intray, why WOULD you want the very dumpers of those (needless, mind-bending) sheets in there, dumping MORE in with each passing day?? You wouldn't would you. But you, you just weren't aware of Why you were doing. It's pretty standard as a behavioural pattern with-a-cause, though. Anyhoo - chew on that, let me know if anything pinged. And I'm very impressed with you, actually. (So there! lol)