Thread: Big sister VS little sister

Hi everyone i know this one seems really long but please read it it I could really use some help??
So to start of i'm the little sister but not so little. I'm 23 years old and still live with my parents and my eldest sister is 28 years old so we are five years apart and though this has caused quite some problems in the past, recently (and i'm thinking the last two years) things have been going better. But recently me and her had a big fight.

A year ago my big sister gave birth to the most adorable little niece i could have hoped for. I was made her godmother which i'm really proud of. Now for the last month my sister has been having some problems in her marriage (her husband is addicted to phone sex apparently) so she's been a bit on edge. (i think you also need to know that my sister in fact is mostly always on edge) Since she's become a mother even more so. When ever the baby starts crying and someone tries to help she snaps at them (and this is mostly me) than they are supposedly calling her a bad mother. Now our mother has asked me to just let it slide each and every single time (and i do because i know she's frustrated) But none the less
about a week ago we went to the beach (me, my mother, my sister, her husband and their daughter) now my niece was a little sick that day so she was (to say it nicely) being a pain in the butt. Crying and not eating and not wanting to lie down in the baby carrier. I was pretty realxed that day and out of experience i stayed out of the whole thing. I let my sister take care of it like she always does. So we're walking down the pier and Amy (my niece) had finally falling asleep and they had covered the whole thing up with a jacket so the sun wouldn't bother her and at a certain point Amy wakes up. My mother just gives her her pacifier and closes it back up in the hope she'll fall a sleep again. My sister doesn't agree so she pulls off the jacket exposing amy to direct sunlight. So she's upset and starts really crying loudly. So we decide to sit down on a bench and let my sister try to comfort her but it doesn't seem to work. Eventually my sisters husband takes over and calmes her down . So my sister says to giver amy back to her. Now at this point i'm not sure what happened i was sitting a meter or so away from my sister and amy (smoking a cig and my back turned to her)
when al the sudden amy starts crying again. The husband says "honey now you've got to admit it's your fault. She just calms down and you get her worked up again) All the sudden my sister strats screaming at him how he's calling her a bad mother and somewhat. So i'm not good with public confrontation (i find them embarressing) so i walk on leaving to fight in the distant. A few minutes later we're walking again. Husband is carrying amy, sister is walking next to him and me and my mom are walking a few pases behind them. My mom and me we get along good so we're cracking jokes (cause everyone is walking on glass at that moment) and my mom makes the joke that maybe we should burry amy in the sand and i tell her "yeah just leave the head out" and my mom replies "maybe we should do that to the mommy" that last part my sister could not have heard at all. my sister turns to us and say "yeak make fun of someone who's frustrated" at this stage i'm still relaxed and not bothered by her remarks. So my mom walks over to her and says "dear we were just joking around about the beach no harm intended".
I see my brother inlaw standing by the beach holding amy and i think it's a beautiful scene so i grab my camera to take a shot when all of the sudden i hear my sister say something to my mother that i had told my sister in confidentiallity and saying that next tiume she'l laugh at me.
If it isn't clear from the story i told now. I did absolutely nothing wrong to deserve that. So i snapped i told her to f-off and that i was going home. I hear my sister yelling after me yeak you take the train home (3hours and a half) so pissed of (and yeah i admit i probably shouldn't have siad this) i shouted back "go make your daughter cry" i walk on and her my mother call at my sister so yeah i knew she was coming at me. I turn around the last second and there we were two grown women pulling at each other's hair with world looking at us. She starts screaming at me that i'm calling her a bad mother and that i think i can take her place in amy's life and all that nonsence (again) so i yell at her that nobody is calling her that and push her off and just walk off. A couple of minutes later i hear my mother behind me. Apparently my mother had told my sister that she had been way out of line and needed to apologize. My sister doesn't agree and tells my mother to take the train home to and that the both of us aren't welcome anymore (so basicly we can't see amy any more) Later on she sends my mother a message that she had to come pick her sh*t up or she was throwing it away (we had left a bag in her car) and a few minutes later i get a message that says ' godmothership revoked' now i've gotta say that one really hit home, but this is just were it starts

two days later the phonecalls start between my mother and my sister and she's crying completely convinced that she had done nothing wrong and then the conversasion takes a twist and all the sudden i'm tha bad guy. How i ruined her life and how everything in her life that went wrong (she didn't finish high school, money problems, marriage problems, etc) was apparently my fault. And how all i want is attention and that everything i do is just to spite her and that it irritates her that i'm stil living at home. The way i see this is pretty much if i hadn't been born her life would be better.

I felt heartbroken. Stabbed in the back and a few daggers in the heart while she was at it. My own sister wishes that i had never been born. While she's crying to my mom she's also crying to my other sister (the middle one) telling her a completely different story as to what happened that day. Finally my middle sister convinces me to listen to my sister who then tells me that all she wanted to do was make me feel the she was feeling so i told her "there is absolutely no reason why you should use something i had told you in confidentiallity against me not even for something like that" all the sudden i hear my sister say something to my middle sister (we were over the phone) how i'm just like that and that i wasn't raised properly
yeah she just kept throwing daggers.

a couple of days pass and each day i get a message from her the last one said something along the line of 'i hope you're happy for ruining amy's birthday (which we are having a party for at my house, at that moment it had been canceled) I hope you have fun living your exilirating lif cause i don't want anything to do with it' a second after i received this message she call my mom crying that she doesn't know how to fix this. So my mom tells her that she should first stop sending these messages.

I haven't talked to my sister or have been contacted my her since that last phonecall. My mom has worked it out with her so she went to visit. While she was there i got another message from my sister which said 'i'm sorry i shouldn't have said thos things i didn't mean it' Now call me stubborn all you like but that didn't do much for me. My own sister hates me at that was it? a couple of days later she's on the phone with my mom and after they finish sha starts calling me (i'm still not ready to talk to her) and then she calls my mom again tot tell her i'm not picking up.

I send her a message that said:
'Could you please stop trying to call me or mother about me. Right now i don't know what to say to you so if you have just a little respect for me i'd appreciate it if you just left me alone for a while. You hurt me pretty bad so i'm trying to get my thoughts and emotion back on track first'

A couple of seconds later she sends me a message back:
' i respect that but could you decided before sunday (amy's birthday) so that only people who really want to be there are actually there!'

AND YET ANOTHER DAGGER! she really doesn't care how i feel as long as it's solved so she can have her party after all...;

ME: ' do you have any idea what you just sent to me, but fine i won't be there'
HER: ' don't be a drama queen i didn't say anything wrong and i have to call mom cause apparently you think you're the only one with problems'
ME: 'Thanks'
HER: 'do what you like, i did all i could'

This message i got a few minutes ago
Am i really wrong in this or what should i do, i just don't know anymore.. Anyone have some advice???

It sounds like your sis is incredibly overwhelmed with being a new mom. Some women even still suffer post pardum a year after giving birth. This is also a possibility. It's also a possibility that she's exhausted from interrupted sleep, feeling lack of appreciation from her husband, feeling jealous of you (her comment about your exhilerating life leads me to think that) for being younger and not tied down, etc.

None of this makes the way she's treating you okay. But I also don't think this is cause to end a relationship with a sister and depriving yourself of seeing Amy grow up. It may be a situation in which you need to be the bigger person, call her up for lunch or just a chat and tell her that you don't know what went wrong that day but that you're willing to look past it in order to keep her in your life. Tell her that's shes important to you, and that you can only imagine being a new mother is very difficult, and that you want to be there for her.

See where that takes you. She may just be having an incredibly hard time right now, and as a result she's acting very immature.