Hello Moonhorse and Celestial Herd, I've been a lurker and decided to take the leap into posting my own dumpster fire that is my relationship with my sibling that just makes me go what the fuck is up with this woman?

A little background: I (33F) and my sister (35F) have never been close but trying too look back on our childhood with the benefit of that 20/20 hindsight I can say neither of us were more bratty than the other when it came to normal little kid stuff.

At least when the adults were around.

Since I can remember she's seemed to have it in for me and since she was the oldest I was to listen to her when our parents weren't around in the fine old tradition. Somethings that were gotten up to included assigning me the chores she didn't want to do (anything gross or heavy to lift) and telling me how to do them. I was also the one to do any fetch and carry like putting any dishes we used back, picking up the toys and changing any videos we might have watched. Pushing me on the couch, putting a pillow over my head and sitting on it, and any and all toys we had were subject to the most rigorous negations and contracts, whose was whose (hers) when we (I) could play with them and when, and if I had something she felt was unfair that I did, she usually broke it. In other words she was the princess and I was to be grateful to serve her.

Being a young kid, I responded in kind to everything and we were nearly constantly in trouble for fighting. Sister would often get a dressing down about "being too bossy" and my dad, being the gold standard of a classic taciturn Midwest farmer, was for letting us work it out ourselves without too much intervention and my mother certainly didn't help the situation. Now I'm pretty sure this is where the resentment comes from and, you guessed it, its the classic case of sister thought I was the favorite cause I was the youngest. My mother did indeed try to helicopter and coddle me to death, and I *hated* it and pulled away at every opportunity leaving my sister with mom since they both liked the same things. I was a hyperactive tomboy that loved being outside, being dirty, and didn't want to sit and snuggle and would avoid anything overtly girly like it was a manure fire. Which I indeed thought it was, hence I was closer to my dad.

Jump forward a few years, my parents have a messy divorce, we get a stepmom, our own mother becomes more eccentric and neither of us can really connect to her, and my sister continues to cry that I am the "favorite". I helped my dad on the farm and had an interest in it, my sister preferred staying indoors. Spending time together cause we have similar interests apparently is what counts as favoritism.

This is where the the shit storm starts for adult life, my sister has to make sure that *everyone* we are near knows how much better, smarter, and above all prettier she is than me. (Our mom was a body shame-er that never weighed more than 100 pounds, but that complex is a different story) Her usual M.O. was to say how immature I was and how my taste and appearance was like a dead fish that had been left in the back lot in the middle of July for a forensic class experiment compared to her. She would then proceed to steal my clothes to wear; I had a goth/vampire phase in high school and bought a lot of red velvet (cringe). This applied to anything else in life (what books, TV shows, or other interests I might have had) criticize and then steal.

Life marches on, I go through my college experience, which sucked and I end up in a trade union making a good living, so happy ending there. I see my sister occasionally during breaks and things mostly stay the same but I keep my distance, there is one story I will go into as its relevant later.

It's January, we are both in college but home for holidays. Dad is away at a farming conference and I have moved back into my dorm and in the middle of the night my sister calls saying the animals have gotten out of their pen. Apparently the neighbor called her while she was had work and said the animals had gotten loose. She couldn't get off of work and now she can't find them. I drive an hour back to my dad's to discover that the animals are indeed penned but just in a different spot, our neighbor must have rounded them up and penned them temporarily till someone got home. I move them back to where they need to be and tell sister to help with chores, I'll do the heavy lifting with the feeding if she just fills the water tubs.

Next morning I go out to do morning chores and discover that the hose is frozen solid and not a drop of water will come through it. I finish what work I can and drag the hose to the basement to let it thaw. When she gets up I ask my sister if she drained the hose last night, she says she put it over the barn rafter like she's seen me and dad do, wasn't that enough? Well surprise if you don't continue to to drain the water out of the rest of the hose by pulling it over the rafter all the way to the end of the 100 feet of its entirety, then the water will freeze given that it's January in the Midwest and render the hose useless till it thaws. I tell her the hose is in the basement and it should be thawed in an hour and then fill the water tubs as I couldn't because I was heading back to my dorm. She immediately gets upset saying that she is seeing her boyfriend today and why don't I just stay and do the watering when the hose thaws? She also throws in an attempt to make me the bad guy by saying that there was stuff she wanted to do today too, implying I was being selfish by leaving and taking away her important time. Being now that I was 20 and not 10 I said I was leaving and if that was the case, she could tell dad why the animals didn't have water. Since there was no call from my dad later that day I assume she did the watering.

My sister moves to NYC and I go no contact more or less cause I stayed in my Midwest state happy and contented in rural life. I study martial arts, flounder with what I want to do for work but end up in my building trade as mentioned. The only contact from sister is the occasional drunk dial text that I tend to ignore.

But this is when a new and now current dynamic starts, not being in a position to order me to do stuff, or steal or break my things with the physical space between us she starts messaging me and to my shock we actually start having grown up, and civil discussions.

Is she wanting to reconnect?

Does she now want a relationship with me now that we've both had some time to grow up?

...cricket chirps...

Nope, now her thing is to be civil and act like a grown up around me in private but the instant we are around people its the same old song and dance again. *Everyone Must Know She Is Better, Smarter, And Prettier Than Me!*

Most recent examples: when I got married she said she wanted to help, having event coordinator experience, which basically meant she showed us how they made a guest list in NYC and we told her what the speculative date of the wedding was but we hadn't talked to the venue yet. When she returns to NYC I don't hear much from her other than she wants to wear a big flower crown like mine for the ceremony. When I shut this down she had a melt down about how she's not part of my bridesmaids and how I'm not making her feel included, she only wanted this one thing, and how she *my sister* and that should count for something. I told her she didn't have to come if she didn't want to. The subject past and I went back to my planning.

Getting closer to the event, sister got her invitation and called me asking me to move the ceremony back an hour cause she was doing an event that day too. It was my fault of course because we had to move the tentative date we told her about 6 months prior because of a scheduling conflict with the venue. If I moved the ceremony back an hour she would have time to do her event and come to the wedding. Mustering my mouth back from where it had fallen open I told her once again she could either come or not and I was not moving the ceremony back an hour after I had already sent out *all* the invites. Wedding day very fortunately goes off without a hitch thanks in no small part to my awesome bridal party.

Again years pass, I am happily married and we are house hunting. We find a bit of property and house through the luck that is nepotism, a friend of my father-in-law's wanted to sell his place so he sold it to us for cheap and gave us all time we needed to get our down payment.

But now we come to the shit stopper of an event that just made me go "what the fuck is your problem"? Christmas, family dinner. Sister tells me she's flying in. Again we have a nice conversation, and me in my naivety bought into it and began talking with her. My hope rises and I'm actually looking forward to seeing her, but then the inevitable shit storm happens.

We are in front of people so again Everyone Must Know She Is Better Than Me. A few examples and this is in front of everyone whos is there: table setting and food is being placed, my sister calls me to follow her cause "I can be useful", I show dad a picture of the property were buying so he can look it over with his farmer's eye, sister declares that were having Christmas at my house next year and proceeds to tell me what I am to cook for dinner, all her favorites of course. I told her she wouldn't like being at our place as we are planning to farm and she would have to help with everything from baking to butchery (husband and I are the crazy mountain man types with a keen interest in self-sufficiency) Sister started to go on a very righteous speech about how she could indeed do all that cause we had the same upbringing. That's when I went, "Oh really? And you still didn't know how to drain a hose in January?" That shut her up for the rest of the meal.

We get our gifts and one of mine is Balls Canning Book with different recipes, as I'm thumbing through it and sister points at something and tells me that I am going to make that for her, and finally while sitting on the couch she grabs my hand and puts it on her head telling me to rub her head. Before I loose my shit my dad intervenes, rubbing her head and letting me go get a large drink. After that Christmas I went truly minimal contact, so when I found out I was pregnant I only told my dad and he did not pass it onto my sister as we both knew she would tell my mom who was not ready to tell yet.

As a side bar I was thrilled when we found out we were having a boy because I would not have to listen to my sister drone about raising a girl to be a "good feminist" and that her first words were going to be "fuck the patriarchy". I am a feminist myself but my sister's brand of it worries about mirco aggressions and man spreading and doesn't want to hear me tell my stories of how I love my highly male dominated construction work and I've only really run into two true assholes on jobsites. And this is not trim work that I do, I build concrete forms for industrial building and power plants. Its rough, hard work in all weathers and I personally find that when it comes to jobs like that most of the men there don't care that I'm female, they care that I can do my job. Sister thinks I must be brainwashed or a "bad feminist" to not see that I'm thinking like an oppressed mouse. But I digress, back to the story.

I also kept my mom and sister in the dark on the day our son was born cause the doctor decided to induce me early due to a complication and it took me 3 days and a week in the hospital for him to finally be born, again dad was the only one to know and did not pass the information along because the last thing I needed was my mom or my sister trying to storm the doors of the maternity ward while I was in labor or at least blowing up my phone. So far in the last months she has only asked me to send her a picture of our baby once and I am very happy with that. She can stay in NYC.

That's where today leaves me in the world of sibling rivalry, making me ask just what the fuck is up with this woman? But alas I fear I shall never know for sure, I am of course just an immature, dumb, and ugly younger sibling that ruined her life, at least in public that is.

Thanks to everyone who comments and thanks to Moonhorse if he reads this from the moonscape paddock.