My cousin and I are both F26. As children, we used to play together until she made me "find" a note that said how boring I was and how she actually disliked me. After years apart, we tried becoming friends again.
I always feel guarded around her. She surrounds herself with friends she (affectionately?) defines "charity cases" and always tries to fix them, which she admits to me while happily complaining about said friends and telling me deeply personal things about them. I have struggled with depression and I'm in the process of getting a formal FM diagnosis, so I'm afraid she sees me as yet another "charity case". I hate being pitied or treated like an invalid and I always try to lie about whatever I'm going through health-wise unless it's impossible to hide, so I hope I'm not encouraging any behaviors here.
This is the context. Now, she has a habit of sending me long, convoluted voice texts at like midnight to 1 am and I can't parse them to save my life. I've told her it doesn't work as a way to communicate with me. I'm often in bed ready to sleep and it doesn't occur to me to like make a post-it note to myself to listen in the morning. Plus, my phone doesn't show notifications as I have a minimal setup, so I need to open the app to see the chat has unread messages after they've come in. She didn't change that. It happens more than I'd like it to.
Thing is, recently, I forgot to reply for a longer time than what I consider acceptable, so I went about my life thinking nothing of it. I usually consider a conversation dead after a few days to a week of no reply and will happily start a new one without mentioning the dead end, idk if that's common. Anyway, I forget, I remember but it's too late (to me), I move on, but apparently she doesn't. She texts my sister (F20) who freaks out and comes to me asking me if I'm mad at our cousin, who just used her as proxy to avoid confronting me directly about my "silent treatment". I rush to reassure her, reinstate I'm a terrible texter, please either write or call instead and I WILL reply. During the day possibly. She settles for keeping the voice messages at ungodly hours and sending me written reminders the day after. (?) (You do you.) (It works, though now I feel like a forgetful teen with a helicopter parent. I'm sure she's not having fun either.)
The same thing happened a second time when I explicitly told her I was outside and couldn't message, she kept going, I put the phone away, and that time I ended up not replying because I ended up very ill shortly after and my mind was taken by other stuff for a couple days. Again, I thought nothing of it, dead convo. No, she contacted my mother weeks later, learned that I was ill and also several other things about my health and social life I'd have rather not told her. Again, didn't talk to me, went straight for the family. I feel more and more like the problem relative she keeps tabs on than a friend. When I contacted her for unrelated reasons, she sent another long voice message where, among other things, she made me feel guilty for this episode.
After this, I tried being more careful, but I started to get this mental block around her and I have to physically force myself. I've never been anxious over something as silly as text messages before. She's now getting passive aggressive in my WhatsApp.
I have issues, I tend to avoid confrontation too. I'm perfectly aware I'm being avoidant. But the more she pushes and goes behind my back, the more I want to run. We're both going through a lot, I don't want her to be there for me as it translates to fake sweet pity, but I feel obligated to be there for her because we're related. All I want is space, honestly. I know I should probably just say it and say it's all me. I can't work up the courage to and I know it would end badly.
TLDR: both F26, cousin got convinced I was ignoring her on purpose when I forgot to reply to a text and got too pushy, contacted my relatives instead of confronting me, I became genuinely avoidant, now it feels hard to fix because I'm a chicken. I want to take a break.