Do you know that saying about how a lot of women’s first bullies were there mothers? Well mine is my sister. It happened again for the nth time tonight for the first time in awhile. Well actually, it’s been this whole week really lol. Prior to this week, I just thought maybe I was just imagining her making me feel insecure or that it was my own mind trying to cope with my own insecurities but I’m almost certain she’s doing this on purpose. Tonight, I was saying how I was going to deep condition my very damaged hair and she condescendingly tells me that there is nothing wrong with having thin hair. I’m pretty insecure about my hair now because it’s incredibly unhealthy due to heat damage but I’m currently on a healthy hair journey.
I tell her that my hair isn’t thin, that I have fine strands of hair and lots of it, and she tells me, no it’s thin, you haven’t seen the back of your head when it’s wet. She tells me this after I’ve countlessly asked her about whether my hair looks like it’s thinning/getting unhealthier before and she constantly says no, or just tells me that I don’t need to do anything about my incredibly unhealthy hair. The weird thing is when I actually style my hair, she degrades herself and tells me she wishes she had my hair and how her hair is so bushy and ugly. I always comfort her.
Another thing that happened this week is her constant need to rush me while I’m incredibly patient with her. We’ve been going to the gym together consistently for the past few months and she’s usually the one who’s kinda dragging us behind, causing us to go to the gym at a much later time than we prefer. She does this by 1. taking forever to getting ready 2. sleeping in 3. just taking her time. I get annoyed sure but I’m pretty patient most of the time. This week though, I’ve kinda been dragging us behind since I had to start working on our New Year’s Eve dinner, actually wanted to fuel my body before the gym, and today, slept in on the weekend. She would constantly be telling me the time, rushing me, and told me that I’m the reason we’re always late to the gym. It’s annoying but I don’t wanna tell her otherwise because then it’ll turn into a big fight. She doesn’t really take any form of criticism well.
Adding onto the gym thing, I don’t wanna say it but a good reason she goes to the gym is because she has a crush on some guy that goes there. He’s nice and everything but he hasn’t really actually went out of his way to show any interest towards her other than us simply being gym friends. She is constantly asking me if there were any signs and how she gets sad when there isn’t any. I told her one time to stop letting him have this much power over her and she got mad at me, refusing to talk to me for a few hours. Incidentally, that same week, a guy friend from the gym asked me out, and my sister was sad because her gym crush hasn’t even asked her out yet after months of “signs” and saying hello and than tried to downplay the possibility of a guy liking me by telling our sister in law that the guy wasn’t trying to ask me out, he was just trying to check my free time.
Another thing she does is constantly degrade herself, constantly calling herself ugly and telling me she wishes she looked like me. I of course comfort her but she just continues to degrade herself. And then she’ll switch up and make me feel insecure again. Like she’ll bring up that weird time of my life where my mental health was struggling and I didn’t take the best care of my hygiene and how I used to stink really bad. Or how bad my acne used to be whenever I’m doing my skincare but I shouldn’t worry because irs much better now. Or try to make me feel bad for repeating outfits that I think I look good in and make sly comments about how my body only looks like that in certain pants and than when I correct her, she backtracks.
Another weird thing she does is that whenever I’m complaining about how hard it is for me to find a job, she tells me I’m not looking hard enough or how I don’t need a job. Or whenever I express any sentiment about how I want a job that will grow my experience in the field I want to work in, she tells me to stick with retail/customer service. Or whenever I express any sadness about not having close friends, she tells me I don’t need close friends because people are annoying. Or whenever I complain about how I feel like I’m wasting my youth not really living my life to the fullest and just staying inside, she’ll tell me that going out is overrated. Idk it’s just very suffocating and it’s like she doesn’t want me to be my own separate person.
There’s another thing that I kinda don’t like talking about but when I was a kid, and she was a young adult, she would kinda do the same thing as well as hit me and stuff. Like I have this memory of her yelling at me very violently, asking me why do I have to be so awkward all the time, after I didn’t know how to pick up food at the Costco food court. Idk but now that I’m at the age where she would constantly yell at me, hit me, make me feel bad as a child, I just look at kids who were my age at the time and I think I would never do that to them.
She’s never really called me ugly, in fact she’s done the opposite. But whenever she tells me that I’m beautiful, she has to degrade herself first. She is just constantly picking at things and making comments about features she knows I’m insecure about and I don’t know why. And then when I’m obviously bothered by it, she acts like the victim by shutting down until I have to apologize. I know she’s insecure and has self-image issues but Jesus Christ why must she inflict that on me.
TLDR; ever since I was a child, my older sister constantly makes me feel bad and insecure about myself and I just don’t know why anymore.