My ongoing sister problem has taken a surprising turn. Last week I can home from work and my sister was there much to my dread. Before she left, she reminded me that we need to discuss why we aren’t speaking. Which for her meant enough time has passed that she’s going to blame me entirely or she begs for forgiveness and promises to never do it again only to do it again. It’s a vicious cycle that I’ve been looped in for over 20 years. It’s happened enough where I know what’s going to happen and I’m just too exhausted to keep fighting her when I have my own problems to fight. And for the first time in my life my mom is actually running to my defense. I think it’s maybe because she actually saw me sick, actually saw me battling depression and really going to into a dark place. She doesn’t want my sister talking to me alone and instead she wants to talk to my sister because she can see how exhausted I am. She sees that I’m dealing with enough and I don’t need one more thing. My whole life my sister was able to manipulate the situation and hide her true personality from my parents. If I ever tried to defend myself in any way, she’d scream and cry to make me look entirely at fault. There was one instance where she slapped me across the face three times for making her lunch (I’m serious) and my parents did nothing because she quickly brushed it under the rug. For the first time in my life my mom actually wants to defend me and that feels good. This entire year  after the incident, she’s been encouraging and no judgmental when I was struggling . Understanding I have my limits and not emotionally stable. While my sister has been using it all against me, belittling me at every turn making me feel worse because I couldn’t recover fast enough for her. I’m tapping out because I’ve been doing this for too long and I don’t want to be 10 years older and still doing this