My sister and I moved in together about three years ago because she was on workers’ comp and couldn’t afford to live alone anymore. At the time I was living with my parents’ with no real plans to move out. Gimme a break - I was young and immature (okay, I’m still young). The deal at the time was that I would pay the rent because I had a job, and she would do the house-cleaning, take care of (her) (four!) cats, and pay the utilities not covered by the apartment complex, which worked out to just be the phone bill. We moved into a low-income place.
I quickly learned exactly how much my sister is a giant pain in the ass. I knew she was annoying, but I didn’t realize she doesn’t believe in keeping a regular sleep schedule, a good diet, or basically doing anything normal. She doesn’t deal well with heat and we have no AC, so during the summer she’d be useless and stay in bed all day long and then get up in the night feeling sick as a dog. She insists she cleans better than I do, but quickly proved that no matter how well you clean (and I don’t think I really clean that much worse) it doesn’t make much difference if you’re only vacuuming once a month and never really cleaning the kitchen. She’d clean the bathroom regularly, minus the bathtub (because it hurt her arm). So I’d end up doing the vacuuming when it started bugging me, with her insisting she’d do it because she did it better. I’d always tell her she could go back and do whatever I missed and she never did.
She never washed dishes. She has descoware cast iron enameled pots and pans. She’d manage to cook pasta but she could never wash the pot or colander (Bullshit). So it’d sit there, sometimes molding, until I’d do it. She never cleaned out the fridge. I’d clean out my food regularly and would throw hers out when it started molding. She never washed the counters, despite the fact that we had four cats that she never trained to stay off the counters, on top of all the fur floating through the air.
We don’t eat the same things, so she’d buy her own groceries. I always offered to buy her stuff, but she’d rarely add to my grocery list. On occasion she’d eat my food if I made Mexican food or something. Not really a big deal but annoying if I had be relying on that for my next meal. She’d drink all the milk, which was the mainstay of my breakfast so sometimes I’d have to skip breakfast. She never bought milk because she couldn’t carry it. :rolleyes:
She refused to drink tap water so she’d go to the water store and refill water jugs. She tried to get me to ‘help’ her with that as much as possible.
She couldn’t lift the boxes of litter so I’d always end up being the one buying and changing the litterboxes. On top of that, Stella would pee on our beds when she was annoyed with my sister.
There’s much more, but basically my sister would expect me to be her servant and drop whatever I was doing to help her. Despite her not having money, if she wanted something she’d buy it. If she didn’t have money and it was something for ‘us’ like camping supplies, I’d pay for it.
Now, admittedly I was getting stuff out of the deal: she made me a couple of bodices for RenFaire, we used her towels and dishes, various other things, and when she finally got her settlement she paid off my car loan and nearly all of my credit card debt. Towards the end as much as possible I’d refuse to do stuff for her.
Whenever she had a boyfriend or girlfriend she’d spend most of her time at their place, which was perfectly okay with me. A few months ago she got a boyfriend and he got her a job. She also got a job babysitting so between all that she was basically never home. Which was fantastic for me, if not so much for her cats. So then she started moving in with her boyfriend and his wife.
Before I go on, I suppose I should clear some things up. I have no problem with anything as long as everyone involved is consenting and adult. I have no problem with homosexuality, bisexuality, open marriages, BDSM, or anything else. I’m not into any of it, but feel free. I will support your right to do whatever you want to do in private. Just don’t expect me to want to hear details. My sister would love to try to tell my details, although eventually she stopped. Thank goodness.
So, anyway, she’s moving in with her boyfriend and his wife. Originally she was going to pay me $100 a month to keep her room (that being the difference in rent between an one and two bedroom apartment). Then she lost her job (if she’s telling the truth, which I can never be sure of, they were yanking her around). Well, I understood that the $100 was not going to happen. But she was still paying the phone bill. Okay, fair deal.
So far she’s taken her trashcans (?!) (and leaving me to buy new trashcans, what the hell?), her tools (fine, whatever), various other small things (including some bins out of the hallway closet right next to my head in the middle of the night), and two of the cats (the two big ones, great for me)
Then last weekend I find she wants me to pay the phone bill. Not fair deal. In fact, utter bullshit.
Okay, the money isn’t really the issue. It’s not. The issue is the fact that she expects me to store her stuff when I’m not getting anything out of it. The first person to say ‘but she’s family!’ gets hit with a dead fish. She’s a mooch. She thinks the world should revolve around her. She’s completely self-centered. And she’s pushed me around, manipulated me, and handed me her rejects and acted like she’s doing me a favor my entire life. She thinks she’s so independent and can’t stand relying on anyone, but has no problem using me or my parents to buy her things she wants or pay her bills or do things she wants. And I’m fucking done with putting up with her shit. I’ve been putting up with her until I could get my BA and leave the fucking COUNTRY. Seriously - I was planning to go to Japan to teach English and one of the main reasons was that way she couldn’t ask for anything from me.
Now she expects to use me as free storage? No fucking way. Not fucking happening. I have already had Rick tell me I should just pack her shit up, haul it to a storage place, and present her with the bill. This was before the phone bill thing, so I didn’t want to do it. Now I’m really tempted.
I’ll admit I’ve grown A LOT in the past couple of years. And it probably wouldn’t have happened without her. But I’ve spent money on her, I’ve loaned her money, I’ve been her servant monkey, and I’m now done with it. I do not give a shit that she’s poor. She treats me like shit. No, scratch that - she treats me like I’m nothing. I’ve never been anything but considerate and giving and I’ve hardly gotten anything in return. Especially whenever she’s with someone. And she’s just gotten worse about it over time. So fuck that shit.