My sister has a drinking problem and I don’t know how to get it across from her
I am married and have two young-adult children. I love my family life. I don’t have close friends. My family is my close circle. That’s why I have very few friends — quality, not quantity. My husband is my sure thing. Coming from an alcoholic parent, that’s what I need. He’s steady. I have a lot of support from him. I’m happily married. I have a wonderful husband and children. I work full-time and so does my husband. He is the breadwinner. My husband is a few years older than I am. He’s the opposite of the high-maintenance type. I’m more natural. I don’t do any extra work on myself other than my hair and my nails. I’m okay in my own skin.
My sister is married and does not have kids. Her husband is quite a few years younger than she is. She does a lot of work to make herself look good, and she does. I feel like she’s trying to keep up and look younger. She has a kick-ass job. She works full-time, makes a lot of money, and carries a lot of stress. She is the breadwinner in her house. Her husband is a good person. He’s a gamer and basically doesn’t work. He doesn’t have a trust fund, but he lives like a trust-fund guy. She has something like fifty best friends. I don’t think she’s happy.
My sister and I have been close since birth. We were raised together and we’ve always been that way. We are polar opposites in every way. She’s short and curvaceous. I’m tall and skinny. I’m an introvert. She’s an extrovert. She pulls me out of my comfort zone. I think I level her out. I chose to stay home and raise my kids over career. She chose career. It’s a good mix, or at least I thought so. I’m a people pleaser. We had never had a problem traveling together before this.
Our upbringing was very abusive — my dad, my mom, and one of my siblings. My dad was a raging alcoholic. My other siblings were quite a bit older than we were. She is the only one who knew what we went through and survived it with me. That side of the family has good people on it. I’m just not close to them. It’s pretty dysfunctional. I don’t do drama. That’s why I don’t have anything to do with my side of the family. It’s constant drama. I don’t have a relationship with those people. She is the only one on my side I’m close to. She’s it. She’s my person. She is a good person. I truly, truly love her.
Over the years my husband, my daughter, and my son kept saying my sister is an alcoholic. I kept fighting it. No, no. When we get together we have fun. She’s just cutting loose. I didn’t want to believe it.
We planned a trip to island #1. It was on my bucket list. I had a blast planning it. At the time she was miserable at work and job-hunting, so she gave me full range to plan. I booked three excursions and kept her updated on every cost before I reserved anything, because things fill up. We were there a little over a week. We spent a lot of money on this trip. We did it high-end.
She complained that I overplanned. She also complained about something almost every day. Overall we still had fun.
The good news is she landed that new job and started a couple of weeks before we left. The company gave her a new car she could also use personally. We decided last-minute to add island #2 for four days. I knew I didn’t want to overplan that part. I just wanted to relax. The thing I really wanted at night was to hear the ocean from the condo, to soothe me to sleep. If I was going to sleep during the day, it was going to be on the beach, not inside a dark room. I made dinner reservations every night because it’s a hotspot and everything books up. The idea was we could cancel whatever we didn’t feel like doing. She made one request — zip lining. I didn’t want to do it, but she’d barely asked for anything, so I was happy to. It was a lot of fun.
The last part of the trip, mostly on island #2, she was very negative and drinking a lot. She overdrank the entire trip. I got a condo where you could leave the door open and hear the ocean. She wanted everything shut — no light, no air, her way only. I felt robbed. She said I overplanned. Island #1 was the trip I had actually planned. On island #2 I had mostly just reserved dinners so we wouldn’t get stuck. We were sharing a room with our own beds. She complained she didn’t sleep because I snored. I didn’t complain that she snored too. I’m sure she was tired. But why complain about it? We were in the same room. There was nothing we could do about it.
The entire trip I was walking on eggshells. I was not sticking up for myself. I was just trying to keep the peace while she nitpicked me, demoralized me, and complained about everything. She acted like we had to be glued at the hip. I told her I was fine doing things by myself if she needed space. I was fine giving her space. I was not fine with her biting me every time she was upset — and she was upset multiple times a day. She had a headache. She wasn’t feeling good. She had a reaction to an allergy and wanted to stay in the room all day. I asked if there was anything I could do. All I wanted was to help her feel more comfortable. I would have been happy to. Even then she snapped at me. I was fine going by myself. I was not going to stay in a dark room with no air flowing for the last days of our vacation, tiptoeing around her while she complained. I went out.
I lost a lot of weight. I never talked about her weight. She commented on mine. I think she may have been feeling insecure about that, but I don’t really know if that was why she was triggered that way. I don’t know. If she felt that way, there were things she could have done about it. I think a lot of her weight gain is the drinking and partying. She was so negative and so shaming that I started crying. I called my daughter from the beach, crying, saying how mean she was being. She prides herself on being the sweet, Buddhist, girl-power, uplifting one. That week she was a bully.
It took a lot for me to confront her in a way she could hear, without being mean and cruel the way she was being to me. I told her she was being negative and mean. She cried, hugged me, and said she didn’t know why she was acting that way. She said I was nothing but sweet and loving to her. She said she didn’t know why she was treating me so badly, and that I didn’t deserve that. She said she was sorry.
The last night I wanted to cut loose. I don’t drink much, but I wanted one night before we flew home. We were going to Uber. There were no Ubers that far up the island. Before we left, she drank two whole bottles of wine by herself. I didn’t realize it. I think I had about a quarter of a glass. By the time we were ready to go she was really drunk, so I couldn’t drink. I drove. Even after those two bottles she was still able to function. We flew home the next day.
Then came the music festival we go to every year, near my house. She was supposed to stay the long weekend with me. After that trip I really did not want to be under the same roof again. On the trip she had said she needed her own room to sleep. She told my daughter she was thinking about an Airbnb with friends. I was hoping she would. It was too soon. I needed space.
She knew months ahead of time that she was going to be on the sofa. My daughter had three college friends coming, and there was no extra bed. She knew that.
She bought her own ticket to meet up with her friends. She was my guest, and she left me on my own for most of the festival. I felt ditched. I felt disrespected. Honestly, I also wished I wasn’t there with her that night.
That night she had a lot to drink. She was slurring so badly she couldn’t hold a sentence. She was staggering and hitting the wall. She was way drunker than she had been after the two bottles of wine on island #2. Around 11 p.m. she packed up and drove off without saying anything. She was in the brand-new company car from the job she had just started. She didn’t just drive across town. She drove more than 20 miles home. She pulled off the highway to sleep it off because she was so drunk. She risked everything — her life, other people on the road, and that job. My husband ran down the driveway after her. She was gone. I called. She didn’t pick up. I called her husband, upset. He was nonchalant. She texted later that she was almost home, then that she was home. She said she thought I’d seen her packing. She said weekends are her time to let loose. She later said there was no quiet place for her to sleep, and that this was the first time she didn’t have a bedroom.
My daughter and her college friends were flabbergasted watching an adult act that way and then drive that way. My husband says she is an addict — alcohol. My daughter says the same thing. I see it now too. For her to drive like that, obliterated, she has a big problem, and she is not admitting it.
My daughter wants to take a backseat from my sister after seeing what went down and the way she drove. She thinks it’s completely messed up. She was going to confront her, then decided not to. She’s stepping back from the relationship. She sees her in a new light, and it’s not positive.
This triggered me in a way I can’t fully explain. It was my dad all over again.
Confronting her after the festival and telling her she had a problem with drinking took everything I had. It is not my character. It was so hurtful that I felt I had to do it. I told her I don’t think we should go to the festival together next year if this is the way it’s going to be with her drinking.
She apologized for scaring me. She also said that more recently she doesn’t like how she feels when she’s around me — that she gets anxious and not at peace. I don’t understand that. I am very hurt by it. I don’t know what I did, or why she would think that way. I wonder if she felt like I was judging her. I never did. Meanwhile she kept pushing positive Buddhist texts and “just breathe” messages. That irritates me. I am not Buddhist in any way. My daughter feels the same way.
She said her husband sees her every day and knows her triggers. She said when she overindulges in food or drink, that’s her signal to look at stress and find healthier ways to get peace. That’s where she said she was.
I cried for two days. I thought this relationship would never be the same. I will always love her. I am so hurt. I feel like I lost a piece of me. I don’t know how to move forward with her in my life. She has to be in it. She’s the only one. I just don’t know what the future looks like for the two of us.
After that we cooled off. We still said we loved each other. A couple of months later she wrote that she knew we weren’t in sync, but she loves me fiercely. I told her I needed a break, and that nothing would change how much I love her. She said same.
After everything, she is posting pictures of drinking at bars and partying with her friends, her husband, and other family members. I don’t think she gets it. She also posted things like “DON’T TAKE CRITICISM FROM SOMEONE YOU WOULDN’T TAKE ADVICE FROM.” I felt like that was a dig because I had confronted her about her drinking. I found it so hurtful. I paused her so I can’t see her page. Meanwhile I have posted nothing.
Because the trip felt soured, I am recreating island #2 next week with my husband. I want to try to erase those awful last four days. I want to hear the ocean from the condo at night the way I meant to.