Seeing my phone light up as the name ‘Cathy’ appeared on the screen, I groaned.
Flinging the device across the sofa, I buried my head in my hands, the peace of my evening suddenly shattered. ‘What’s happened?’ asked my husband, hurrying in from the kitchen, convinced I’d just received terrible news.
His concern only made my reaction to the message I’d just received seem – on the face of it – pretty ridiculous.
What did it say? ‘Happy birthday for tomorrow. Want to go for lunch? My treat.’
It was a generous offer from my younger sister – but instead of smiling I felt only a huge surge of anxiety, one that came from decades of sorting out her dramas.
Fourteen months earlier, during a row sparked by yet another moment where I was expected to drop everything for her, I’d told Cathy I needed space.
At the time, I thought that would mean a few weeks, a much-needed pause in a relationship I’d begun to resent.
And yet, despite her sending me a couple of messages, I’d never found the desire to reply.
There’s an expectation that you will keep up some sort of contact with brothers and sisters no matter what – but for Jayne, being related to her sister Cathy is exhausting
Instead of smiling at her sister’s birthday message, Jayne only a huge surge of anxiety after decades of sorting out her dramas
Now a year had passed and her birthday message made me realise I preferred it this way.
My evenings weren’t being derailed by whatever crisis she found herself in. I wasn’t bracing myself every time her name flashed up on my phone.
So, instead of replying, I blocked her number. Then, when we moved house the following month, I didn’t bother telling her where to.
I know that sounds cruel. Even my husband said it felt harsh. After all, I had effectively ghosted my own sister.
You hear a lot about people who’ve estranged themselves from their parents, but much less from those who’ve cut off a sibling.
There’s an expectation that you will keep up some sort of contact with brothers and sisters no matter what. But being related to Cathy is exhausting, and, frankly, I was done.
For years, I accepted the dynamic between us without really questioning it. Our dad had died suddenly of a heart attack when I was 15 and she was 12, and I’d taken the responsibility of being the older sister very seriously.
Mum was devastated, so I made a conscious effort to take care of Cathy to give her one less thing to worry about.
Cathy had been very close to Dad, and I can see now that she must have been dealing with all sorts of complicated emotions. But these manifested in friendships that became intense and volatile – often ending in dramatic fashion and with her needing my reassurance she’d done nothing wrong.
As we got older, the mayhem only got worse.
I remember her ringing me late one night when I was 25 and she was 22, drunk and in floods of tears after a row with a man she’d been seeing, who it turned out had a wife and two children.
I threw a coat over my pyjamas and drove across town to get her, then sat on her kitchen floor until 3am while she swung between sobbing and fury, asking me what she should do next.
Another time, she rang in a panic after leaving work halfway through the day having taken umbrage over something she’d been asked to do.
She begged me to call her office and say Mum had been taken ill and she’d had to rush to the hospital. I hated lying – especially about something like that. But she was so desperate, I did it.
However tiring this all got, I think there was something about being the person she turned to that I found flattering, the fact she turned to me instead of Mum, who couldn’t cope with her dramas. And it felt good knowing I was saving Mum the stress of it all.
Not that Cathy seemed to appreciate it. Even on my wedding day, when she was 27 and I was 30, Cathy found a way to make herself the centre of attention.
I remember standing at a window during the reception and spotting her in the hotel garden, locked in a furious row with one of my bridesmaids after Cathy had openly flirted with her boyfriend.
Everyone was watching, so naturally I went out and helped smooth it over for her.
But when, in my 30s, I had children, my priorities changed. Now there were two small people whose needs had to come first, no matter what was going on in Cathy’s life.
Yet Cathy, still single, held on to the expectation that I’d continue to drop everything for her. I remember one evening when both my children were poorly. I’d finally got them to sleep, but then my phone started ringing over and over. I knew it would be Cathy – no one else would keep calling so relentlessly – but I was too exhausted to answer.
She left a message accusing me of abandoning her in the middle of a crisis.
Often she’d turn up unannounced with her suitcase in hand, in tears after yet another relationship had imploded and asking to stay for ‘a few nights’.
Cathy held on to the expectation that Jayne would continue to drop everything for her, even after she was married with children
Each time it meant one of my children having to give up their bedroom so she could have somewhere to sleep. My husband, an only child, complained but tolerated all this because he seemed to think it must be normal.
Meanwhile, money became another source of tension. There was always something – a rent shortfall or a bill that needed urgently paying – leaving me feeling I had no choice but to bail her out.
She’d promise to pay me back quickly, but then she’d be booking holidays or turning up in new clothes as though what she owed me had slipped her mind.
Yet if I dared remind her, she’d make me feel as though I was being mean for even mentioning it. It was utterly infuriating, but the truth is, Cathy had a temper and it was easier to keep the peace than to keep attempting to fight her on it.
Eventually though, just after I turned 50, my thinking shifted during yet another of her fall-outs with a friend. She called me, as usual, to talk it through, presenting herself as having been completely wronged.
But then she read out a message she’d sent the friend in the heat of the argument. It was deliberately cutting, saying that their relationship had survived this long in spite of her friend’s personality and not because of it.
I remember sitting in silence, realising how much my sister had escalated the situation, then positioned herself as the victim. She was in her late 40s now, far too old to be behaving this way.
The true breaking point came a couple of months later when my husband was undergoing tests for possible cancer. Our mum had also died in the past year, so I was feeling particularly vulnerable.
I called Cathy, needing support for once instead of providing it.
‘Oh God, that’s awful,’ she said. ‘What have they said? When will you know more?’
For a few minutes, she was exactly what I needed – calm and sympathetic, asking all the right questions. And then, almost seamlessly, the conversation shifted to her and a minor disagreement she’d had at work.
‘Cathy,’ I said, cutting across her, ‘do you have any idea what I’m dealing with right now? For once, I need you to just listen to me, not turn it back to you.’
There was a pause, then she snapped: ‘Oh, so I’m not allowed to talk about my own life now?’
Only this time, I snapped back.
‘I can’t do this any more,’ I said. ‘I need some space.’
That was five years ago. At first, I found it harder than I expected. After all, in between the dramas, Cathy could be funny, spontaneous and great company. She was also the only person who shared my history.
But the lighter moments had been swallowed up by her self-centredness. The balance had shifted so far that the good no longer outweighed the toll it was taking on me.
I realise that, with our mum gone, my turning away from her has effectively left Cathy without close family. Our elderly aunt shows me the Christmas and birthday cards Cathy sends her – they don’t give anything away about her life, and my children don’t hear from her, so I don’t know anything about her now.
I’ve never given her the opportunity to try to put things right. And, yes, there are moments when that weighs heavily on me.
I miss the version of Cathy I will always love – the sister who could make me cry with laughter.
But I don’t miss the chaos and the horrible feeling of my life being pushed aside to make room for hers. And, sadly, I don’t believe my sister has it in her to change.
Maybe one day I’ll relent and try to make contact, although I don’t imagine she’ll want to speak to me again after I cut her out of my life so brutally. Maybe I’ll come to regret my decision.
All I know is that right now, it feels better this way.
- Jayne Whipsnade is a pseudonym. Cathy’s name and identifying details have been changed.
