Background: My is 26 y.o sister and I’m 42. She had a pretty rough childhood. As you can see, I was born much later, so I have no idea of how her teenage years looked like. According to her, my parents played favourites and they preferred the boys over her.
When my sister was around 13, she was kicked out of our family home over her refusing to go watch a parade and she ended up living in my grandparents’ home for about 1.5 years. Our parents act as if this never happened and they deny any negligence although all three of my siblings faced this. Basically, my sister holds a lot of resentment towards our parents and rightfully so in my opinion.
Around 8-10 years ago, she was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy and this has been very hard for her and us as a family. Her illness caused our parents to actually prioritise her and her children over any of us and I believe our parents feel very guilty over how they treated her before.
While they have never apologised, they have gone out of their way to take care of her. Our dad paid all the bills, rent and tuition fees of all her kids when she decided to move to UK for better access to healthcare (Some specialise). She was there for nearly two years before moving back during the pandemic.
Our mother also regularly looks after her kids and goes to pick them up from school.
Our parents bought a car and hired a driver last year. One of my brothers and I vowed to never use it because of all the drama. Both my sister and her ex-husband work full-time in demanding jobs, so she is unable to pick them up from school by herself. Our dad also uses the car to go to work and mum also whenever she needs to go to the shops.
Most of the conflict happens due to clashes in schedules and when my sister can’t use the car whenever she wants. According to our dad, she uses it 80% of the time. She does not pay for petrol, she does not contribute anything at all to the car. Last night, my sister again got into an argument with our dad since the car broke down, she was complaining about how the driver keeps mixing up the pick-up points.
She hung up the phone causing my dad to throw a fit about how they bought the car to use for themselves and are not able to use it without upsetting her. That she knows that the driver cannot properly understand what we are saying because of the language barrier.
I had enough of listening to both my parents complain about this for so long and offered them a solution – to tell her that she can no longer use their car.
Our parents don’t want to say no to her and I know it’s because they feel like they owe her the world after everything. I feel like my sister is using her childhood trauma and illness as an excuse to take advantage of them. I am on the verge of telling her to stop being so entitled, to buy a car and hire a driver herself since it is inconveniencing our parents.
Should I do it?