I think it’s okay to be selfish when you’ve done the exact opposite your whole life, and I think that it’s beautiful you can always do a hard reset in your life and start over. The past few days have been rough. My cat was sick, my family has been fighting, I found out my sister wants to start seeing her dad even after finding out he would physically abuse me and my mom. I’ve learned to detach myself from what I can’t control and let people do what they want instead of exhausting myself trying to save them. I have to save myself first, and I have gotten better with that. The problem is that everyone around me can see that too. I’ve been called selfish the past 2 weeks more than I have my whole life, but I am content with that. My siblings and cousins are all 16 and under while I’m about to be 22. There’s only so much I can do when they’re fighting but I’d rather pour into my own cup than worry about what they will or won’t do to fix their own problems. My grandmother on the other hand wants to save everyone, she wants people to know that she’s there even if it means stressing and sabotaging herself. I still don’t talk to my mother, I haven’t since September and I try to hear the least amount of things about her as humanly possible because she’s never going to change. I seem to be the only person that will realize that. With my siblings and cousins fighting my mother chooses not to intervene, she just doesn’t want to deal with parenting. She doesn’t want anyone to pop her bubble of this warped reality that she made up and that everything is fine. It’s one thing to be selfish and to be a parent. My siblings told her they don’t like her drinking, from what I’ve heard she has an entire fridge full of alcohol. She got angry and defensive about it of course, but swears that her kids don’t need therapy and that therapy doesn’t help, that all they need is her. All the while my brother rips his hair out when he’s frustrated and my sister looks for a father in older men on the internet. No matter what I say they won’t listen, I was 14 and 15 once too. I tell them my opinion I give advice once and I let them do whatever they want knowing they will either learn from it or not, knowing they have to choose. My sister told me I’m selfish for not involving myself more, for not actively trying to stop what I didn’t create. I spent my whole life doing that just to end up stressed out and things playing the way they were meant to anyways. My cat is better now, but I spent the past few days staying up all night with him because I was worried if I slept I’d wake up to him not breathing anymore. What really changed everything was hearing my sister wants to start seeing her dad again. She talks about him a lot in therapy, even though she’s never met him. Which i understand, but what she isn’t doing is telling her therapist what he did and the reason he’s not allowed to be around us anymore. He would hit me and my mom while also hitting her in front of me on purpose, he told my mom he would bury us alive and intentionally find us to do so, he’s tried to kidnap my sister multiple times and I sat on the sidelines from age 6-10 watching it unfold. She knows this too. I felt myself dissociating just hearing that, I still am now even talking about it. My dad was never around either, I only met him when I was 7 because my mom didn’t want to deal with me anymore. I get what it’s like to wonder. But it just rubs me wrong that she knows what he did and is actively avoiding telling her therapist because she wants to see him. I had to take a step back and let myself accept that she’s going to do what she wants to, either she’s going to see him and find out for herself, or she’s going to wonder the rest of her life what would’ve happened if she did. I can’t do anything about that. If that makes me selfish I will be selfish. I am going to continue pouring into my own cup and letting others have the opportunity to do the same. I won’t stress myself out anymore over what other people will choose to do, what’s meant to happen WILL happen either way
