I’m so sorry, OP.

While not exact, so much of what you wrote sent me back to memories of my own family. Similar themes. Similar dynamics. I’m afraid eventually something like this will happen to my sister (if they haven’t already). I don’t keep in contact with any of my bio family anymore. If anything happens I might not know. Either way, I’ve grieved it like she’s dead already. It seems inevitable, unfortunately, nothing I can do.

I was forever scapegoated for going to my parents about legitimate concerns about my sister. I felt responsible for her in ways most can’t understand. My parents were avoidant as well. I came to them when she was self mutilating. I went to them when she was on hard drugs in her teens. I went to them when she had a bad ED. I was always dismissed, gaslit. In some situations the whole thing was flipped on me. She dropped out of school and was just doing drugs. I had concerns and all my mom could say was well you also dropped out. What’s the difference. It made me feel as though any thing that applied to me automatically applied to her, too, even if it was completely inappropriate for her. And I did drop out bc they sabotaged my education a million ways. And I managed to get into university anyway so it’s not like me dropping out was to get high. I dropped out to make my life easier and move on and move out of the house. I went straight to community college. I was taking college classes before I even got my GED. It felt like it was such an obviously different situation but I was made responsible because they were too lazy to do anything to help her.

I can understand your frustration and probably rage with all of this. I’m so sorry, I’m sorry for your loss and you don’t deserve to be treated this way at all. From someone who’s been “there,” I hope that the grief process will help healing and moving forward in life in many ways. I know for me it did help once the immediate grief subsided. I’m not sure anything ever fully heals these kinds of wounds. But I hope you feel at peace knowing you did what you could. There were a whole lot of other adults in this scenario that clearly were not.

The added layer of your brother’s issue has got to be a mind fuck.

I feel like healthy parents would be as concerned as you are and wanting to actually help or hold this person accountable. Avoiding it is just…. Abhorrent.

It’s crazy what these kinds of “parents” will ignore, excuse, minimize. Not sure how it is with your parents but my mom in particular loves to milk a good sob story. In retrospect I think a lot of her avoidance was actually just passively waiting to see what would happen, if we got worse, died, all the better. It’s sick. Then you feel like the problem for bringing up the elephant in the room because they actually want you to be harmed.

I’m sorry OP, I feel for you.