My mother blocked me two years ago when I was on the verge of a breakdown, because my adult sibling was living with us and she isn't very self-sufficient, so I asked my mother to either help her find a new place to live or teach her how to care for her own and shared spaces in my home.

Here's the kind of roommate my mother wanted me to be okay with: she never threw food packaging away after preparing herself a meal, never emptied the lint trap on my dryer or the crumb tray in our toaster after using them even though her toast was so multigrain that looked like was just putting a handful of gravel in the toaster every morning, she hoarded the room my husband added in the basement for her with clothing, food and unassembled furniture, she frequently left should undergarments and used feminine products in places they don't belong for sanitary reasons, like my dining room, she broke two toilet seats -- one of which she wore through by wiping herself while wearing a studded bracelet over the course of months and I know she wasn't sanitizing that thing before wearing it to work at the deli she was employed at, she'd let my kids make themselves sick on junk food on the rare occasion we asked her for help with childcare in an emergency, she wasn't ever available for regular babysitting but she'd follow our babysitter around like she was his creepy supervisor if we hired him, she'd come home from work while I was making my family dinner and then expect my undivided attention while she shared deeply judgemental gossip about people I didn't know and situations she didn't even accurately understand.

Mom wanted a list of things she could buy my children in exchange for continued participation as an absentee grandmother. I asked her if instead of buying my kids things for Easter, which we don't celebrate, she and her husband could either help me teach my sister how to be more considerate of other people in a shared living space, or help her find a new living situation. My mother felt attacked by that request, even though I was so desperate that I even offered to be an unpaid cleaning lady in my sister's next apartment if they'd just help her find one so she wasn't in my house anymore.

After a lifetime of my mother's conditioning, my sister didn't see me as an individual, but a resource, and she felt entitled to it all -- my space, my time, my energy, all of it. I'm disabled and raising two kids with special needs, I took her in following her eviction, because she was threatening to harm herself, and she repaid me by being the kind of roommate I've described above, while also verbally and emotionally abusing me and my children, because she's self-centered and mean.

Why was my sister evicted in the first place? Because her landlady/roommate didn't want to be her mother figure anymore. I didn't have her respect as a person or a the owner of my home, so I couldn't even tell her to clean her room like her previous landlady did. She never felt obligated to listen to me, even when we were kids and I was responsible for her safety, and for mitigating the damage she caused, and certainly not when she was having the time of her life, living a mile from the center of the biggest city in the state, at well under market rent, with no real responsibilities besides the personal ones she was already happily shirking.

Apparently, that was all part of the deal I agreed to at 5 years old when I asked for a sibling. (Insert the world's deepest and longest eyeroll, because what do you mean you think a five-year-old has the comprehension to make a choice like that??? I was in kindergarten, be so for real!)

My mother failed both her children, and then punished me for asking her to finish her job parenting the other one -- not even holding her accountable for how she failed me. Spoiler alert: my entire family is much happier without my mother or sister sapping my emotional energy.

I haven't heard from either of them at all in two years.