Birthday Twin
So this isn’t as bad as many of the situations in this group, but I lived with my older cousin(she’s 25, I’m 20) for about 1.5 year until she kicked me out a few months ago because “her boyfriend was gonna buy their family home and wanted it to be just them”. The real reason was I asked her to pay me for babysitting her kid. I wouldn’t have had a problem babysitting her kid for free if I lived there for free and she bought food for me, she didn’t. I payed to love there, cleaned THEIR messes, bought my own groceries, feed their kid because they would take random naps in the middle of the day and leave their 2-3 year old running around by herself. Anyways, we got into a big argument when she tried to kick me out and her boyfriend told me I could stay as long I needed, but i had everything packed and officially moved out the next day. We haven’t talked since, but today is both our birthday’s and she text me happy birthday. It’s not a huge deal but i was really close with her when this happened and like I said she’s my older cousin so I looked up to her when we were younger, it hurt when she kicked me out and I told her if she grew up how I did I would’ve whooped her right then and there. The point of this whole rant is idk if I should respond to her or not. I wanna respond and say happy birthday because I miss her and like I said we were really close, but I can’t forgot her kicking me out and taking advantage of my help while I was living with her. What should I do?
@loyalStrawberries5313
I think, if your heart is telling you to respond, there may be some inward desire to opening up communication with her. It sounds like she did take advantage of your good nature and unfortunate that, rather than communicating with you directly, you felt she made up an excuse to have you move out of the home. I can understand your feeling that you can't forgive her for what she did. Have you considered creating boundaries to protect yourself and you feelings if you choose to respond to her? It's okay to tell her you aren't ready to talk about being kicked out, for example, if you think that conversation would be hurtful to you or to your relationship.