I don't know if I can be of any help on this. In reading your post, it's something I can relate to a little bit. It seemed to "hit a cord" with me. Here it goes ....

At where I live now, it's over 3000 miles from my family. When I was in my early 30s, I lived with my parents and sister who is 11 years older than me. My sister, being older, feels like the boss if you know what I mean. At one point I lived with them for a couple of years in my early 30s. I felt like they treated me lousy; like I was in Jr. High. They were always critical, controlling, secretive, and abusive. At 33 I just had to leave because I couldn't stand it. I left and went over 3000 miles, to where I am now, and never went back.

My parents have passed away and my sister still lives in the same area. So this is getting to something that I can relate to now maybe about you. It's about my sister. Since my mother passed away 13 years ago (my father had already been gone), I never went to visit my sister. And I don't intend to anytime soon at least. I felt like she was the reason why I left because she sided with my parents a lot when they were treating me bad.

And now with my sister, she's married with two college aged children. Life back there is a real mess as she's in over $100,000 in debt, has a husband who's a jerk, and has all kinds of problems with the two kids. On top of that my sister doesn't call me very often, and when she does, she always has to hang up on me because there's some kind of crises going. Also she sounds very tired and falls asleep on me when we talk. So, my sister does not make it very appealing for me to want to come to visit. On top of that, she forgets that I left that place because I couldn't stand it.

So that's my take on this. I hope now in reading this that you don't see yourself as my sister.