The shattered remnants of my family lay scattered around me, much like the pizza slices on the dining room table after my sister’s explosive, weed-fueled rampage. Her physical assault, J’s menacing threats, A’s bruised face – it was a horrifying blur. My scream, “this is exactly why I call her crazy and that she needs medication,” had been a desperate lashing out, fueled by years of repressed anger and the immediate threat. Now, with J banned, A injured, and my sister gone “rogue,” I was adrift, guilt gnawing at me, wondering if I was the asshole for ever uttering that word, for feeling so little remorse, for not pushing myself to “fix” it.
The days following the explosion were a surreal nightmare. My own house felt unsafe, my parents’ plea for me to leave for my sister’s return a stark reminder of where I stood in the pecking order of their emotional chaos. A’s injuries, a constant source of guilt, kept me from his comforting presence, his mother’s anger a new barrier. I was adrift, stuck between a home I couldn’t bear to be in and a partner’s home I couldn’t bring myself to visit. The question of whether I was an asshole for saying “crazy” and for my lack of remorse gnawed at me, even as I clung to the undeniable reality of being physically assaulted.
One afternoon, seeking solace from the suffocating tension, I found myself aimlessly walking near a community center. A flyer on a lamppost caught my eye: “Family Support Group for Mental Health Challenges.” It wasn’t for me, I thought, but then another smaller line caught my attention: “Understanding Complex Trauma and Borderline Personality Disorder.” I hesitated, a faint pull drawing me towards it.
I walked in, feeling like an imposter. The group was small, intimate. A woman, older than me, was sharing her story. “My brother,” she said, her voice heavy, “he was diagnosed with BPD in his early twenties. He’d always been so volatile, so difficult. For years, I hated him. I saw him as manipulative, selfish, just… ‘crazy.’ He destroyed every family gathering, every holiday. My parents were always walking on eggshells.”
She paused, taking a shaky breath. “Then, I started going to therapy for myself. And my therapist, she started talking about complex trauma (C-PTSD). Not just single events, but ongoing, pervasive trauma, especially in childhood. Things like emotional neglect, inconsistent parenting, constant conflict, feeling unsafe in your own home.”
My blood ran cold. Constant conflict. Feeling unsafe in your own home.
“It turns out,” she continued, “my brother, he wasn’t born ‘crabby.’ He wasn’t just ‘choosing’ to be violent or manipulative. Our childhood home… it was deeply chaotic. Our parents fought constantly, emotionally absent, creating an environment where he never felt truly safe or seen. He was constantly dysregulated, his nervous system on high alert. The ‘tantrums’ as a kid, the ‘outbursts’ as an adult – they weren’t intentional malice. They were the desperate, maladaptive coping mechanisms of a child whose brain was literally wired for survival in a constant state of threat. BPD, for him, wasn’t something he ‘acquired’ out of nowhere. It was a severe trauma response, a way his brain learned to survive in an unpredictable, unsafe environment.”
She looked up, her eyes meeting mine. “And here’s the thing: while he was lashing out, pushing everyone away, our parents were also emotionally unavailable to me. I learned to shut down my emotions, to be ‘unemotional’ and ‘quiet,’ to avoid conflict and keep myself safe. I was dealing with my own trauma response, just in a different way. We were both survivors of the same chaotic environment, just expressing our pain differently.”
The pieces of my shattered past clicked into place with horrifying clarity. My sister’s “crabby” nature since birth, her extreme tantrums, her constant accusations of abuse, her desperate flights – they weren’t just the hallmarks of BPD. They were the desperate cries of a child perpetually stuck in fight-or-flight, a brain overwhelmed by unprocessed, complex trauma. And my own “unemotional” exterior, my ability to “walk away,” my self-description as being “exactly like her” in thought process but capable of control – that wasn’t a sign of superiority. It was my own, equally valid, but vastly different trauma response: fawning and freezing, a survival mechanism to become invisible and compliant in the face of chaos.
My stomp on her forehead at age five, her self-dislocated arm at seven, her running away in the Deep South – these weren’t just isolated incidents. They were the desperate, escalating cries for help from a child drowning in an environment of chaos and neglect, a childhood I had also shared, a history I had partially repressed to survive. The “crazy” I had labeled her with was a crude, unfeeling description of profound, internalized pain. My lack of remorse wasn’t indifference; it was the chilling numbness of my own trauma response. The blame, the arguments, the years of fractured relationships – it was all a devastating dance between two siblings, both shaped by the same invisible, complex trauma, both desperately trying to survive, but in wildly different, tragically misunderstood ways. The AITA question dissolved into a profound, aching realization: there were no assholes, only two wounded individuals, caught in the devastating wake of an unacknowledged family trauma that had silently dictated our entire lives.