I don't usually post personal stuff on this forum, but I have had a bad day and I know this board is full of intelligent, well-read people who will bring me back down to earth on this
The short version is, I have come to accept that my Dad's family is just not good for me. I grew up primarily with my mom and take after her in a lot of ways. She has a very open family. If somebody says or does something that bugs somebody else, they say 'that bugged me' and the other person says 'sorry' and it's done and we all move on with our lives. Dad's family doesn't do this. His family is very dysfunctional, full of feuds (some known to all participants, some harboured secretly over many years) and schisms (one sister controls each brother; if the Debbie faction is having an event, the Lisa faction is not invited and vice versa) and just plain old grudges.
My half-sister is a chip off the old block, and a recent minor thing (which was completely none of her business and which was resolved among the two people whose business it actually was within a day of happening) has set her off again, and after four days of ranting emails from her about how completely unwilling she is to have a relationship with me unless I apologize, again, and with greater sincerity, for things she thinks I did to other people dating back ten years etc. I have realized that having a healthy relationship with her just isn't going to happen. I have made sincere attempts to make things right with her. She just isn't playing ball here. And when she recently crossed a line and told me that perhaps I should stay away from 'the family' for awhile, I insisted she tell my father, and to my dismay (I had expected it but sort of hoped for better) he did not completely back me up on this.
Part of me rationally understands that some people are just drama people, that she maybe has some issues going on which are not completely about me here, and that sad though it might be that we could not come to some sort of peace on this, it's not a reflection on me as a person. I'm not even saying she is a bad person either. She has her own damage from his crazy family, and my parents are so different and I am coming from such a different place on this that I may as well have been raised in Kazakhstan by polar bears as far as speaking her language is concerned. The bottom line for me now though is, I am no longer willing to submit myself to her drama and am bowing out of this for the time being. She, and to a lesser extent, Dad, will get Facebook messages on their birthdays and holidays because it's the right thing to do, but for anything else, they know where to find me if they want to talk and I am going to stop sticking my neck out to have it bitten yet again
I'm just really sad about this and having trouble making peace with the whole thing. My rational brain is saying all these sensible things about how I did my best, about how she has something else going on with her etc. that isn't my fault and maybe she'll come around someday but if she doesn't, I handled this by taking the high road etc. But it hurts that my dad has proven once again that I am the last priority in his life, and it hurts too that even though my sister has been a total brat about this, that we couldn't come to any sort of mutual peace on this because family IS really important to me (my mom's family is really close-knit and I love them all) and I wish I could have had that with her. And yeah, it bugs me that she doesn't *like* me because I really don't think I am such a terrible person
Has anyone been in this kind of situation before? Do you have any words of wisdom to help me make peace with the kind of sad ending to this whole thing? I know I am doing the right thing by laying low and keeping my distance, at least for now. But I am really sad that it came to this point and really having trouble reconciling myself to the reality that these people may be family but they just are not that healthy for me.