Struggling to find peace after an incident with my sister
Some context: my sister and I are both in our mid twenties, and though our relationship isn’t necessarily always ‘healthy’ I do consider her my best friend. We have always been very close. Unfortunately, our family dynamic is one of adapting around poor behaviors instead of addressing them, and I’m afraid of what I’m seeing in her as an adult.
Today, my family was out of town enjoying nature in a very popular/crowded park. We have all had a long week and lots of physical activity and are exhausted. My sister became incredibly irritable and snapped at me and my mother for having a conversation she wasn’t interested in (and could easily have walked out of earshot of). I calmly commented on her attitude, to which she told me aggressively to “shut the f—- up”. I walked away to cool off, but probably not for long enough. My dad went to direct us towards our next activity and I commented to him privately “sure, just get me away from this bitch” (yes, petty and unnecessary, I know). Apparently she was within earshot, because she turns around with an enraged look and lunges. She clawed her nails into my shoulder hard enough to draw blood through my sweater, and my dad pulled her off of me or she would have likely done more. In public. In front of my dad and at least a dozen strangers. She then keeps walking and muttering furiously under her breath at me and calling me names.
It’s been about 6 hours and she hasn’t mentioned it once. No one in my family (except my dad who sat with me when I cried after) has mentioned it. No one said anything to her about it, she hasn’t apologized or shown any remorse whatsoever. She is acting like nothing happened, and like I’m just vaguely annoying and unimportant.
This pattern of physically violent response when she was in a bad mood, overstimulated, or upset with me was extremely common in our childhood. My parents always treated it like “well, you can’t stop running your mouth so you kind of had it coming” or, “you know how she gets”, or “you’re an easy victim”. But I’m struggling to justify this incident in my head now that we’re adults. I haven’t lived with her in close to a decade, so the intensity of this pattern was a little far off in my mind, and it was a shock to me experiencing it again. It has changed the way I view her as a person. I don’t really know how to move past this—because of my family dynamic I feel saying anything about it would only make it worse. I genuinely believe she doesn’t think she’s done anything wrong or that what I did was just as bad and deserving of her response, and based on the way my family has always handled this, they’d agree. I don’t know what to do or if I’m overreacting, but I need advice.