Enmeshed with my sibling in an impossible to escape codependent emotionally (and overtly) incestuous relationship
My sibling(21NB) and I(19NB) have always been too close. We have no boundaries, no separate lives, we exist as a unit, so overt that our friends have called us a "package deal". Some of them have even pointed out that it's "weird" how close we are (and they're right! they just don't know the extent of it.) We have very long personal conversations every night that venture into topics that siblings probably shouldn't be discussing. We function almost like a married couple, save for the fact that we don't have sex. No, instead they just tell me about their sexual encounters and relationships, as well as their habits involving porn and fetishes. I can't say this is fully on them though, as I have engaged in these conversations and have even done the same. It's almost like a compulsion.
This all stems from deep seated childhood trauma. We were both molested together when we were really young, and on top of that were never taught any healthy boundaries by our extremely physically and emotionally abusive parents. In fact, our lifelong "closeness" was always encouraged by our parents (namely our mother and her parents). Our relationship as kids was horribly codependent, and on top of that, there was a brief but extremely traumatic period where we were repeating the SA we suffered onto each other. We believed, due to the trauma we faced together, that no one could ever possibly understand us except for each other. We only had each other in the face of our horrifying reality from the moment I was born.
We've been through awful things together, and often it feels like we are one in the same. We tell each other almost everything we experience when we're apart, sometimes we even get our memories mixed up. Everything they feel, I feel, and vice versa. We have so much emotional turmoil that we can only turn to each other to soothe, which only further pushes us into this toxic cycle of codependency.
I've never been able to form romantic feelings towards another person, despite how much I long for connection like that. I always chalked it up to being autistic or maybe I'm just aromantic or something but I'm starting to think this enmeshment is the root of the problem, and the reason my brain won't romantically connect with others is because it's already too occupied caring for the emotional needs of my sibling, and having many of my own emotional needs met by them.
It's suffocating. I feel like I have to give all of myself to my sibling. I don't have any true personhood, I barely feel human. And while I feel horrible for it, just looking at them reminds me of all of the horrible traumatic things we went through as children together. My daily life is a neverending cycle of being triggered and retraumatized again and again and again and again.
But no matter how badly I want to get away, no matter how much I want to live as my own person and finally be free, I can't. There are certain circumstances which makes it hard, namely my financial situation (we're both incredibly poor and live paycheck to paycheck just to pay the bills of our shitty one bedroom single wide trailer), but what makes it truly impossible is that I could never do that to my sibling. I could never leave them. I love them. What happened to us as children wasn't their fault. And I know it wasn't my fault either but I can't help but feel so much guilt, like I should have done something to protect them (even though there's absolutely nothing I could have feasibly done). And it hurts so so bad, because when I do try to withdraw from them and try to establish certain boundaries, they make me feel even more guilty by saying things like "I just want to bond with my little sibling" and "why are you so mean to me", which is honestly fair because I'm not actually effectively communicating the actual issues with them and am honestly probably just coming off as being moody. But I can't really address our issues without talking about our childhood and resurfacing trauma which is extremely triggering for the both of us. I don't know what to do, it feels like I'll be stuck like this until I break and fully go insane. I don't know if there's any hope for me, or them, at all.