AIW for including my extended family’s kids in my ghosting/no contact decision?
Long story incoming:
I (26F) haven’t spoken to a huge section of my extended family since October of last year. I don’t return their calls or texts, and I don’t respond to anyone scolding me for not speaking to them, or insinuating that I should. The reason why is that collectively, I have lost thousands of dollars to them.
My aunt (53F) has two adults children, (31M and 35F) and her daughter has two children (6M, 12F). My aunt is a sickly woman and lives with her daughter and grandchildren. She can barely afford upkeep on her house. One brutal winter the heat went out and she needed to borrow a few hundred from me to get it fixed. She begged, and also told me that she’s borrowed the same amount from my brother and paid it back, which he corroborated. I didn’t want her and the kids getting sick in the cold, and I had it at the time, so I helped. She then proceeded to tell me every excuse in the book as to why she couldn’t pay me back. The day after telling me that, her son crashed her car and she had it replaced in less than 48 hours.
3 years ago, the daughter’s fiancé passed away, leaving her with a 3 and 9 year old. The whole family pitched in to help her, materially and also just helping with her kids. She asked to borrow from me because she needed to pay for daycare and other expenses, which I’m sure was hard on her considering the breadwinner had passed away earlier that year, so I let her borrow. She explicitly said she would pay me back at a certain date, and that day never came. Then right after telling me she didn’t have my money, I come to Christmas and she’s bought her son a PS5.
This is on top of how she began to get entitled when I helped with her kids. She would dump her kids at my apartment every Friday to Sunday (if her mom wasn’t home) without even asking for my consent, all so she could go hook up or go to parties and dinners with her friends. And because her brother was my roommate, he would accept them “on my behalf” and just leave and/or lock himself in his room and not come out until Sunday afternoon when she came to get her kids. Once I came home and the kids were completely alone and had been for hours.
Speaking of the brother, the bulk of the problem comes from him. He squatted at our shared apartment for several months, which is why the total is up in the thousands. And previously he had gambled with the rent, didn’t say anything until we were on the brink of eviction, had gotten us a court summons, and then my brother (who had lived with us before the lease expired) and I had to pay it off so that we wouldn’t have to search for apartments with an eviction on our records. It still looked so bad during apartment hunting, because I was doing it alone, that I was rejected many times and had to be stuck with him for even longer.
I had already gone minimal contact with the adults, but the literal second I found an apartment, I disappeared and stopped responding to any of them. Even when the kids were calling and texting, I didn’t respond. It hurt, but I really don’t want the adults using the fact that I talk to them to get access to me (which is what my aunt did to my late mother to rope her back into their dynamics). I don’t ever want to see or hear from the adults again if I don’t have to, and maybe this is making excuses but I don’t see a reasonable way this can work as long as the kids are minors.
I couldn’t give less of a damn about how the adults involved feel about this, but AIW for ghosting the kids? It was my niece’s birthday today, and I felt so guilty for knowing that but not at least texting her. I can’t help feeling like it was the wrong thing to do.