When Your Sibling Literally Steals Your Identity: A Case In Extreme Sibling Rivalry

Most people think that sibling rivalry is a series of small disagreements between children that are extremely close in age that fade in time. The more mature the siblings become, the less the rivalry is supposed to play a role in their lives. They are supposed to become older and laugh about the silly pranks that they used to play on each other and rejoice in each other’s accomplishments. As much as I wanted this to be my story, it is not.

My half-sister and I were raised by our mother. When I was a toddler, I quickly grew from a toddler walking around the house behind her with my sister being the teacher to reading at the level of a college student and writing at the level of a sixth-grader. This occurred at a time when my sister was diagnosed with a mild learning disability in school and was placed into a special program at the school. It was during this time when sibling rivalry first interfered in our relationship; she would lie about me to my mother so that I would be spanked and she began to constantly make me appear to be the ‘bad’ one while making herself look like an angel.

Because of academic advancements in school, by the time that we both reached high school, I was only two grades behind my sister, even though we were six years apart in age. I was still excelling in school and my sister started to improve in her studies. However, while improving in academics is always great, her motivation was pure jealousy. She would wait until I received my report card and she had to take it from me and look at it first to ensure that my grades were not too far ahead of her grades before I could show it to our mother. Nevertheless, her comparison lacked insight; I was in the accelerated program and she was not. Thus, I had to work much more diligently in my studies than she did. Also, during the year that I started high school, my sister enrolled in mostly easy courses, i.e. culinary arts, beginning sculpting, etc. to ensure that she would have comparable grades.

She flunked out of college at the same time that the high school announced that I was the valedictorian of the senior class. Also, my mother revealed that, although my sister and I look alike, our fathers were of different ethnicities. My sister became intensely jealous due to the events and the fact that my ethnic background has more variety than hers. At this point, she seriously began to try to steal my life.

She began to tell people that she has the ethnic background that I have, she would tell them my G.P.A. as her own, she would steal any friends that I tried to make from that point onward by spending more time with them behind my back and bragging on faux accomplishments to impress them, any accomplishments I’d made from that point onward became hers, she stole my haircuts, clothing style, jewelry, and even my nickname. Yes – my nickname! There was a special nickname that our mother liked to call me due to an inside family joke and my sister stole it and still uses it in all of her social media profiles as her name.

These days, she is turning 40 years old and I am about to get married. I have not told her this because she still has an issue with pathological jealousy. For example, my manager recently sent me away on a company trip by train and no one in my immediately family had travelled before by train. When my sister found out about this by overhearing our mother talking to someone at a family gathering, she rolled her eyes and acted indifferent for the rest of the day. A few weeks later, she needed to drive about four hours for work-related issues and she demanded to go by train. She also found out that I bought a new car and while she could not afford a new car, the car that she had was in perfectly good condition and beautiful. She ranted and cried to our mother about how much she “needed” a new car and treated me coldly and cried every time that I drove to the house in my new car until our mother caved in and helped my sister put a down payment on a new car. Afterward, she posted on social media the following: “Look at me! I have two cars. Aren’t I successful?”

Because of these actions and many more similar actions that I have not listed in this article, I’m afraid that if I told her that I’m getting married, she’d either try to put a stop to it or would suddenly turn up with a random man claiming that she is getting married on the same day or the day before to try to make my day less special. She consistently shows disdain at anything that I achieve from this point forward and still tries to make me look like the ‘bad’ one, even though we are both too old for this game. I thought that she would eventually achieve so much that whatever I have would be irrelevant to her happiness, but that is not the case. She has shown me that she has to have my life or else she will not be happy. My mother has even caught her in public places pretending to be me to former friends that have not seen us in years. Thus, she will not be invited to my wedding because it is the pinnacle of starting a new life free from the poison that she has injected into my life for many years. I plan to only visit her once a year.

Whenever she is asked “would you tell me about yourself?” she replies: “I am a scientist and musician; in my free time, I study foreign languages and I have successfully learned five of them. I also like to exercise and I enjoy fashion.” However, that is not her at all. That is the description of myself. My sister is actually an arts and crafts specialist and a tomboy who sees no point in learning more than one language and really could not normally care less about fashion and she is awesome at being herself. Yet, she doesn’t seem to understand that she should be herself and stop trying to be someone else.