The Reality of Being the Eldest Sister

pink tote

One of my "pink tote" moments was all throughout my late teenage years my mother worked the evening shift 3pm-11pm meaning I would be held responsible for watching my sister every day, with being lucky if she had a weekend off and only really seeing her 6-8 total days in the month. However due to behavioral issues with my sister she would refuse to help with chores, reck the house, get into everything, and go through stuff in my mother's room. Everyday I would beg my sister to stay out of things, clean up after herself, and to do her chores. None of this would get done so I would be cleaning the house, do her chores and try and make sure everything was in place. So every night around 9:30 after spending all day begging her to help I would rush to get everything done so my mother would not yell and scream at me. But majority of the days I would accidentally forget to throw a wrapper out, or there would be crumbs on the counter, or my sister shoved a spoon in the couch that I wouldn't know of. And every day I could be screamed at and asked "where was I while she was doing this?" And it wouldn't matter if I was in my room with the door open or closed or in the living room to supervise her. Everytime I would have to explain where I was or what I was doing like working on school work such as homework or studying or wanting some alone privacy because I wasn't allowed to have that due to me being needed to watch my sister constantly. And after a point I tried expressing to my mother multiple times how everything would go awful with my sister because she wasn't helping and was destroying the house everyday but my mother wouldn't do anything about it. until late into my senior year of highschool I became severally depressed and had harmful thoughts towards myself. my mother wanted me to be more babysitter rather than a sister and a daughter.