Hi everyone - this is my first mumsnet post so please bear with me if I don't have all the right lingo etc down yet! I'm after some advice on how I should react to the fact my estranged sister has had a baby.
I'll try to be as brief and objective as I possibly can be: the backstory is my sister and I haven't spoken since I got married two years ago. Things had been slightly strained - but completely civil - between us since she secretly married her much older, alcoholic, controlling husband after a few months of dating. My family is the type to not speak about feelings and my parents just want to keep the peace (we're a big dysfunctional family!) so I was the only one to raise concerns to my sister's (and husband's face) one Christmas - specifically about the fact he has three kids by two other women who he doesn't look after. I didn't get into the boozing or controlling behaviour but that was enough to really piss him off and he stormed out. My sister just muttering - 'you shouldn't make him angry'.
Anyway skip forward 18 months/two years and we've had other Christmas's and birthdays together and it's all been civil and - I thought - put behind us with her understanding I was just being a protective older sister. I ask her to be my bridesmaid for my wedding and she accepts: I invite her husband but only on the 'B list' (a couple of months after the first invites when we had initial numbers through) which I know is controversial but this was a tiny, intimate foreign wedding of around 30 of our closest friends and family - no plus ones at all, including for my other sister who had a boyfriend. Bearing in mind my husband had never met my youngest sister's husband and I had only met him twice in 5 years - he avoided us every time we visiting my parents house (this was before our Christmas argument) because he didn't want my sister to be around men who weren't family (!). So he was a stranger to us - plus my sister had never invited me or any of our family to their wedding at all. She said she understood but that he didn't want to come anyway and all was civil and fine. But I do accept for family politics I probably should have invited him immediately, if only to make my mum's life easier.
Then about four months later, I sent a slightly sharp text about her decision not to come to my hen do (no reason given) but ended it with love and offering to pay for her wedding flight to make things easier. That triggered an avalanche of anger from her, bringing up stuff from two years ago and how she can't believe I never invited her husband etc etc. We were both annoyed at each other and argued our points without it getting too nasty or personal. I thought it was just a sister's fight and I'd hear from her soon. And I did. But not with what I expected to hear.
Around a week later, an email popped up from her that is genuinely the nastiest message I've received from anyone in my entire life. It was coldly furious and went much deeper than my upcoming wedding: she ranted about how she had "never" considered me her sister; how her husband was more family to our family than I was; accused me of leaving behind our family when I moved to London for university and how I make 'thousands every month' while our mum struggles to pay the bills (this isn't true, on both points), and how I was basically selfish and thought I was better than everyone else and expected to get my own way all the time etc etc. I was really shocked by all of this anger I had absolutely no idea she was harbouring that dated back to me moving away to get an education and a career while she stayed at home and became a waitress. She ended her email said she was blocking me from her life and never wanted to speak to me again. I was pretty heartbroken to be honest, to hear such vile and viciousness from my own sister when I've never been anything but immensely proud of anything either of my sisters have achieved.