Family arguments can get tricky, especially when someone always pulls the same emotional card to win.

So, what would you do if you couldn’t even share your feelings without being compared to your sibling’s past struggles? Would you learn to stay quiet about things? Or would you finally call them out for always making everything about themselves?

In the following story, one teenager finds herself in this exact situation and decides to speak up. Here’s what happened.

AITA for telling my sister that she needs to stop trying to be a martyr?

Everyone is mad at me right now, but my sister just can’t stop trying to make every single thing about her.

My (14f) birthday is next week, and I have been imploring my parents to let me go to the movies without them and with a few friends (they are super overprotective and won’t budge or try to find a middle ground).

So, my older brother (17m) and I tried to convince them to let us go during dinner last night.

Her sister has been this way for years.

And then my sister (25f) – she had childhood cancer and spent a lot of years in and out of the hospital, until her teen years (17) – just interrupts and says that I don’t have a reason to be this upset because at my age she couldn’t even eat without feeling sick somedays.

My parents always use this as an argument, too, to say that my brother and I don’t have enough reason to be upset.

And she has always been like this, yk?

Every time I speak in front of her about something that is making me sad or mad, she will just say that I’m really ungrateful for complaining when she couldn’t even do most things at my age.

Unfortunately, her parents aren’t any better about it.

I already told her that hearing this doesn’t help me because I’m really sorry that she had to go through that, really. But it is not because she couldn’t live her life that I can’t live mine, too, so we even the score.

My parents always say that she is dealing with everything in the best way she can when we complain and that we need to have more compassion.

But well, I’m so tired of this being the final argument for everything in our house, so I told everyone this last night.

Here’s where she finally lost it.

I can’t even get sad about bad grades or a fight with my friends without being called ungrateful and reminded that my sister had bigger worries at my age. When I said this, she told me I needed to grow up and stop resenting her for having suffered for real in life and not having time to deal with my drama.

So I told her it was also time for her to stop trying to be a martyr. She isn’t sick anymore. She can’t keep trying to be the center of everything with things that are in the past.

My parents sent me to my room (no movies for my bday, that’s for sure) and told me that I was out of line, mean, and disrespected my sister’s trauma. My friends also think I was wrong for saying this when she has actually suffered a lot, but my brother agrees with me, but he just thinks I should lay low until I’m 18…

AITA?

Wow! This sounds like an unfortunate situation all the way around.

Let’s see how the readers over at Reddit feel about it.

According to this comment, she was tactful in expressing her feelings.

As this reader explains, the sister should want the opposite for others.

Here’s someone who thinks her family should want her to be happy.

This is a great way to handle it.

It’s clear who’s in the wrong, and it’s definitely not her. She needs to just hang in there, because she’ll be an adult soon enough.

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.