To my father's older daughters,

We grew up together briefly. At least it feels very brief when I look at my life as a whole, and every time I look back I am reminded of all the toxicity in our relationship.

You did not like my mother, therefore you did not like me. I get it. You grew up on movies that told you step mothers are evil and step sisters are spoiled brats. Don't pretend we were anything different than that in your minds. You were definitely right about me, I am a spoiled brat. Frankly, I deserve all the things I have though. I earned them.

Don't worry, it doesn't hurt knowing you felt that way. It never does because I didn't have time to love you all. I never will love you all. I'm too smart for all that now. I'm smarter than all of you because I'm the only one out of all of us who grew up and admitted our father needed help.

In fact, I'm the only one who ever grew up.

I'm not writing this to pick a fight. I'm writing this to let you go for good. So we can stop pretending there's any relationship between us besides the one you've fabricated in your fantasies where you come back and get to be my big sisters.

Newsflash, you are nothing to me except our shared father's first children.

You do not get to come back into my life and claim a title you never earned. You all never treated me like a sister, you treated me the way our dad told you to treat me.

I remember laughing with you guys sometimes or actually having fun every now and again. In the grander scheme however, I can recall a lot more horror, and I'm not talking about our father.

I'm talking about the molestation, the theft, and the fights turned physical. Each of us only really looking out for ourselves. You taught me siblings go to war and don't actually care about each other.

When all of you went away that stopped. I started cleaning, cooking, babysitting, and shouldering the brunt of our father's violence. I found myself in your position.

Most importantly, I became a big sister. I won't lie, at first I did just like you taught me. I never cared about them or when I did it was mostly to pick on them.

That all changed when my mom got pregnant and then suddenly she wasn't because our father decided she shouldn't be.

I felt true pain for the first time in my life. It was as if someone took an ice cream scoop to my chest and scrapped out someone I could have loved.

I saw my younger siblings differently after that. At any moment, our father could decide the same of us, even if we were already born. He could hurt them and no one would stop him.

No one ever stood up to our dad; not your mother, not my mom, not any of you three, and certainly not his own siblings.

So I changed. I became a better person because I cared about my younger siblings and my mom. I played with younger siblings more, I included them in my hobbies. When our parents fought at night, I'd hold all three of them and promise if they closed their eyes I'd make sure mommy saw the morning. I taught them to be good in school and to always do their best. I did everything I wished someone had done for me.

I'm not saying I expected this from you. I'm saying this is how big sisters act. We take our younger siblings under our wings. We help them be good people because we want other's to see how awesome our sibling can be. We're supposed to love them unconditionally and unselfishly.

You go around calling me your sister, but I am not your sister. That is a title I refuse to bestow on myself for the three of you.

Familial titles are earned in my house. You do not decide you are my sister. I will tell you. If I love someone and I think of them as my family, I let the whole goddamn world know it.

Your definition of family as blood and something you can't escape is the most toxic and possessive version of family I have ever come across.

You earn your place in people's hearts to make yourself their family. Your definition of family is for people who do not know how to build lasting relationships and do not know how to earn love. You want it to be handed to you just like our father expected me to hand over the title of dad.

Becoming my big sister isn't about loving me for the three of you, it's about owning me. Let me tell you this: you can never own a person.