Florence, this all sounds too familiar.
First, the number one source. Your mother.
Like mine, the children's relationships are probably greatly influenced by whether she wanted you to connect, or disconnect and be in competition and live in fear. Ask yourself about that. Did your mother encourage healthy trusting close relationships between you and your siblings?
It took me quite awhile to recognize that my mother played us against each other. She never encouraged loving, healthy, trusting relationships between us, only that we trusted HER. We were played--often blatantly--against each other. This was to keep her in the only role of trust and someone to rely on.
I see how, now that the 5 of us siblings are well into our 40's and 50's, that has carried over into our adult relationships, and none of us have truly moved past it.
She is still up to her old antics. Nothing has really changed.
After my father died, my mother took on this role of matriarch, that she was the carrier of the millions we were each going to receive, but alas, the stock market didn't play out exactly.
Now she likes to bring up our inheritance. I avoid it. Yet I can feel with each word spoken to her, that she is constantly assessing my value, and just how she will divvy up one day whatever is there.
Frankly I think it is more of the same, and she is playing us, looking for that fear in our eyes, that we measure up in order to get the cash. That she is comparing us. That she has obvious favorites. She doesn't even hide it anymore.
Your post brings this to mind. You get along just fine with her when the other sisters are not there. However, the second they reappear, look who is the black sheep and lesser than. It is not all in your imagination. I wonder if your mother gets along with you when they're not around because of the convenience of your proximity. She can lean on you too, you know, should she need to. The second they are back in the picture, back to last place you go.
I have also noticed in my family dynamic that each player in our game has themselves to prop up, too often at someone else's expense. This is a common game in my family.
Their motives are based on their own insecurities, and I know that also includes me. But I have found disdain for this bashing of whatever sibling isn't in ear shot at the time in order to make someone else feel better, higher, more than. I don't play along, and that too is met with suspicion and then I can feel the rejection in that I am not playing along, and I must be watched, held suspiciously, for not bashing the sibling out of ear shot.
It's that going to the hardware store for bread, Florence. Your sister looked at you with contempt when you cried. Sympathy from her is not forthcoming.
If you're furniture, in your mother's eyes, again, don't go to the hardware store for bread. Validation from her for your abuse and suffering is not coming. She would have to admit she dropped the ball on caring for you.
It's painful when this stuff is still going on this late in life. We're all turning gray, yet instead of caring, loving, reliability, the worst criticism any of us receive is from within the family, and in my family, the grand matriarch holds all the cards. She's the dry alcoholic minister, supposedly relaying the word of God. Humph.
Ergo, the family is not the place to find comfort.
It leaves some of us very alone in life, and in need of a good support system outside the family unit that will never, ever, give that comfort. No going to the hardware store for bread.
Yep, I've met the enemy, and it's my own family, specifically, my mother. None of us are evil on some intrinsic level...at least not us siblings.
And I wonder...will we finally feel allowed to get along, as we well could, when my mother passes?
It's time to see each person, for who they really are. Not through those child innocent eyes that could never believe a family member would purposely try to undermine our self-confidence or hurt us.
Take what applies, and throw away the rest.