Hi everyone. I'm (21M) here to talk about an altercation that happened months ago (last summer, if I remember correctly). Since this happened months ago and because I have a bad memory, I don't remember the exact details of the argument that triggered this altercation, but this started when me and my sister (24F) were making dinner for the two of us. Either she was helping me or I was helping her make dinner--since my dad had gone back to Korea for some medical issues he's been having (and because American healthcare would fucking cost an arm and a leg) we were trying to step up and cook for ourselves, be less reliant on my dad and be more independent and take more responsibility even when he came back.

The argument started when my sister seemed like she was in a clearly bad mood for some reason. I don't like confrontation in general, so I generally try to not call people out on stuff unless it's reallyyy starting to piss me off, and I didn't say anything for some time while we were cooking. I think I remember calling my sister from her room for help with something--for reference, I have literally no clue what I'm doing in the kitchen because I've had home-cooked meals by my mom and dad until I went to college, at which point I lived in a dorm without a kitchen so I didn't really learn how to cook (I know, it's pretty bad for an adult in his 20s to not know how to cook and rely on his parents, it's also been pretty hard to make time for stuff like this with all the extra work I'm doing during the summer recess like finding internships, grinding leetcode, working on my own startup, working with professors on r&d for computer networking technology, etc. + I struggle with some pretty bad depression that can be debilitating on some days. I really should be taking more responsibility and stop relying on my parents though, that's definitely on me).

Anyway, tangent aside, I called my sister for help on something stupidly obvious to her. I'm a dumbass with a lot of social anxiety so sometimes I have a hard time with things that seem like common sense to others. When my sister came over, I asked her the stupid question, and she answered with a question back at me that basically implied like "are you seriously asking this question?". I said yes, and I think at that point my sister responded with like an exaggerated sigh or some kind of attitude and told me the answer to the question. Again, so sorry for being vague, but this was months ago and I have a really bad memory--I swear I'm trying to remember as much as I can while trying not to be too biased for myself. At this point, I was just done with the bad mood that seemed to be bleeding into her conversation with me (whether intentionally or not), so I responded in a pretty scathing sarcastic manner. Now, I want to be clear, it wasn't like I called my sister a bitch or something, I feel like I just mouthed off pretty harshly (harshly meaning really really sarcastically), but nothing that was so over the top that it justified what happened next, but obviously this is only my pov so I can only try to explain my thoughts about what I said.

After my harsh response, my sister just froze and looked at me pretty angrily, and just grabbed a full metal can of beans and just lobbed it at me. I was so astonished by this at first, but then I just got even more pissed off that SHE couldn't handle the attitude that she projected towards me, in what she said that actually started the argument in the first place. So I threw the can of beans back at her. She then started to punch me (not like a powerful punch, but I could tell that she was trying to put strength into her punches by following through but she was just too weak to make it actually count), so I started shoving her back. I don't know if at this point I threw a punch back, but honestly I'm just going to say I did so that I can be as non-biased as possible in my recounting of the story because I was angry enough to punch back. These punches were more towards like the arms and stuff because we were trying to block each other from actually landing a punch. But then she started swinging at my head, and so I just lost it and started swinging back at her head. When it became obvious to my sister that she was just weaker than me and couldn't knock me out or something, she grabbed a STAINLESS STEEL PAN and started beating me in the body with it. Here's a picture of the pan: https://imgur.com/a/ooDhSW4

At that point, I was just trying to protect my body with my arms, so I just tried to defend myself as best as I could and make my way over to my phone so I could call 911. Soon enough, police officers came to the apartment and asked what happened. We both knew that we both didn't want to get in trouble or get each other in trouble with the law, so we kind of just said that we had an argument, a can of beans was thrown, but nothing about the pan or the punching. The officer was able to read the room well enough to be like, "hey, if you tell us one of you did something illegal by assaulting each other, we're obligated to arrest you and take you in. So DID an assault actually take place, or was this just a sibling fight that got out of control?" We took the out and just told them that it was just a verbal fight that got a little out of control, and they left pretty quickly after that.

I called my dad who was still in Korea at the time using Kakaotalk, and he basically told us to separate ourselves immediately and stop the altercation for now, until he could talk to each of us separately and figure out what the hell actually happened.

The day later, I woke up feeling super sore in my arms, and I found them to be bruised pretty badly. Here's an image: https://imgur.com/a/Vc8GXvv

The worst part was that I had to go to my PCP for a routine checkup a few days later, and I had to take off my shirt for an ECG or something with the leads attached directly to my chest. I just felt like crying because I didn't know what the fuck these people would say after seeing my bruises.

To this day, my sister claims that we both escalated the situation and contributed to the altercation. Like, I'm not saying I'm 100% blameless and that I'm the perfect victim, but holy fuck this really gaslit me and I just ended up agreeing to a small portion of what she said was my fault, but inside my mind I was just like "this is not right..." I just don't know if this is because I'm biased and am only looking at things through my own perspective, but it felt like to me that the only thing I did was MATCH her OWN escalation. It's honestly felt like this for a long time now, but this was the first time it escalated to this point. I think part of the reason I didn't just walk away and tried to match her escalation was that it felt like every single time, I was the one who had to walk away from HER escalations, and I just felt like I was so done with this bullshit. I just wanted to be like, "you really want to do this bitch? Let's fucking do it." But I understand that in an ideal world, I would've walked away and this would not have escalated.

I think part of the reason why my sister says that she felt so "disrespected" (I'm putting this in quotes to show that this was her actual words, not to be a dick and try to discount it) was that she was the one with the stable job who provided for me and her during the summer when my dad wasn't around. I'm still in college, and I worked as a research assistant at Boston University (my undergrad school) but I only worked like 10 hours per week and earned minimum wage in MA--somewhere around $15/hr.). She had graduated from college already, and was working in a lab at UMD School of Medicine, but she only made like 45k per year, so things were pretty tight for her. The fact that she took care of me willingly is something I should be grateful about, and it's understandable why she would feel disrespected when she was trying to provide for me, but man this altercation just does not sit right with me.

Please let me know your thoughts on this situation. If I'm just an asshole who's in the wrong, please tell me (gently pls) so I can actually try to consider yall's opinions and maybe grow as a person. I also think that black-and-white thinking of she was wrong or I was wrong isn't the right answer here, so I would just appreciate any advice on how to improve as a person in general and make sure things like this don't happen in the future. Thanks a lot, sorry for the long wall of text, and thank you to everyone who made it this far.