I apologize for the wall of text. I just need to vent. Scroll down for the tl;dr.
I'll start at the beginning. My dad died when I was very young. He and I were really close, and at the time I was too young to understand what death is and that he wasn't coming back.
Two months later, my mom started dating my dad's alcoholic, evil, child molester friend. For the sake of anonymity, let's just refer to him as POS. The abuse started small but pretty much right away. I would be subject to punishments such as not being able to get up from a chair all day, to being woken up in the middle of the night to do a sink full of greasy dishes. The abuse escalated from there.
My mom moved us in with relatives (who were so wonderful btw), but a few years later, we moved back to where we came from. I needed clothes for school, and she said she didn't know where the store was, but POS did, and could we please just bring him along with us just this once. I said ok, and a few weeks later they were engaged to be married. For years, I told myself if only I knew where the store was, we would not be in this situation.
The next few years of my life were horrendous. I shake whenever I think of them (I am shaking right now). I cannot articulate what happened specifically. I can't even really type it. My husband knows it was bad, but he doesn't even know what happened because I can't get the words out. I have a nice case of good ol' PTSD as a souvenir.
I was basically tortured and brutalized by POS. I was hyperaware of everything 24 hours a day for years. He killed my cat because I loved him so much and said it was my fault for not cleaning up after him. I never had friends over. The neighbors called CPS all the time, but CPS did nothing. I was terrified of being taken away from my mom and my home. I have a younger sibling that I fiercely protected, and thus I took the brunt of the abuse.
My mom didn't defend me at all. I begged her to divorce POS, but she said she couldn't because when she married him, she made a promise to god that she wouldn't leave him. She kept trying to convince me that he wasn't all that bad. We never had food in the refrigerator, but she had a closet full of clothes with tags still on them. We never, ever, went to the dentist (I still don't go. I have panic attacks thinking about it.), but she had all of her teeth capped as a cosmetic procedure. I had an infection that went ignored until it turned into blood poisoning. She did everything she could to ignore me, but my younger sibling was the golden child (I just learned from this sub that this is actually a thing).
Eventually, when I became a teenager, they divorced. That's when the flashbacks started, but I didn't understand what they were or what was wrong with me.
There has been an endless string of mom's boyfriends, some ok, some awful, but at this point I was old enough to defend myself.
I have been working and supporting myself since I was 14. I have never asked anything of my mom because I knew she would just say no. I found out when I was 17 that I was getting my dad's social security since he died, and my mom was supposed to use that for my care but she didn't. I was living with relatives at that point and I asked her if she could send me that money since I wanted to go to college. She said no. I put myself through college waiting tables.
Meanwhile, my GC younger sibling got everything. My mom cashed out her retirement funds to pay for college, a giant flatscreen TV and couch for their bedroom, food, alcohol, etc. My sibling is approaching 30, is morbidly obese, unemployed, and still lives with mom. She cooks for GC, cleans up after GC, and still pays for everything. GC will often post on social media about their brand new computer or hard drive or monitor etc.
I hate to even say this, but watching them interact is very dysfunctional and even sick.
Between the two of them, I am sure they have a huge amount of debt and absolutely no savings. My mom is getting too old to work full time, and I see this all crashing down in the very near future.
My life is really good right now and I have so much to be thankful for. I am a well-liked tenured professor, and a leader in my field. I am well known in my subject area, and well known in my community. It is a big struggle sometimes to keep my shit together as I don't want anyone to know what happened to me. I have an amazing, wonderful, caring husband who is my best friend and a perfect match for me. I live in a great house. While I am not rich by any means, I am financially stable. I am very happy when my PTSD is under control. It took an unspeakable amount of work to get to this place.
I do not want to care for my mom (for obvious reasons) or my sibling (as they are selfish and entitled), and I feel terrible about that. My mom has not yet approached me for help, but I can see it coming. She is getting old and frail. I get along with both of them, but I do not enjoy their company, and I am grateful that they live far from here. But they both want to move back here, and there is a much higher cost of living. When they come up to visit, I struggle to function in everyday life. I could not deal if I had to see them all the time.
How can I deflect them without hurting them?
How would I get over the guilt? I know everyone is going to say that I shouldn't feel guilty, but I do. I don't think she ever wanted to intentionally hurt me. I just think she is a sad, crazy person that had no business having kids.
Thank you so very much for reading.
TL;DR: My family sucks. My life is awesome. I don't want my family to make my life shitty again.
Submitted February 11, 2015 at 01:16AM by AClownKilledMyDad http://ift.tt/1AUhi6m raisedbynarcissists
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