I actually wrote this a few weeks ago now but had it sat in drafts for a bit to see if I still wanted to post or not.
TW - S*icide, Ab*se
Our cast of characters:
Me - 33F
Sister - 51F
Brother2 - 36M
Mom - was 70 when she passed 3 years ago
Dad - 72M
Stepmom - ~67F (never married but were together 20+ years, so SM was just easier to say)
Basically I just need some input from people who don't know any of us, because I hover between 'no that was absolutely unacceptable' and 'is it really *that* bad?'
I'll try and give you a history of relevant info to give you some background and context.
My parents met as teenagers and legend has it that Mom baby trapped Dad to get away from her own Mother, so they got married and had my oldest Brother1 (~55M who is now estranged, his choice.) My sister is around 3 years younger than him, and always says how he was the golden child of their pair and she was constantly punished and verbally and physically abused by our Mom and Dad. She was kicked out at 15, she says she agreed to a babysitting job that for some reason our parents had forbidden her to take - so our Dad packed all her stuff in bin bags and dropped it off at her friends house and that was that.
Mom had started drinking sometime after Brother2 was born as far as I can piece together from things that Brother2 and Sister have told me. Sister claims to have basically raised Brother2 for the first few years of his life before she was kicked out, and from what I knew of our parents later, this does seem very likely. I have to take my Sister's word for a lot of how our parents were before I was born because they sound very different to the parents I know. Still awful, just in different ways.
Until the age of around 5-6, I don't think I ever really felt like our family was different to others. Both my parents were around and we did normal family things together, camping holidays at the beach in the summers, decorating the Christmas tree together, baking with mom and 'helping' our dad in his shed etc. They fought a lot, they didn't always pay much attention to us, but mostly things were normal enough that I didn't think much of the fighting.
I was 7-8 when things really kicked off, my parents were fighting all the time, using us kids to hurt one another by triangulating us against the other parent. Mom almost got us into a couple of car accidents, Brother2 was in hospital for stitches because he'd been in the line of fire when Mom threw something at Dad and missed. For the most part we got off lightly when it came to being physically injured, neither of them ever purposefully hurt either of us. It was usually because we were nearby and Mom was a clumsy drunk.
What I found out later was that behind the scenes, Dad had met SM. We became aware of her pretty quickly, but my childhood memories were more in the order of 'Mom got bad, and then Dad had an affair' but in reality, Mom got worse because Dad was having an affair. Now, he'll still deny this to this day even though basically the entirety of both families knew about it, and from the sounds of things, a lot of the neighbours. I remember Dad 'nipping to the shops' only to be gone for hours, and Mom would be pacing in the driveway ranting about 'that woman' and how dare he be so obvious. Looking back it's very easy to see how Mom got to the point she did, because he was not subtle. I've also since learnt that Dad was allegedly purposefully enabling Moms drinking and giving her stronger and stronger drinks so that she would pass out and he could sneak SM into the house while we all slept upstairs.
Eventually there was the big blow-up, Mom ended up getting arrested and eventually put in a women's refuge and was then housed not too far from the family home after the divorce. After that, we had regular visits and eventually ended up with a relatively stable relationship. She had some hiccups along the way but things were mostly fairly calm after that where she was concerned. This is also where Sister went NC with Dad over everything he'd done, and as a result me and Brother2 also lost contact with her because we were too young to do anything about it and from all accounts, Dad and SM essentially went into hiding with us and no-one knew where we were after we moved for a little while.
As soon as Mom was out of the family home, SM was around a LOT. We started spending time at her house too, and at first we were uncertain. She seemed okay but not particularly warm, mostly I didn't like her to begin with because of how much attention my Dad paid her compared to Mom or us kids. It was decided quickly that we'd be moving because SM didn't want to live in the same house that our Mom had, and I imagine Dad had to sell because of the divorce, though he totally shafted our Mom in that and she got barely anything. SM moved into our family home before it sold, and even turned my old bedroom (I'd moved into Brother1s room when he moved out) into a room for her teen son to stay in when he wasn't at his dads. My Dad adamantly denies that she moved into that house with us, but if she never lived there with us, why did her teenage son need a room? Why do we remember her being there so much? Why was she setting all the rules and giving us chores? Why was she dictating what belongings of ours we got to keep or not for the move? (spoiler alert: most of it was thrown out, along with 90% of my baby photos, all the home videos, and just generally most of our stuff, especially if it was sentimental)
My huge family on both sides vanished overnight, now it was just me, Brother2, Dad, and SM's family.
From day 1, SM controlled everything. At 8 years old I got given an A4 typed and printed list of cleaning chores to do every Saturday morning before I was allowed to do anything fun, this list of chores only ever expanded to include the bathroom once we lived somewhere with more than one, by the time I was 20. We weren't taught how to do any of these things, just expected to know, and if we got it wrong we just had to do it over and over again and got a stern talking to about not doing it right the first time. This pattern of not teaching us anything but expecting us to just magically know would continue with everything a parent is supposed to teach their kid. I'm not saying kids shouldn't have to clean, but they should be given age appropriate tasks and be shown how to do it, and be given a break if they don't do it perfectly because, they're a kid. It was used to control and punish us, if I was going out for the weekend to do something fun I'd better have made sure I went over the place with a fine tooth comb because they'd find any speck I missed and use it to ground me, of they'd wait until I was out and call me to make me go back home and re-do it, because apparently a tiny bit of dust can't wait a couple of days before it mutates and suddenly the house has been burned to the ground due to my negligence. They really acted like the world would end any time anything wasn't completed perfectly. We were barely allowed to do anything, because we might make a mess, and even though we were always cleaning - they acted like any mess we made would be permanent and/or life changing in some way. I'm sure if SM could have implemented a rule that we weren't allowed to actually walk on the carpets, she would have.
By the time we were teenagers, the house was just constantly filled with tension. SM cared a lot about appearances and so we'd moved to a very beige house, but my Dad has been disabled since he was in his 30s and not working, so he was supporting himself and 2 kids on reduced disability money, so we lived in this nice house but we were poor af. We were punished/lectured for leaving anything plugged in and turned on at the socket if we weren't using it, and many other money saving rules we had to follow lest we get berated. Along with all the maaany rules that basically aimed to keep the house looking like no one lived there. The main living room was off limits and only got used a few times in the 5 or so years we lived there. Literally, a whole room, just for show.
SM was super paranoid and hated leaving us unsupervised with our Dad because she thought we were talking about her behind her back, she didn't trust Dad when it came to other women too. He knew the receptionist at my dentist and they'd just exchange a brief hello at check in and SM got so wound up when she found out that the next appointment she demanded be made for a time she could attend, and she got dressed up like she was going on the ultimate girls' night - red dress, heels, full glam makeup, hair done. She looked ridiculous, and it was embarrassing as hell to be there with her.
During all of this, my Dad basically shrunk into a ghost. He would relay SM's wishes 'Me and SM have talked and we've decided' always meant 'SM has gone on and on all night about this so you're doing it because I want her to stop giving me grief about it' and he rarely ever opposed her. She was just handed the reins to control everything with no complaint from him, and a lot of the time he would join in the ridiculousness of it all. One time he threatened to kick me out and die young like his dad because I didn't sort a few bits of paper into the recycling. They kicked out Brother2 when he was ~19 because he had mostly gone the rebellious route, and in the end it was because he'd been eating snacks in his room that did it. They had randomly decided at some point to forbid us to ever have any food in our bedrooms, we were never given a reason and it hadn't always been the case, but sometimes new rules would just appear out of nowhere for seemingly no good reason and we just had to unquestioningly accept and follow them. Then on the flip side, when I inevitably was programmed to follow orders without question and did something that somebody else told me to do, I was berated for not having a mind of my own and for blindly following someone else's orders, and why was I so naïve and would I jump off a bridge if someone told me to etc etc. It was really fun.
SM would also on a daily basis invade my privacy, going through my whole room. They read my diary once and lectured me about what I'd written, slut shamed me because I'd written about a boy in class, and basically told me that my feelings weren't allowed. I wasn't allowed to not like SM because everything they were doing was because they cared, of course. This is the woman who wouldn't let the thermostat above 15c and then also turned my bedroom radiator almost all the way off, so I was freezing every night. She would rearrange the bathroom cabinet that had my shower stuff and her dog's bath stuff in it, so that my shower stuff was at the back, I showered every day, the dog got a bath once a week, but every. single. day. that cabinet would be rearranged. When I finally got fed up of the unnecessary inconvenience and started keeping my things in my bedroom, she got annoyed about it but couldn't think any reason why I wasn't allowed to do that so she had to let it go. This is the kind of thing she would do on a daily basis, she was careful not to do anything that she couldn't think up a reasonable-ish sounding explanation/excuse for, she was careful not to shout, but she would wait until Dad was out of earshot and come and have a go at me for lord knows what, and if I told Dad about it, she'd just wait till he was out of earshot again and have a go at me for telling him. Me and Dad weren't allowed a relationship. She would point out non-existent 'damage' to something expensive (countertops, carpets etc) and claim I must have done something, literally pointing to nothing and threatening me with having to pay hundreds to replace it.
I moved out when I was 20 to live with Brother2 in a flat, and after 8 months there I moved in with the boyfriend I had at the time. From the day I moved out its like I stopped existing, I went from having every aspect of my life micromanaged to the extent I couldn't even open/close my window when I wanted, to only hearing from them on birthdays and Christmas.
Fast forward to the start of 2020, Dad had a big stroke and was in hospital during the first lockdowns. Once Dad came home, the beginnings of me being pushed out began. SM and Brother2 had worked at the same place for a little while so had kind of gotten a better relationship, and honestly, Brother2 turned into an asshole and became a lot like SM. They had also just maintained a better relationship with him after he got his life together after getting kicked out, they had just bothered with him and shown more interest in him than me. It hadn't bothered me until the stroke when I was suddenly left out of the loop about what was going on with Dad.
I could have helped with the admin side of things, navigating the medical stuff, chasing up emails or phone calls etc, I could have done a lot to help, but I was just never included in any of the conversations around any of it. SM would text Brother2 and by his own admission, Brother2 wouldn't even think to tell me or Sister because it wouldn't even enter his mind to do so. They could have just as easily added me to a group chat, no? I still have no answers about why I was so excluded from all of his care and just general knowledge about him but I think it's because I'm disabled. I'm either too useless to bother telling anything, or I'd have too much empathy for Dad and make them feel bad for how they have been treating him. Which is pretty terribly.
A few months after our Mom passed away, I got a text from SM saying that Dad was dangerously depressed and she was worried about him etc. This had kind of been out of the blue because they'd barely been telling me anything and I hadn't really been involved in a lot because I just wasn't informed, and I didn't feel like I should have had to keep asking and I was barely getting any answers anyway so I'd basically just given up. I went over to stay with Dad a few times so SM could go out for various things and Dad wouldn't be left alone (he was bedbound and paralysed down his whole left side, as well as s*icidal) but after these few times she stopped asking me or contacting me really. If I ever made a suggestion or asked a question about what was going on I was spoken to like it was an annoyance to have to respond to me so I stopped doing that.
We're now at the point where Dad is making (feeble) attempts at his own life on a regular basis, and nobody was telling me about it. I'd find out days or weeks later when I asked about an address for the care home Dad was in only to be told he isn't there anymore because he'd tried to OD or something. SM broke up with him 2 years ago because of him having become very self-centred since the stroke and lying to her about things. I'd seen it coming years ago when she started adding 'I'd never leave him though' to the end of her never ending list of complaints about him. Stroke's are well known to change people's personalities and make them more selfish and struggle with impulse control, but SM and Brother2 act like Dad woke up and chose to be a selfish ass on purpose and that he could stop if he wanted to, also that he should be over the depression about the stroke by now. She sent a loooong text in her defence which was basically blaming Dad for everything and how he had just become this awful person. SM was always very concerned with making sure everyone knew that she was also a victim of Dads stroke and the hero for supporting him for a few years until she put him in a home and broke up with him. She's still in control of all of his care and stuff like that, so there hasn't really been any change in their relationship besides the fact that she visits less and can date other men now.
After one of Dads more recent attempts that I wasn't told about, I sent Dad a message explaining that SM and Brother2 had shut me out and that I thought they were acting awfully, they haven't had anything even remotely positive or nice to say about him in years, Brother2 is only hanging around as much as he is because he's envisioning the inheritance, which wont be much. A couple of weeks later I get a text from him that he accidentally forwarded from SM, where she is instructing him to text me, his adult daughter, and tell me how disappointed he is in me and how wrong I have it all. And I just lost it. I'm in my 30s, they haven't been a couple in 2 years now, and she is STILL telling him how to parent me and what to feel and what to say to me? I've dated men who have kids and I couldn't for the life of me imagine just taking over their relationship and hijacking his kids so I could bully them for the next 10 years.
So, I sent SM the first text since she broke up with Dad and told her exactly what I thought of her, that she treated us like shit, that I felt unwelcome in my own home, that I had to walk on eggshells, that she ruined my relationship with my Dad and that she didn't have any right at any point to tell him how to parent us. Then I blocked her before she could respond. This was, BIG, for me. Because of how they 'raised' me I have super bad anxiety around authority figures, I can't stand up for myself at all, I struggle to trust my own abilities, and any time anyone even seems angry or upset with me I morph into a 12 year old being shamed into submission by SM.
Eventually I get another text from Dad, telling me I'm being toxic and childish and he wants me to stop badmouthing SM because where would he be without her? Um, likely still in a care home my guy. So I got fed up and confronted him too, I asked him if he's not even the slightest bit curious about me saying I felt unwanted or that I had to walk on eggshells. He said he didn't want to talk about it because the past is in the past and he doesn't need this blah blah. I wasn't going to let him off the hook quite that easily, so I carried on and told him how he'd let me down by not preparing me for adult life at all, for telling me when I moved out that I would never under any circumstances be allowed to come back if I ever needed it, for making me feel like an inconvenience and something he regretted. His replies were all along the same 'stop talking about this, memories differ' lines. I asked why he even had us if he didn't care about our experiences, and he said 'because your mom controlled the birth control' which is about as close to 'I didn't actually want you' as I think he could let himself get.
Then, he blocked my number. Rather than confront any of it or show a speck of concern, remorse, care, anything. Blocked.
I've decided that I wont be going to his funeral when it comes, and I wont speak to him again if he ever unblocks me. I know that SM probably can't wait to spread her crap story about how awful a person I am but honestly, I don't care anymore what her or any of her family think of me.
So really, I'm just looking for outside opinions/advice. Was the situation of SM coming in and taking over normal? If you're a parent/stepparent I'd love to hear your thoughts on the whole thing.
I'm also wondering if I might regret not going to his funeral, but really I don't know that I see the point because the only people in Dads life are SM's people, and after she gives them her side of the story I feel like if I go then I'll just be made into the circus attraction.
How do you cope knowing your parent, who fought to get full custody of you, didn't actually want you, and that you were just in the way of his new relationship? How do you even begin to start becoming the person you would have been if you had been wanted and loved?
I've had some private counselling in the past but its not affordable at the moment, and I cant get anything through any other channels because of our crappy healthcare system and insane wait lists. Most times I try to talk to my sister about it we somehow end up talking about her experience growing up and how she was physically abused too. I think she's probably just also never really felt heard when she's talked about anything, and so probably doesn't realise that we don't often talk about me for long.
Sorry for how incredibly long this got lol, it's hard to condense 30 years of family drama in to one short post. Thank you for reading all this, I wouldn't blame you for skimming.