full image - Repost: I don't feel like I can forgive my family (from Reddit.com, I don't feel like I can forgive my family)
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I've gone back and forth for a long time on whether or not to post this, as I know plenty of others go through much worse. Finally decided to just sit down and vent.I (33M) grew up in a home with a younger brother (31M), older half sister (39F), and older half brother (41M). Both older siblings are from a different father.My father was a violent, alcoholic and incredibly loud man who worked delivering a very heavy building material to job sites, making him extremely muscular and his hands incredibly rough and calloused. Which proved very effective when hitting the 3 male children open hand. To give context, he would throw his body weight into it like those arcade machines where you see how hard you can pound a hammer into a target. I say this, because my mother has consistently handwaved away the hitting as "just spanked you when you misbehaved". No. He'd do it if he had a bad day at work, if I put my elbows on the table at dinner, and once because I turned off too many lights in the house. Just had this trademark stare of barely contained rage as he'd walk over, go to town, and then walk back out without a word. Majority of the time I would get carried away by force to my room to get hit, so my mother didn't have to actually see it; but apparently could remember it better than me.Older brother and sister grew into pretty aggressive kids in their own unique ways too.I literally have no memory of my older brother, except as an arrogant bully, but he moved to live with his biological father when I was very young.My sister fancied herself the mother of the house when mum wasn't looking. She'd try to tell me what to do, even if her instructions clashed with what my actual mother said, and would fight me if I said no. Things like kicking in the stomach, punching, or coming into my room, smacking me right in the face, then walking back out. The majority of this is from when she was 13 and up. Memories before that are not as clear to me.My sister and mother were the only ones in the family who did not get hit. The rule I grew up with was "you never hit girls". I still to this day can't tell you why it's only okay to hit male children.Almost every year in school involved a lot of bullying. Like, social ladder bottom rung, fat kid that gets picked on by other fat kids, rocks thrown at head, face pushed into wire mesh fences, kicked in the head by kids several grades above me, generally ostracised, most years had 0 friends, a couple of them I'd have maybe 1-2.By around Grade 5 it had intensified to the point I'd come home crying and try to hide in the mornings so I wouldn't get taken to school (which never worked). Without asking me what was going on, my mother came in and told me "You sit here crying, but you have a home. Girls born in China get thrown out to die because the family wanted a boy.". So as a 10 year old, I then started picturing baby girls being thrown out to die and cried at that. My mother got visibly frustrated and walked away, with the parting comment "You need to learn to be less sensitive."Things I didn't know as a child, are that I have Asperger's and OCD. OCD I would not be diagnosed until I was an adult, but Asperger's I was diagnosed as a child, and not told about. I found out because it was in my school medical file, and when I was 14, was gossiped to students by one teacher, and one IT administrator who didn't like me (because I would hide games like Unreal Tournament in the local network and it revealed that he didn't understand network security).I would actually discover my condition from another student I was friends with, who caught the news from his older sister, and he was then not sure if he should be the one to tell me. I had to point out to him "so you think other students in the school should know what's wrong with me, but me knowing is a problem?" this is what ultimately pushed him, instead of vaguely alluding to what he supposedly knew.When I confronted my mother, she flippantly said that she had already told me. She thought by regularly telling me growing up "you don't see the world the way other people do" whenever I got upset about something, that that is the same as saying "you have a condition called Asperger's Syndrome, here's what that means:".As I got older, my parents fought and shouted at eachother more. Leading up to their volatile separation when I was 11, each one brought me to an empty bedroom, knelt down in front of me, and tried to convince me not to believe the lies of the other. In both cases when each of them did that, the other parent would walk past the doorway and make a comment like "Oh now you're poisoning his mind, too!"Shortly before the separation I recall my father being accused by multiple witnesses of hitting my mother in the hallway for the first time ever. He swore black and blue that he never did that, but he also swore his entire life that he was a soldier in Vietnam, despite the lack of medals, photos, uniforms, or his name even being in the very comprehensive public records, and that unlike actual veterans, he would eagerly tell stories whenever asked, and they all sounded like scenes from war movies. But I digress.So the separation happened shortly after that accusation, which strongly indicates he did hit her, much like when he smacked my sister just once during an argument, and my mother instantly raised hell. It was suddenly a problem.I have so many memories of him with a bottle in his hand, a cigarette in his mouth, and a violent temperament. Until I was 18, I didn't trust anybody who drank alcohol as I thought it made people evil. I have learned better now, but to this day have never tasted alcohol, and don't plan to, much less smoking or drugs or gambling. I don't judge others for this, I just wanted to be as polar opposite to him as possible. Unfortunately, it's not as easy to say "I'll never be angry". But thankfully, it is only ever internalised anger. In 8 years, I have never raised my voice to my wife, much less my hand.Once they were living separately, I and my younger brother were required to spend every second weekend at his house. It would consist of us being in the house while he smoked and bet on horse races.Also around this time when my mother and other siblings were no longer in the house, he suddenly started insisting he help clean me in the shower, and forced my brother and I to shower/bath at the same time. Any protests and he would just get the same look of rage in his eyes that he'd get before he was about to hit us. Even now, among the obvious feelings, it causes great confusion, as I don't believe he had any homosexual inclinations. Not only that, he wouldn't even shut the bathroom door, not even when he had his mates over. One of them walked past the doorway while I was standing there naked in the shower at 11 years old, and tried to angrily tell my father to at least shut the door. He gave me the same look, and then responded "He's just walking past the door. It's not like he walked in and went "Oooooh, Can I Tryyyy Youuuuu?" ". That last part is a direct quote, and he directly fondled me while doing it. This memory only came up within the past year when I started finally seeing a psychologist, but it's now clear as day to me.As I got into high school years, the bullying at school was steadily becoming more intense. By now, I was being mocked because my voice had become completely flat and monotonous, and my face never changed expression. My nickname became "Monotone." I had learned to be less sensitive.At home by this point it was my mother, older sister, and younger brother. My mother had stopped hitting me long ago when I was old enough to defend myself, and stuck to mind games and guilt trips. My sister still to this day behaves the way she did as an early teenager, with the same tantrums, hitting, and playing the victim to mother if I ever got angry about it. I have a lot of memories around 10-12 trying to fight off her at 16-18. She moved out while I was halfway into high school.My younger brother joined in with the bullies as we got to high school, taking up smoking with them, and probably drinking too. Every single person in this family is a smoker to date, excluding myself. I once overheard him being questioned by my mother about drugs, but never learned what. I never got along with him. We fought daily. He went on to become loud, violent and angry as well, leaning more into alcohol and drugs. By and large, I just wanted to stay in my room and ignore my family, but none of them would leave me alone, just walking in without knocking at any given time.I was not allowed to refuse to see my father until I was 18. I didn't know I could refuse, and my mother is an enabler through and through, not leaving him until it was her being hit. She still to this day insists I was only lightly smacked if I misbehaved. But she also still insists that she never read my letters to my first girlfriend when I was 14, and is one of many reasons I have never trusted her. (Context: I kept these in a drawer. She asked to read them. I said no. Shortly after, she told me to go walk the dog. I did this, leaving the letters in a very specific order, and came home to find they had been shuffled around.)Didn't see my father for a very, very long time. Eventually I agreed to speak to him over the phone again. But I would only see him in person maybe three times. The third was late last year, when I got a call from a friend of his that he was very sick, and that I needed to come down asap. I ended up deciding I would regret not trying to close that chapter of my life, and went down (about 5 hours drive), cancelling my birthday plans to do so. He didn't even remember it was my birthday. This was consistent. When I was a child he would be off betting on horses. But to have it happen now, stung.Turned out he had Lung Cancer. But despite this, refused hospitals, doctors or ambulances, insisting they're all butchers, and the entire weekend I was there, I basically just watched him sit on the couch watching the horse races, stopping to cough painfully, and then get a cigarette, or some pot.He died a month and a half later on my wifes birthday. I tried to not focus on it so she could have a birthday, but I wasn't very good at it.Not long after this, my older brother decided to make contact out of the blue, to reveal to me that as early as 5 years before I was born, my father would beat him as well, even more so when my father realised my older brother was homosexual (around when he was 13). This was why he moved away when I was young.What he also revealed, was that my father was an opiate addict, which explains why I remember seeing so many boxes of painkillers in the house. Additionally, he revealed that my father tried to kill himself when I was 7, via carbon monoxide with the family car, in our carport in the front of the house. When I gathered myself from the shock, I thought to ask why police were never involved as surely the children in this situation would have been assessed psychologically, even a police report. Apparently none of this happened due to my father having a cop friend. I have no way of confirming or disproving this today, so to the best of my knowledge that's what happened.Older brother asks me then not to talk to anybody else in the family about it, and to keep it secret. I numbly just say 'ok', and the conversation ends. Then, for whatever reason, he calls my mother and sister the next day and tells them "I told him everything, he deserves to know.", but doesn't tell me that he has done this, or elaborate on what "everything" is. So suddenly my mother and sister are blowing up my phone trying to probe for information on what I have been told. I was still in shock when my mother called, and didn't take any more calls from her, but when my sister called, she asked what my older brother had told me, but before I could answer she went into an aggressive and extensive rant about how my older brother is a fucking liar and my father "wasn't that bad".I countered by asking if she had anything she felt she should tell me. She essentially danced around the question while continuing to press, until I finally asked if the story of my father's suicide attempt was true, which she confirmed. Apparently she didn't speak to anybody for 2 weeks, then when she tried to open up about it to my mother, she got a handwave and a "well he's back now".At this point, I sent them all an open letter telling them in great detail that I'm exhausted by their behaviour and their lies, and to give me space while I work myself out, and blocked all phone numbers and emails. Then I found a psychologist, so I could get help addressing the question of whether I should forgive my mother for keeping me in that environment and never actually stopping to listen to me.Within days of doing this, my mother had mailed an incredibly vitriolic letter to me, addressing it to my wife so I didn't get the chance to tear it up on sight. My wife saw the header 'this is his mother, please pass this on, he needs to see this' and gave it to me without reading it. I've told her that in future, I don't care if it's "my mail", I don't want anything from them anymore.So that essentially answered the question for me. I know if I talk to even one of them, that person will inevitably pressure me to speak to everyone again. It will just be nothing but guilt trips and telling me what I should think and feel like I'm still a child.
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