Help: She took them all away from me. (Mild CW: violence, suicide mention)

[etherealwinter]

Not written for the public or publication, particularly without monetary recompense.

I wrote and drew as a teen. I accrued many solitary hobbies, including things my younger siblings liked. Truly, I love them so much. That's why it hurts.

Throughout the last recession and my mother's increasing abuse, I protected them. I remember being resentful of the pain inflicted on me as a teen, but resenting more that my siblings would suffer as I had, even if they caused it.

Friends:

None of them speak to me anymore, nearly a decade after all that I had sacrificed and suffered. I haven't spoken to them for years, on and off, and I know they do not know me, or how I think, or how I am. They have been fed lies, and I am cast off as some paranoid rabblerouser.

I took blows. I bled for them.

Matriarch was so often shaking from anger and violent rage, we worried she would survive. Before she beat me, and us.

Before I knew she would readily abandon them to me to live with some man, who was a better parent than she would have ever been, except for our immigration system. But he was taken from us through the "legal" system, and I survived the blows as a parentified child. I even cried, thanking him for caring for us the last time I ever spoke to him. I never even had the chance to say goodbye to the only responsible adult I ever knew.

I ate less.

She likely killed my dogs, who were often the only family I had. She will never face consequences, especially not the ones she forced on me.

I loved them and my siblings more than I ever loved myself.

She took them all away from me with lies and violence.

I loved them with all my heart, and would have gladly given my life for theirs, but I don't think they even remember me most days. I don't think it helps our parents had life-threatening conditions in recent years, unlike me and my suicidal ideation and my parents being indifferent to whether I live or die.

Some even look down on me for being poor, when I loved them with all of my heart and soul.
How do I make sense of this?

[Armee]

 

I care if you live or die.

[Rainydaze]

I don't think the kind of toxicity and dysfunction you describe are things that can ever be made sense of. Anyone who intentionally harms children and/or animals has entered the realm of psychopathy in my opinion. Their behaviour cannot possibly make sense to those who are capable of empathy and have a moral compass. It sounds like you've experienced a lifetime of abuse and that your siblings have been emotionally manipulated and are caught up deeply in the dysfunction.

It's not fair to have been dealt that kind of lot in life, I know, and there's so much there to process and grieve. I'm so sorry that your abusive mother has put you through all this.