>>20356762My mom ran away for a month to leave the country to be with the man she cheated on my dad with when I was 6. My parents moved back to their hometown with us when my dad found out where she was and they both lived with their parents for a while. My mom remarried to the guy in question and my dad married a woman he met at church not long afterwards. Custody was really lopsided following my mom's antics (she only got to see us six days out of the month until I was 17) and there was very little co-parenting.
My dad's second wife abused us and made me and my sister, mostly me, responsible for taking care of my younger brother who is severely developmentally disabled whenever my dad was at work. She would pick me up from school and then leave with her daughter to "run errands" every day while I stayed home with him and I would spend my summers caring for him as well. I was responsible for bathing and feeding him most of the time.
Once my parents ended up getting 50/50 custody, my mom let me become a huge wastoid stoner instead of going to college and said it was "okay because I was self-medicating my depression."
I moved out around 19 and she hired a couple of people to take care of my brother until I was 23, when I found myself in a genuinely abusive relationship and felt like my only option was to move back to my hometown. My mom encouraged me to take on the job of taking care of my brother, and I still work in that capacity. She is now my boss and my landlord, but thankfully I don't live in the same house as them. The job doesn't pay well, but my rent is cheap.
I resent them for raising me to be this way, but I also hate myself for placing blame at their feet for my unhappiness with my current lot in life. I should mention that I tried and failed to go to school a couple times following high school; I never went to class and my drug abuse made me withdraw socially.
I've now been sober since December and am already seeing improvements in my life, thankfully. In less than six months I'm leaving my home state to go to college in earnest this time and finally work towards an actual career instead of hopping from one entry-level job to the next. I'm going to continue working this job until August and I feel like I hate my life most of these days, but I'm trying to remain grateful for my health and stay optimistic for my future.
When people find out what I do for a living they say stuff like "it's so good what you're doing for your brother" and it kinda drives me insane. I feel like I'm pissing away some pretty critical years of my life while caring for him (not to mention my childhood), and I hate that he will live with my mother for his entire life. He's 25 years old, nonverbal, autistic and epileptic. The most important part of my job is making sure he doesn't hurt himself when he has grand mal seizures. I've spent so much of my life feeding him and cleaning up after him. I wouldn't wish this on anybody else.
