It's a very complex, ongoing and painful story, but I'll try to get the gist of it out. I'm sorry if this is long...
I am 21 years old and I have a 16 year old sister. I grew up with a sociopathic father and a highly empathetic mother. My mother and my sister are my rocks and we have bonded in such an extreme way through the abuse. It has only been in the past few months that we have been able to put a label to my father. The realization frightens me beyond belief, but I now can finally understand everything that before had been so confusing and we can begin the process of forgiving ourselves and healing.
During my early childhood my Father used money as a means of controlling my mother. He could fly into rages at the drop of a hat and kept us on eggshells. The good bit was that he was at work ALL the time (we now wonder what he was really doing during that overtime that none of coworkers had) my mom did the best she could to raise us as normally as possible and until recently all my childhood memories have been all the wonderful bits, well, you know... until I began remembering.
My parents divorced when I was 10 (my sister was 4). By this point my father had realized that my sister was more attached to my mother and since he knew she wouldn't idealize him in the way I did he stopped caring about her and started to systematically break her down. During the divorce he used me as the means to exact revenge on my mother and brainwashed me into believing that she never loved me and was an unfit parent. A custody battle ensued and at the age of 11 the courts allowed me to make the decision to live with my father. By this point my father had already been using me to fill the emotional role of a spouse. This covert incest began around age 4 or 5 and continued until he remarried when I was 13.
My mother, during the divorce was targeted by a female sociopath. Despite never being in a homosexual relationship previously this woman wormed her way into our lives under the guise of protecting us and my mom started dating her about 4 months after the divorce was finalized. Come to find out down the road that she was just as bad. That relationship lasted until my senior year of highschool.
There is so much more to the back story but I don't have the strength to go through all of it right now. From a very young age--as far back as I can remember--I have suffered from nearly debilitating anxiety, panic disorder, and severe depression. I firmly believe that if my mother hadn't gotten me into therapy at such a young age and continued to send me back as needed I would not be alive today. I still struggle with my mental illness (that I now categorize all under the blanket of PTSD) it is completely manageable. My younger sister on the other hand is not so lucky right now. She is in the midst of a battle against her own mind.
She has always had the most wicked sense of humor and seems so optimistic (we had hoped she took after my mother in that way) but it seems that her humor is a coping mechanism for the severe pain she has been experiencing internally. She has slowly withdrawn over the past 3 years and to an outsider may just appear lazy when really she has just gotten to the point where she is too apathetic to function. She has decided that her only logical solution is suicide. She has no set timeframe for it, she says it'll happen when she's ready. She's so much more emotionally mature than I was when I went through the same thing. She asked for help, she wants to get better and she says her only goal is to be happy. My mom and I got her into an inpatient treatment (she wanted to go) she'll do outpatient after and then continue with long term therapy. This all came to a head this past thursday so my weekend has been spent focusing all my energy on the immediate situation. My mom and I are both getting ourselves back into therapy as well.
I think the thing that is the hardest is if she ever did kill herself I wouldn't be angry with her or think she was selfish, I would just miss her so very much. That is the thought I keep having and I begin to cry every time it creeps in my head. I know she is in the safest situation possible and that we are doing absolutely everything. We just love her so much!
So that's a quick run through of everything. I hope it makes sense and I hope I'm in the right place.
I am 21 years old and I have a 16 year old sister. I grew up with a sociopathic father and a highly empathetic mother. My mother and my sister are my rocks and we have bonded in such an extreme way through the abuse. It has only been in the past few months that we have been able to put a label to my father. The realization frightens me beyond belief, but I now can finally understand everything that before had been so confusing and we can begin the process of forgiving ourselves and healing.
During my early childhood my Father used money as a means of controlling my mother. He could fly into rages at the drop of a hat and kept us on eggshells. The good bit was that he was at work ALL the time (we now wonder what he was really doing during that overtime that none of coworkers had) my mom did the best she could to raise us as normally as possible and until recently all my childhood memories have been all the wonderful bits, well, you know... until I began remembering.
My parents divorced when I was 10 (my sister was 4). By this point my father had realized that my sister was more attached to my mother and since he knew she wouldn't idealize him in the way I did he stopped caring about her and started to systematically break her down. During the divorce he used me as the means to exact revenge on my mother and brainwashed me into believing that she never loved me and was an unfit parent. A custody battle ensued and at the age of 11 the courts allowed me to make the decision to live with my father. By this point my father had already been using me to fill the emotional role of a spouse. This covert incest began around age 4 or 5 and continued until he remarried when I was 13.
My mother, during the divorce was targeted by a female sociopath. Despite never being in a homosexual relationship previously this woman wormed her way into our lives under the guise of protecting us and my mom started dating her about 4 months after the divorce was finalized. Come to find out down the road that she was just as bad. That relationship lasted until my senior year of highschool.
There is so much more to the back story but I don't have the strength to go through all of it right now. From a very young age--as far back as I can remember--I have suffered from nearly debilitating anxiety, panic disorder, and severe depression. I firmly believe that if my mother hadn't gotten me into therapy at such a young age and continued to send me back as needed I would not be alive today. I still struggle with my mental illness (that I now categorize all under the blanket of PTSD) it is completely manageable. My younger sister on the other hand is not so lucky right now. She is in the midst of a battle against her own mind.
She has always had the most wicked sense of humor and seems so optimistic (we had hoped she took after my mother in that way) but it seems that her humor is a coping mechanism for the severe pain she has been experiencing internally. She has slowly withdrawn over the past 3 years and to an outsider may just appear lazy when really she has just gotten to the point where she is too apathetic to function. She has decided that her only logical solution is suicide. She has no set timeframe for it, she says it'll happen when she's ready. She's so much more emotionally mature than I was when I went through the same thing. She asked for help, she wants to get better and she says her only goal is to be happy. My mom and I got her into an inpatient treatment (she wanted to go) she'll do outpatient after and then continue with long term therapy. This all came to a head this past thursday so my weekend has been spent focusing all my energy on the immediate situation. My mom and I are both getting ourselves back into therapy as well.
I think the thing that is the hardest is if she ever did kill herself I wouldn't be angry with her or think she was selfish, I would just miss her so very much. That is the thought I keep having and I begin to cry every time it creeps in my head. I know she is in the safest situation possible and that we are doing absolutely everything. We just love her so much!
So that's a quick run through of everything. I hope it makes sense and I hope I'm in the right place.
