Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Totally invisible. Both my parents had major mental illness with multiple suicide attempts (I think all before I was born). They got on some decent medications....but my sister ended up being developmentally delayed. As the younger sister I actually ended up in the role of the older and was constantly reminded she would be my responsibility when I got older. Otherwise I kept quiet and out of the way to avoid my sister's and parents' drama. Graduated early from H.S. and went out of town to college as soon as I could.
miss renee...did you end up taking care of your sister??? what a thing to say to a young girl
invisible,,,,as a young'n
so when you went to college away from the family,,,did you bloom into your own person?
As a kid it was great. I have a one brother who is elder than me. We both were treated the same way even my brother is 10 years elder than me. For our parents no one was better than other. They treat, punish everything equally. Due to my father being a diplomat we lived in many countries but when we started schooling my father was just around the world and we went every school holidays where ever in the country our father was. Where ever now war I have been there and those were really beautiful countries. We had a dog Tommy and a black and white cat Bobby.
I was the first born female with two psycho alcoholic parents that were both ill equipped to be parents, let alone married. My father never knew his father because he died when he was a baby. My mother lost her mother at a very young age and was shipped off to live with her grandparents because the new wife only wanted her children with my mother's father in her life.
My brother was my only sibling and the treasured one, even though he was a total screw up loser. Just like my parents. I learned to deal with the bill collectors as my father was fired a lot and my mother never worked. I cleaned up her messes when she got sick from drinking too much. I dealt with her physical abuse until I got old enough to hit back. My father had designs on me when I was 13 but I was able to put the brakes on that. In return my mother abused me more because my father showed more interest in me then her. I over heard him telling her once that being jealous of your own daughter was sick. Ah yeah, but so is being physically attracted to her sicko.
It was a very difficult childhood but it taught me how to survive at a young age. I started looking for ways to make money at age ten. Decades of that mentality made me a workaholic. It also left a deep impression on how NOT to be. I tried my best to be the total opposite of what they were.
miss renee...did you end up taking care of your sister??? what a thing to say to a young girl
invisible,,,,as a young'n
so when you went to college away from the family,,,did you bloom into your own person?
Thanks for your concern! I did do better once I got out of my small town and into college, then graduate school. My father died from lung cancer while I was in graduate school...my mother's health was poor and she died about 10 years ago at the quite young age of 72. She was in a nursing home for a year after breaking her hip.
My sister lives near me in a mental health care center - like a nursing home but with a much younger clientele of people with similar issues as she. I see her weekly to take her lunch, snacks, and her "allowance"...ha. I bring her to my house to celebrate the holidays and her birthday. It's not easy - a sister won't "mind" her sister and she has lots of other physical health issues that would make it difficult for her to be in a less restricted setting. Things could be worse...I look out for her but we could never live together.
I hope others with less than ideal beginnings were able to get beyond them...
My parents divorced when I was four and I saw my dad all of 3 times from then until adulthood. We just weren't important to him. My mom was a career woman so I basically raised myself. My sister and I were cooking our own meals and doing our own laundry by the age of 9.
Looking back our mom just wasn't involved and our house was no fun. Now, I go up to my sister in laws house and they're playing games, or dancing and listening to music. They interact with and have fun with each other!! Our house was never like that. We might as well have been three roommates with separate lives and little interaction.
But my mom was an excellent provider and made good money, yet was smart enough to make us buy our own cars pay for our own college education. She new we would work harder if we had to pay our own way.
Growing up, I had a lot of issues (many of them medical) which neither of my two younger siblings shared, so I guess you could say I felt like I felt like I always "had" to be the one who was different.....and not necessarily in a positive way.
Meanwhile, I always felt like my brother was favoured because he was the youngest and the only boy, and that my sister was the one who was always considered pretty.
I was the first born female with two psycho alcoholic parents that were both ill equipped to be parents, let alone married. My father never knew his father because he died when he was a baby. My mother lost her mother at a very young age and was shipped off to live with her grandparents because the new wife only wanted her children with my mother's father in her life.
My brother was my only sibling and the treasured one, even though he was a total screw up loser. Just like my parents. I learned to deal with the bill collectors as my father was fired a lot and my mother never worked. I cleaned up her messes when she got sick from drinking too much. I dealt with her physical abuse until I got old enough to hit back. My father had designs on me when I was 13 but I was able to put the brakes on that. In return my mother abused me more because my father showed more interest in me then her. I over heard him telling her once that being jealous of your own daughter was sick. Ah yeah, but so is being physically attracted to her sicko.
It was a very difficult childhood but it taught me how to survive at a young age. I started looking for ways to make money at age ten. Decades of that mentality made me a workaholic. It also left a deep impression on how NOT to be. I tried my best to be the total opposite of what they were.
Lots of people would cycle the bs and crap you grew
With. But you are wise enough not to
Bravo! To you
Lots of kids grew up in shadows that
Most will never suspect... Let's hope most that
Read this have put their own demons to rest
I was the middle child. 2 years younger than my big brother, 2 older than my little brother. BB was the brains of the bunch. He was very smart. Had a chance to go to college on a free ride, but chose the military instead. On his way for deployment in 89, he was killed in a car crash. LB got away with murder at every turn, and I was usually the one blamed for it. I spent a lot of time in my bedroom being on restriction for what he did. Dad depended on me to do the work on the farm. I was his personal slave, do this do that do the other then you get to do what you what......oh wait, your on restriction. I had a s#?*!ty childhood.
2nd of 5 kids, childhood was awful, father absent (due to his work), mother was meek and bullied by her mother, a tyrant of a woman if there ever was one, but she was the one who basically told my mother how to raise me and my mother allowed her to. I was thrown into convent boarding school in my early teens. To this day that place haunts me and I hated every nanosecond I spent there.
I suppose the adults in my childhood considered me a problem child, but they're lucky I wasn't brought up in this day and age, because they'd be in jail for child abuse. In those days corporal punishment was the norm.
I was #8 of 9. As the youngest girl, I was the doll for my older siblings. Unfortunately, my mom & dad divorced when I was six & the person she married decided us 4 girls were his personal property. It was an extremely confusing time for me as a child; one moment being sexually abused & the next being taken to the local cafe for ice cream.
Thankfully when the 4 of us got to talking & realized he was abusing each of us we went to our mother & told her. She threw him out of the house, but the damage had been done. One sister ended up committing suicide, one became a vice president at a bank, my sister closest to me & myself grew up & had regular jobs. All of us were married & divorced numerous times. I often wonder what I would have become if I hadn't been abused & terrorized by that man.
I was happy when I found out he was dying of cancer.
I should add that my youngest memory of the abuse was when I was 8 & we confronted our mother when I was 12. He told each of my older sisters that he wouldn't touch me if they let him do what he wanted. He told me he'd kill my family if I told anyone what he was doing.
I'm 62 now & it still haunts me, even though he's been dead since I was 16 or so.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
