The past few weeks have been really hard for me.
I don't know what to do at this point. I'm in the middle of an extremely complicated and frustrating situation and I don't know how to deal with it. Warning because this is going to be long and mentions verbal, psychological and emotional abuse.
So here's the deal. I live with my family, my mom, brother and sister, and my four year old niece. Things have never exactly been good around here. When we were kids, my mother was a huge alcoholic and horrendously abusive to us on a daily basis. As a result, it seems none of us really have the psychological capability of living normal adult lives. I never wanted to come back here. The only reason I wound up moving back in almost two years ago is because otherwise I would be out on the street.
But it's probably a good thing I did. Because shortly after, we found out that my sister was using. She dropped her daughter off here with me and my mom (she had just turned three at the time) and I've pretty much been taking care of her ever since.
I've been going to therapy for seven months now in order to deal with this stuff from my past. After a few months, I decided to try to talk to my family about it (a subject that is largely taboo in our household) so that maybe we could all deal with it and hopefully start healing and improving our lives. But it didn't go so well. My brother and sister were sort of willing to talk about it, but I quickly found that my mother is in complete denial that anything bad ever happened to us when we were kids. Apparently, she was never even an alcoholic, she was a great mom, and we had super happy a childhood. The only reason we are saying any of this stuff is because we are liars and spoiled brats who just want to be mean to their poor mama.
The more things started coming out, the angrier my mother got. Any time someone even mentions something, she starts screaming. She's gotten so mad at me now for daring to bring up the past, that she has been using any excuse she can to start fights with me and scream at me. Sometimes I feel like I've been shuttled back to my childhood, because the things she has been saying to me - the name calling, the threats, the verbal, psychological and emotional abuse I have had to endure - it's like I'm reliving it all over again.
My mother is the most abusive, manipulative, controlling and narcissistic person I have ever known. I honestly feel like the only reason she had kids was so that she could have something to control. She's always on a power trip, thinking she has the right to tell us what to do, how to live and who to be. She constantly demands things from everyone, and if anyone tells her no, she throws a tantrum like a child. I feel like my siblings and I have been under her thumb for a long time. After I moved back in, I was pretty much waiting on her hand and foot for a while. So much so, that I barely had time to do the things that I wanted to do. I didn't realize at the time that she was still abusing me, and abusing her power over me. I thought, as long as she's not drinking and yelling all the time things were okay. But after being in therapy for a few months, the blinders started to come off, and I realized that she was still manipulating me for her own selfish purposes.
I don't think my mother wants her children to live their own lives and be independent. The last thing she wants is for us to go out and have careers and cars and our own places to live and our own families. She just wants us to stay huddled up with her in the nest, where she can use us as an extension of her own being, so that she doesn't have to be lonely and so she has someone to take care of her (she's pretty much ran off everyone else in her life). We are basically all she has left. And the more I try to exorcise my own independence from her, make my own choices, plan my own life, do the things that I want to do instead of what she wants me to do, the more insecure she gets and the more she starts to freak out. At first it started with me refusing to do ridiculous things like letting her wake me up at 1:30 in the morning to drag me to the store to get canned cat food just because shes bored (of course she makes it out like the cats are just gonna starve to death if they don't get it immediately, even though they have dry food) and things like that. Breaking the taboo of talking about our childhood really brought things to a head.
My mom doesn't have much psychological power over me anymore, compared to before anyway, which is a great thing and something I thought I would never be mentally capable of since she's spent my entire life drilling it into my head that I am worthless and the only person I can trust, the only person that will ever love or care about me, is her. That I will never succeed in anything I do in life without her. That I cannot exist as a separate human being because I am innately owned by her. She's my mother. I do what she says. Period. I don't question. I don't make my own choices. I don't argue. I do for her and I do it respectfully, because that's all I'm good for.
Yet, despite my ability to finally break away, things have gotten so bad lately with all her fits and tantrums, I've started getting concerned for the well being of my niece. I make it a point not to argue with my mother in front of her. I don't want her around that at all. I try to tell my mom to be calm around her and not try to pick fights, but my mother doesn't seem too concerned about how it might effect her. I feel like she does it as a way of manipulating the situation, because she will go on and on, trying to push my buttons and get a rise out of me, and if I say anything - anything at all, even if I say it calmly - she starts saying that I'm a bad influence on my niece, I'm hurting her and I should be ashamed. I often have to escape upstairs with my niece to my room and lock the door just to get us away from her because she wont stop (thankfully, my mom often has trouble getting up the stairs and usually wont follow us). The worst thing is how she tries to start fights with me every single morning while I'm getting my niece ready for preschool. She follows me around all morning, asking me if I'm doing this, if I'm doing that, if shes up, if shes eaten, what I'm feeding her, telling me how to dress her etc etc. Constantly telling me how to do things right, and that if I don't do it HER way, I'm damaging my niece in some way. It's insanely frustrating because it's not like I can't do it. I did it just fine on my own for weeks, until my mom decided that she was so mad at me she just wanted to try to piss me off every moment of the day. Now all of the sudden I am incompetent and everything I do is hurting my niece. It got to the point where I've had to wear my headphones all over the house just so I can't hear her and lock my door behind me so she couldn't come in and argue with me right there in front of my niece. She gets mad that my niece spends most of her time in my room when she's here. But it's not like I force her to be in here, she chooses to to be in here. And the reason is pretty obvious. It's the only place in the house that's safe, quiet and clean. Okay, it's not immaculate, but it's not filthy either. It's the only place she can go to get away from the negativity and not have to wade through piles of junk.
It's exceptionally frustrating seeing as the person doing this is a person who was incapable of taking care of her own children. The person who neglected and abused us since I was seven years old somehow thinks that she knows better how to parent than I do. I admit I'm not an expert, but I know what NOT to do. I think anyone would know its common sense that you don't yell and scream in front of a child and try to turn them against their other family members by saying horrible and untrue things around them. She has even gone so far to say to me in front of my niece that I don't care about her and that she shouldn't listen to me because I'm a bad person. What a fantastic human being.
I feel like my mother, in some kind of twisted, backwards way is trying to somehow one-up me by trying to "prove" that she is somehow the better "parent" by trying to take over the role and undermine my efforts, seeing as her lack of parenting skills has been brought up so much lately. But instead of doing it by actually being a responsible adult (something I don't think she has and ever will be capable of), shes trying to shoot me down to her level by making me - and everyone else - think I'm doing everything wrong. By trying to push me to get angry and yell in front of my niece so she can turn around claim that I'm the abusive one.
I can't deal with it anymore. I am quickly coming to the end of my rope and I feel like my sanity is about to break. It's even more frustrating because my sister - my nieces mother - lives HERE with us, but she just doesn't want to get involved. She doesn't seem to care what is happening around her child. When I try to come to her and talk to her about it, and ask her to back me up and tell our mother to stop she pretty much just tells me to keep her out of it. That if we're gonna argue then do it away from her. But this is HER CHILD we're talking about. Her child that is seeing this behavior. Her child that I am taking care of and trying to protect because she seems completely uninterested in doing either of these things. The only time she does anything with her or for her, or spends any time with her is when I ask her to, and even then half the time she tells me she's "busy". I've tried to encourage her to spend more time with her daughter, but it doesn't even seem like there's much point because the time she spends with her is never quality time. All she does is sit her down in front of a cartoon and tell her to be quiet while she sits there on her phone texting the whole time. If my niece does anything she doesn't like, she immediately yells at her puts her in a time out. She has absolutely no patience and no desire to actually interact with her child and it makes me angry and its really sad.
And on top of all THAT mess, my mom is also a hoarder. I don't usually tell people that because it's an embarrassment, but it's a huge problem and not the kind of environment a child should be living in. That's why my room is the only clean place in the house. The rest is always a mess and full of clutter, and I seem to be the only one interested in actually trying to keep it clean. My sister doesn't think she has to do anything because she "works" or "is looking for a job" - which is only true about two days out of the week, my brother wont do anything because he thinks he should be paid to do chores (5 bucks a load of dishes to be specific... and he's 26 and doesn't work. Yeah, I donno, he has a load of his own problems and that's a whole other story. He literally does nothing at all), and my mom just wants everyone to do everything for her so she can sit on her butt all day. Granted she does have health problems, but she uses them to her advantage and tries to milk it for all it's worth. I work my a** off trying to keep this house, at least the main rooms, clean and fit for a child to live in - which includes cleaning up after everyone else because apparently they can't even do that.
This is so hard... I feel like the only adult in a house full of a bunch of grown children and one actual one. My therapist described me as one person trying to hold a whole universe together. "It's too much, Kai. It's too much for you." She said, and she's right. It is too much, and I don't know how much longer I can do this. No matter what I do, no matter how reasonable and rational I try to be, nobody seems to care at all. No one ever listens. And I don't get any appreciation for the things I do either. I could be running around all day taking care of my niece and cleaning and doing whatever else needs to be done and all I ever seem to get is people turning their nose up at me telling me I don't do anything. Even my sister the other day, I was complaining of how tired and exhausted I was and she was just kind of like, "Why? You don't do that much." and I was like WOW. Really? I'm taking care of YOUR CHILD while you sit in your room all day doing who knows what and you say I don't do that much?? Well, I didn't actually say that, but I wanted to. Even when I told my cousin about that she was like, "Wow, yeah, must be nice for her to have all that free time!"
I just can't take it anymore. Last week, I was so upset and lost on what to do, I ended up telling my therapist how bad things were getting and my concerns for my niece. It was probably one of the hardest thing's I've ever had to do in my life. I hadn't even mentioned that I had a niece before then because I knew, after everything I've already told her, that she would probably feel inclined to report to Child Protection Services, and sure enough, she did. I didn't want them to get involved. I don't trust CPS one bit. Every case I have ever been involved in - when they got called on my mom and my sister in the past - and every case any one I've known has ever been involved in they just seem to do the complete opposite of what they're supposed to do. They don't fallow their own rules, they disregard the law, and they lie and mess with people just because they can. The fact that they could have the power to take my niece completely away and put her in foster care freaks me out to no end.
I am certain it won't come down to that though, because she is not being abused or neglected and she has a competent caregiver. I am torn though. The police came over yesterday and told my family about the cps report and checked out the house. My niece was at her other grandparents house at the time. My family doesn't know that I'm the one who let the cat out of the bag. The sad thing is, CPS has been called on my mom and my sister so many times they already have a plan for if something like this happens. They actually read up on the law and they apparently aren't required to even talk to the social workers or let them in the house. They have a string of lies to tell them if they do end up having to talk to somebody. When the police came, my sister told them that she lives at her boyfriends house and only brings her daughter over here to visit and she doesn't actually live here. My therapist told me I did the right thing by telling her about my niece and has encouraged me to communicate with CPS just to keep them informed on the situation. But, as I said before, though I desperately want to do something to change this situation, I don't feel like I can trust them. Plus, if my family found out that I was talking to them, and letting them know they are lying to them, they would be livid. Talking to CPS and telling them ANYTHING truthful is a big no no. Not only would I have them mad at me, but my nieces dads family would be mad at me too because there are plenty of issues over at their house as well (she spends the weekends at their house, she sometimes doesn't even wanna go over there because she says her dad yells all the time and I know they are alcoholics. I donno how much or how often they drink around her, but I've been there when she was there and they were drinking before). It makes me sick that I am stuck in the middle of a group of people who are not capable of providing a safe and stable environment for my niece to live in, and want to hide it at all costs and pretend like there's not a problem. That I am apparently the ONLY person who is interested in doing what is right for her and giving her what she needs to grow into a healthy, mentally stable adult. No one else is trying to advocate for her. No one else is saying, 'no, this is not right, this is not a good environment, this is not the kind of behavior a child should be around, and something has to change.' No one. Not even her mother. If her mother wanted to do what was right for her, she'd get herself a new place and move out away from my mother and this garbage dump of a house, but she wont. She wont because here she has people to take care of her child for her, here she doesn't have to work her a** off to pay the bills, here she doesn't even have to clean up after herself because somebody else does it for her, here she has a fraction of the responsibilities it would take to have a place of her own and as long as she gets to be comfortable, having her daughter in a crappy living situation okay with her.
I just want to get out of here. Take my niece and move away so that we both can have a safe, stable environment. But I can't. I have nowhere else to go, no financial stability, and no support. Even if I did have those things, I don't think I would ever be able to talk my sister into letting me take her with me and out of this house. My sister would be welcome to come with me, but I don't know if she would even want to come if I did have a way out. I even talked to her about that recently about that. I thought, if she could give me temporary custody of my niece, then perhaps I could get into a section 8 apparent and we could all go live there (my sister can't get section 8 anymore because when she did have it she got kicked out...). She was not keen on the idea. Just started saying, 'Well, it takes so much time, it takes money for court fees and such, blah blah blah'. Then when I try to tell her that we need to do something, she just kind of sluffs it off and is kind of like, "Oh well, this is how things are."
I feel stuck, lost... I don't know what to do. I was hoping that maybe just the mention of CPS would be enough to scare my family into making some changes... but it doesn't seem to be. I got up this morning and tried to wake up my sister and my mom to help me clean the house in case the social worker came by... but they pretty much ignored me and told me not to worry because 'we don't even have to let them in'. All my mom could say to me about all the fighting is telling me not to argue with her anymore. I need to stop yelling, I need to stop fighting, and I need to start doing what she tells me or else I am going to make things worse. They are not inclined in any way to try to change, accept responsibility, or make this environment better for my niece at all.
I don't know what's going to happen from here. I want to get custody of my niece so that I have the legal power to make the decisions that need to be made, but I have no idea how to pursue that or if I even have the strength to do it. I'm already being accused of tearing my family apart by trying to talk about our issues and the truth about our past. And I certainly can't fight for custody while living with the people I'm fighting against. If I do this - and if things don't change, I'm going to have to - I need to prepare. I need to have my own place where my niece will be safe. I need financial stability so that I can support her. And I need some kind of emotional support system so that I don't totally break under the pressure. I talked to my cousin yesterday about everything going on, and she said that if things get to such a point I could possibly stay with her and her mom. I haven't spoken to her mom about it yet, but she has supported me in this sort of thing before, and I now she will again as long as I can pay my own way and support myself and my niece. I just need a plan. I'm going to be doing this all on my own, and I need all the support and advice I can get.
The bottom line is, I feel like my niece is on the road to growing up the same way we did if things don't change. I can't let that happen. I won't let that happen. I can't sit back and watch another child go through the things that we went through and witness the things that we witnessed. Something has to be done, even if I end up having to do it all on my own...
So there it is, finally all out on the table... I'm amazed I had the energy to get it out of me... Sorry it's so long, but thanks for reading. I hope someone out there can help me figure out what to do next.
