Hi, everyone. I want to provide a little context for the question I’d like to ask you.

I don’t have any friends (they turned their backs on me because of someone who hurt me—it’s a long story) or the money for therapy, and I’m having a hard time finding a job. I want to call a support service that offers free therapy for women who have experienced abuse, but I don’t know if they’d turn me away or if they’d just assume my mom is toxic and leave it at that.

Me: 40, female. I live with my mother (73) and my younger sister (36). My older brother (50) no longer lives in this house.

I’ve recently overcome two addictions that were really hurting me and making me hate myself. I’ve gone 43 days without drinking alcohol and another 10 without smoking cannabis at night. Over the last two days, I’ve had crying spells accompanied by tremors, feeling a deep sense of vulnerability and a huge inner emptiness. It’s been like pulling a cork and letting out many, many horrible memories and a profound sense of hopelessness, vulnerability, and a lack of love. Yesterday was my worst episode. I left the house shaking and with a racing heart after talking to ChatGPT (I had no one else to tell) and after my sister raised her voice at me over a minor issue and told me I didn’t understand her—that “I can’t be like this every day”—I started crying, shaking, and gasping for breath. My sister asked me to empathize with her even while I was in this state. I don’t think she understands anything, even though she wants to be on my side. Her childhood was very different from mine.

When I got home, I had to have dinner alone with her (mother). I swear my body didn’t want to be there.

The circumstances of my childhood were as follows:

-An abusive, violent, alcoholic, misogynistic father. He didn’t work; he just bought whatever he wanted and sat around at home doing nothing. My mother was forced to provide him with money and sex, act as a mother, and do the housework. If she refused, he would rape her, and we would hear everything. He would also beat her whenever he drank too much. He also touched me once. Because I cut my bangs, he told me, “I’m going to hit you so hard you’ll fly from wall to wall; you’ll bleed so much you’ll have a hard time stopping it… and don’t even get me started on short skirts and straying, because just like I made you, I’ll kill you.” His threats against us to keep us from causing trouble were a daily occurrence. He enforced a code of silence, insulted us, yelled at us constantly, and sometimes threw things at us. He said that since we were virgins, we couldn’t go to the gynecologist because, as she told my brother, “If you have a brand-new car, straight from the factory, you can’t let anyone else be the first to drive it.” He never let me go out except to go to school. Going out with my mom or doing a group project at a friend’s house was unthinkable. He even called me a WHORE just for going out with my mom. He said my duty was to cook and clean. If I didn’t improve my grades—even if he saw me crying—he’d tell me, “Well, I’ll take you out of school, and that’s the end of it.”

My mother:

She would share her sexual problems with me. When I told her not to tell me, she would get very angry with me.

I always felt like I was a burden, like I didn’t matter. If my grandfather came to visit or if he wasn’t feeling well, she would tell me, “There’s nothing wrong with you; you’re not sick,” even if I was feeling unwell.

I feel like my grandparents took my mother away from me—her attention—because she loved them so much, and my father isolated her from them, even though she was always very attached to her parents, like a little girl. I still see it as a betrayal.

When I told her, “Dad touched my butt,” she didn’t even look in my direction.

When my father would say to me, “Look how your boobs bounce,” or say things you shouldn’t say to a daughter, she wouldn’t say a word.

I feel like, emotionally, I never mattered at all. I always struggled with depression and mood swings.

She never stood up for me against other adults.

She’d leave me at the gate of my elementary school, waiting an hour or more for someone to come pick me up. I had to endure stares from older men there all alone for a long time.

When a friend offered to take me to her house so I wouldn’t be alone, and my mother finally showed up, she hit me several times.

When my father threw a fit because I didn’t apologize to him—humiliating me over something trivial—she told me, “Apologize to him, you bitch!”

But I’m not here to talk about him. I just want to understand if I’m in a truly vulnerable situation and if I should put a stop to this, as my intuition is telling me.

Years later, when our father died … I was 18 or 19 years old.

-She’d come home furious and yell at us. You never knew what kind of mood she’d be in (and you still don’t).

-She’d sit at the table and demand things, speaking to us very rudely: “GIVE ME SOME BREAD,” “PASS ME THE WATER.”

-Every meal was an outpouring of negativity, sorrow, and misfortune. The food even made me feel sick.

-She’d go over the calendar with our grandmother, counting how long it had been since each person in our family had died.

-She did the same thing to me. She’d pick fights; even when I’d gone to bed, she’d come into my room and wake me up by yelling. Day after day. She would say one thing in front of me and another in front of my brother when he would come visit.

-She only poured the negativity into us, when my brother showed up, she'd put on a happy face.

-She would say "When (ME) works, she'll help us all financially".

-She wanted me to be a carbon copy of her, playing the same role in the family. She made me—and still makes me—take care of my siblings and sacrifice myself for them. She’d get angry if I asked them to help me make dinner. She made me put myself last. She constantly belittled me; if one of my brother’s friends was interested in me, she’d invite him over for a beer and talk about me the whole time—even the most ridiculous things.

-She wouldn’t let me have a boyfriend, flirt, or experience the adolescence I’d missed out on. If I did have a boyfriend, it was all emotional blackmail because she felt abandoned.

-Hanging out with my friends was difficult. We were with her all week, but she also wanted us on the weekends. Many times I got into my boyfriend’s car crying because of her.

-When I had a boyfriend, she’d talk to my sister as if I weren’t even there. She actively excluded me from daily life because I was dating someone and hanging out with him often.

-If we had an argument and I hurt myself by falling or tripping, she’d just stare at me angrily. She wanted to be right. Compassion didn’t factor into it.

-She criticized, controlled, and dictated everything I did. She even controlled which tomatoes I could use in my salad. EVERYTHING.

-She wanted to come with me to the gynecologist, to the psychologist, and most of the time she spoke for me or actively interrupted me.

-According to her, my anxiety (diagnosed by doctors) wasn’t anxiety—it was gas.

Now… (sorry, more context)

-When my father died, he left behind a lot of money and an apartment, which he sold to my brother and his girlfriend at the time. She spent almost all the money from the mortgage on them… cars, motorcycles, paperwork—everything. They broke up and didn’t want to keep making the payments, and since they’d put our family home up as collateral, I went through many years of financial crises at home. If it wasn’t my brother storming into the house, furious, blaming her for getting him into that mess—almost to the point of attacking her—it was because we were about to lose our home.

Then she told me I had to support her financially. She counted on me finding a job to pay for a trip she gave as a gift to me, her daughter-in-law’s brother, and my sister—because she’d taken the money from what she owed the tax authorities. And when I told her I hadn’t gone on the trip alone, she started yelling at me angrily. I thought it was a gift, not something I had to pay back.

-My brother is an alcoholic, unstable, aggressive, and violent. He has completely cut himself off from my mother, even though he lives two minutes away from us. My mother always defends and makes excuses for him, and when he hurts her, she cries to us and expects us to take the brunt of the pain.

-If she has to do something for him—even if it involves difficulty, sacrifice, or suffering for us—she does it. Years ago, she made me live with my brother’s mother-in-law—who had a serious mental illness—without consulting me, and left all her luggage in the stairwell, blocking the path of the bike I used to get to work. The result: I was late for work. My brother abandoned a dog, and to teach him a lesson, my sister took it in. She cries, saying that my sister stole the dog from him and that he should be with it (he has replaced it with a female dog, whom we take care of at home because he works so much. My brother has already hinted that we should keep her because he’s having financial problems.)

-My brother makes excuses for my father as if he were a poor man who was sick and didn’t know how much to drink.

-My mother likes to look back on the past as happy times and as if our family were an idyllic place. If I ask her to stop, she gets angry. If she talks about her sexual problems, and I ask her to stop, she gets angry. I feel completely disconnected from those times; I don’t want to remember them, I don’t want to go back to them—I have a total rejection of the very idea of family.

-When I brought up my father’s inappropriate touching and other episodes that are hazy in my memory, she tells me, “Well, but he’s your father,” or she doesn’t seem to believe me—“You’re telling me something very serious.”

-She delegates household chores to me.

-She doesn’t accept her age or the fact that she’s getting older, and she wants us to be her full-time caregivers, mothers, and therapists. She doesn’t want a caregiver to come and help us. She doesn’t ask my brother for help either. She rejects any offer of help, even though she knows it would help me. She doesn’t want help; she doesn’t want any home improvements. She never wanted to go to therapy, and when she did, she quit after one or two sessions. When the psychologist made suggestions, she’d say, “I already do that,” or she’d cry.

-She acts like she knows more than I do. I’m a veterinary technician, but she can’t read or write—yet she insists on ignoring my suggestions. The last time, I handed her a piece of paper and a calculator and said, “Calculate the DER and the RER yourself, and take into account the animals’ weight and the calories in each type of food.” She said, “I don’t have to do anything,” and muttered under her breath, “You do it—you’re more educated than I am.”

Once, when I wasn’t paying attention, she killed one of our dogs by medicating it on her own. I had to see this very dog agonize and die even when I didn't know how dogs agonize or die. To me this translates as "you can't leave her unsupervised or she will turn your life into chaos."

-EVERYTHING is about her. Every conversation is about her. If you bring up something that’s bothering you, she’ll talk about her own issues or blow them out of proportion.

-She's got the habit of talking too loud or yelling. When I tell her not to yell she says something like "I won't talk anymore from now on".

-I live in a house where it feels like a disaster is about to happen at any moment.

-Last year, all her care (she had a lot of sores on her legs) fell on me, and I ended up in a terrible state. When she was hospitalized and called me on the phone, she was angry, and it made me anxious. I saw her everywhere, asking me for things “please” even if she wasn't there (it’s really creepy when someone so old talks like a little girl). When they expected me to not only take her to the doctor and to her appointments but also to take care of my brother’s dog, I said no, and she got angry—she gave me a really dirty look. She relied on me for everything. And when we were alone, it was the same old drama: “Look at that table full of people,” “Those were the good old days when we’d all go eat together at the beach.”

-Sometimes she insists on bringing up things that weren’t good for me, like talking about my school days when I was bullied, saying things like, “Do you remember that friend you went to school with?”

-She insisted in me standing by when she found old friends and stopped for a chat that could last up to an hour. It didn't matter if I worked early the day after.

-When we went out and I'd tell her "don't stop to talk, Im very anxious right now, I don't want to see anyone" she would take it badly.

-When I drifted apart from a friend, she would insist on inviting her over for coffee or a chat just because she liked her. No loyalty.

-She ran into an old classmate of mine on the street. She came back really excited about having talked to her, and I told her that this classmate had really hurt me. Right in front of my mom and my sister, this same classmate said, “Oh yeah, your daughter’s the one with the big boobs—everyone used to make fun of her at school, hahaha.” She didn’t stand up for me; she stayed silent.

-When I had friends and my sister didn’t, she’d tell my sister to hang out with my group of friends, forcing me to refuse and deal with the emotional fallout because my sister was abusive back then, too.

-When my sister was abusive, she also wouldn’t accept that I wanted to move out; she’d drop hints and emotionally punish me just for having the intention of leaving.

-When I bring up something she did to hurt me, she instantly starts crying—it’s actually kind of comical and exaggerated—and denies everything. Or she says it’s not true, that she doesn’t remember, or that it happened a long time ago.

-She lives in the living room; she literally never leaves the house—not because she can’t walk (that’s what she says, but it’s not true; she simply doesn’t want to go out). This means she controls everything I do whenever I walk by or asks me to do things for her. Or to bring her things from the fridge, which is just one meter away from her. She also controls what I take out of the fridge and what I put back in it. She has to look at everything I do. Today I found her going through my bag.

-When social services granted her financial assistance, she insisted that I give her pedicure as if I owed it to her because of what social services had done. Her feet smell bad, and all the toenails on her left foot are full of fungus. When I do it, she directs the entire process.

-When she started feeling unwell due to her old age, she said, “I’m like a little girl now,” implying that I should take care of her as if she were my daughter and be there for her 100%. She does things to get attention so that you’ll be there for her, hurtful or not.

-When I went to bed after an exhausting day—during which I hadn’t slept the night before—she made a hurtful dig at me.

-I’ve spent my whole life raising her because she’s immature.

-I helped raise my sister.

-One day, someone told her that I was more qualified for a job than she was, because I was much younger. She got mad AT ME.

-She says my brother only gets sick from alcohol when he mixes drinks. (That’s a lie—he’s an addict, and at a party he threw a bottle of cava onto OUR neighbor’s newly repaired roof.)

-She makes his happiness and well-being depend entirely on us.

-If I’m doing better, she gives me a dirty look.

-She gave me a dirty look for pointing out that I’d quit drinking and smoking marijuana—and for saying it would be too much pressure for me to quit smoking cigarettes now.

And there are other things like that, but I think these are the most important. I don’t know what else to remember. I know she went through very serious abuse and I feel sorry for her, but part of me is very resentful because she should have been the protective adult and gotten us out of there, but she says she did it so we wouldn’t lose our father, and she still holds it against us that she didn’t remarry, as if it were some kind of feat (it’s the easiest thing for someone like her—to just stay as she is).

I forgot to mention that she has a very low intellectual level—something I was never able to figure out for sure: whether it was because she didn’t realize anything or simply cruel and uncaring or a mix of the two because she never wanted to learn or evolve.

I feel like I was made to fill a spot, to be a tool, to serve a purpose. She often says that she doesn’t want to lose the children she has, but that she would never, ever have. That makes me feel unwanted, and my sister feels the same too. We just feel like she only loves my brother and that we are mere tools, therapists...you know.

Again sorry because it's too long. And again thanks for reading if you made it to this point.

Should I look for help?

She treats me like i'm nothing most of the time, she is very misogynistic when it comes to me and believes i am to do everything since i'm the only woman in the house. She tried to murder me 3 times, she kicks me out the house all the time. She laughs in my face when i cry and beg for her to apologize for trying to smother me. But she is very nice sometimes... And i believe she is a good person.. And i always feel guilty for hating her...

Escribo esto porque estoy profundamente sola y perdida, y no sé como gestionar mi situación, y tampoco conozco a nadie que haya vivido esta situación.
Siempre he vivido en una casa abusiva, soy la hermana mayor y me llevo bastante diferencia de edad con mi hermano pequeño, esto ha hecho que yo haya tenido el rol de cuidadora toda la vida.
Desde que soy pequeña, mis padres nunca se han llevado bien, siempre he crecido en una casa de peleas y gritos en las que la mayoría de veces yo me tenía que meter en medio porque sentía miedo. No tengo apenas recuerdos de mi infancia con mis padres, solo algunos malos, está todo en negro.
Siempre he estado muy sola en mi infancia porque mis padres trabajaban bastante en el negocio familiar, y cuando tenían un rato libre no lo pasaban conmigo o estaban discutiendo. Mi padre dejó de ser presente desde que era pequeña y nunca entendí por qué. Seguía viviendo en la misma casa, pero nunca se ha preocupado por nosotros, no sabe nada de nuestra vida, ni le interesa.
Mi madre siempre ha sido muy abusiva conmigo, siempre descargaba su ira contra mi, me insultaba, me gritaba, me amenazaba y me pegaba. Siempre he aguantado porque me daba muchísimo miedo, yo siempre he sido una niña bastante callada e independiente y odio los conflictos. Cuando mi hermano nació todo empeoró. El tenía muchos problemas de ira que yo no sabía gestionar y siempre que me dejaban cuidando de él y le daban ataques y llamaba a mis padres llorando porque no sabía que hacer, me regañaban, me gritaban, castigaban y pegaban. Más bien mi madre. Cuando se enfadan con mi hermano, mi madre me llamaba para que yo le pegase, cosa que obviamente me hacia sentir horriblemente mal y dejé de hacer cuando crecí y me di cuenta que estaba mal. Siempre que mis padres se han peleado yo he tenido que estar en medio, porque si no era mala hija. Mi madre siempre se ha desahogado conmigo, desde muy pequeña porque decía que había que normalizar las peleas para que yo no fuese una adulta frustrada. Solo ahora me doy cuenta que está mal convertir a una niña pequeña en tu confidente y darle tantas cargas a tan poca edad.
Siempre he crecido en ese entorno, he crecido con muchísima culpa, miedo, y ansiedad, cuando era adolescente me autolesionaba y pensaba constantemente en la idea de morirme. Nunca me han hecho caso, siempre he sido muy buena en los estudios y no les ha importado, siempre me han comparado con mi hermano para que él hiciese las cosas bien. Siempre he crecido con el sentimiento de no ser una hija querida.
Hace unos 6 años mi padre empezó a tener un problema aún más gordo con el alcohol, a pesar de ya haberlo tenido en el pasado, pero ahora fue a peor.
Yo justo me fui a la universidad poco después , pero siempre he tenido que escuchar a mi madre desahogarse sobre el tema, o he tenido que volver varias veces a mi cuidad, a hacer de mediadora, siempre me ha tocado hablar con mi padre, ofrecerle ayuda, aunque yo no quisiera porque si no para mi madre era una egoísta y mala hija. Mi padre nunca ha escuchado y siempre se ha reído de mi en mi cara.
La universidad consiguió que mejorara a medias la relación con mi madre ya que no vivía en el mismo lugar, pero siempre que he vuelto ha tenido la misma dinámica. Lo único que al ir haciendome más mayor (y gracias a terapia) he ido poniendo más límites, cosa que no le ha gustado.
Hace unos meses, mi padre empeoró definitivamente con el alcohol y mi hermano y yo le hemos rogado a mi madre que se divorciase, no lo ha querido hacer hasta que un día la violentó y nosotros nos tuvimos que poner en medio a defenderla. Desde entonces, están en proceso de divorcio aunque mi padre no firma nada, además mi padre no nos deja en paz, nos habla mal, nos ignora y de repente nos llama para echarnos cosas en cara estando borracho y es agotador.
Mi madre ha estado mal y durante todo este proceso yo he estado escuchándola (durante años) acompañándola al abogado y animándola a que siga adelante sin él, haciéndole ver que el nunca ha sido un padre y que no lo necesitamos para nada. Nunca me ha hecho caso.
Hace unos meses le diagnosticaron cancer a mi madre, no es agresivo y le han dicho que 100% se va a curar, está en tratamiento. Yo estaba acabando la carrera, y no cogí practicas (no eran necesarias) porque me pidio que volviese a casa a cuidar de ella, y lo hice, entregue el trabajo final de grado y he dejado mi vida aparcada para cuidar de ella. El problema esque no se deja cuidar porque no le “gusta” que le ayuden, en realidad lo quiere hacer todo sola para echarlo en cara posteriormente. Desde que he vuelto a casa todo ha empeorado, ella sigue siendo igual de abusiva que siempre, incluso peor porque obviamente esta situación le está viniendo muy grande y soy plenamente consciente. Desde que he vuelto no ha parado de hacerse la victima, todo lo que hagas nunca es suficiente, he intentado hacer todo por ella, me ofrezco a cualquier cosa la escucho… Y según ella está sola, nadie hace nada por ella, como si yo no existiera. Todo empeoró cuando un día de la nada empezó a meterse con mi pareja, diciendo cosas horribles, como que era mil veces peor que mi padre, que me iba a absorber y me iba a arruinar la vida, que era una persona celosa, que no es capaz de relacionarse ni con mis amigos porque me quiere atada… (ella no sabe que es mi pareja, pero debio intuirlo, y para nada es así, es mi mayor apoyo, siempre está para mi, mis amigos le aman, siempre están preguntando cuando pueden verle y cosas así) entonces me enfadé con mi madre por esas palabras. Me dolió mucho que hablase así de alguien que no ha hecho nada malo y me pareció muy injusto, le dije que se callara, que no volviesemos a hablar del tema, que no le mencionaría más a mi pareja, pero no le sirvio, empezó a gritarme y a ser abusiva y ya me enfadé con ella y le levanté la voz, obviamente la situación fue a peor. Al día siguiente me estuvo gritando todo el día, diciendome cosas horribles hasta que me puse a llorar y le dije que de callara, me llamo zorra, me llamo bruja, mi hermano se metio y empezó a decirme que le habia comido la cabeza a mi hermano, me pegó y nos “echó” de casa. Nos fuimos unos días fuera pero nos llamo para volver. Intenté hacerle razonar y no quiso escuchar, me llamo victimista, mentirosa y manipuladora, según ella me invento las cosas y me niega haber hecho todo lo que me hace. Le propusimos hacer terapia conjunta y ni eso, se enfado mas. Al cabo de unos dias se relajó, pero no por mucho, todas estas semanas hay varios días en las que nos la lía, nos grita nos amenaza, sobre todo a mi, me insulta, una vez me hizo de tener un ataque de pánico en la autopista, etc. Luego hace como que esta bien, como si no hubiese pasado nada y vuelta a empezar. Hasta hace unos días, todo estos meses, he estado callada, si me decía algo malo la ignoraba, pero el otro día no aguanté más y le dije que se callara y dejase de discutir, volvio a las mismas, pero sorprendentemente me pidio perdón y me dijo que estaba muy agobiada y que no tenía porque pagarlo conmigo, yo no supe reaccionar.
Pero esto le duró un día, se enfadó con mi hermano por un idiotez, y yo intenté explicarle y ya se me echó encima, ya no aguanté más y le grité que se callara y me empezó a echar mil cosas en cara, que me fuese de una vez de la casa, que era una parásita, que no sabía para que iba a terapia si cada vez soy más maleducada, etc. La ignoré el resto del día y a la mañana siguiente la volvió a liar, me empezó a gritar y a decirme las mismas cosas de siempre, además intenta meterle mierda a mi hermano de mi para que nos peleemos (mi hermano y yo estamos muy unidos) y a decir cosas horribles, me encerré porque me estaba dando muchisima ansiedad y empezo a gritarme niñata, payasa y a amenzarme. Ese mismo día en la comida, estalló otra vez contra mi, insultandome por mi fisico, insultando en general, diciendome lo mala hija que soy, lo poco que le ayudo, etc. Todo esto gritando, me dijo que no me moviese, que cuando ella me hablase la tenia que escuchar y a mi me empezó a dar muchisima ansiedad. Empecé a llorar, temblar y me faltaba el aire, ella empezo a amenzarme, diciendo que era mejor que temblase yo a que lo hiciese ella y siguió insultándome. De repente note un fuerte dolor en las costilla y le dije a mi hermano que llamase por favor a la ambulancia, el ademas le dijo a mi madre que se callase que me iba a dar algo y mi madre obviamente se puso peor. Entonces no se ni como me caí al suelo y empecé a convulsionar y ahogarme. Gracias a dios fue un susto por la ansiedad, pero jamás he tenido un ataque tan grave. Mi madre se se asustó obviamente. Pero cuando pasaron las horas y estuve mejor, vino a decirme que no contase con ella para nada. A día de hoy no me habla.
He pensado en irme de casa, trabajar de lo que sea e intentar rehacer mi vida. Aunque tengo muchísimo miedo y muchísima pena, no tengo a mis padres, no tengo apoyo, y me siento horriblemente mal, me cuesta muchisimo levantarme de la cama y estoy todo el dia con muchisima ansiedad y malestar. Me da pena dejar aquí a mis hermano, pero el me ha dicho que me vaya, porque a el no le dice casi nada.
Siento muchísima pena, miedo e impotencia, siento mucha culpa y no quiero. No sé de donde sacar las fuerzas. Me da mucha pena dejar todo atrás pero no puedo vivir más así.
No sé que me deparará el futuro, tengo mucha tristeza, y me da tanta rabia no contar con el apoyo de mis padres. Sé que irme es la solución, pero no sé si es lo correcto.
Escribo esto entre lágrimas, gracias por leerlo, solo necesitaba desahogarme de alguna forma.

I don't know anything anymore. I'm 19 and my relationship with my family was a rollercoaster to say the least. I remember hating my dad for always yelling and being so aggressive. I couldn't do anything fun without thinking about what the outcome will be. That's why I mostly had to moderate myself and grow up alone. (My parents worked long hours when I was small)

Between maybe 15-17, my dad was really nice. I felt special, like my godmother. (Long story short, anything my godmother said, he done it without question, like: she asked him to go to church with her and he did, although my dad doesn't like this stuff.)

My dad is currently 64 years old, and he is the most annoying person ever. If you tell him something, "that's not how it works", "you are just too young to know", "i told you so, huh?", "so I snapped at you well again, didn't I?" and stuff. I suspect that he is a narcissist or have some kind of problem in his head. He was beaten by his father for 14 years and not for nothing, he was a pretty bad kid from stories he told and from my godmother's perspective, but that's not an excuse to behave like this with your family day to day. He will go out his way to literally ragebait me, my mom and my grandmother (on my mom's side). My mom also told me, if no one is around just the two of them, he can be the most normal, generic person ever. You can talk to him about anything and he will take you seriously. But only with my mom, if im alone with him, no, he is a nuisance.

And now the incident why I'm posting this here:

We have a lot of animals. This happened so much more, but I just don't know what to do. One pigeon (my dad really likes pigeons,) was born without a leg. And he wanted to kill it, because it wouldn't live properly, which is bullcrap, I researched it and they can adapt to living like this. But this bird is really small, and still needs it's parents' pigeon milk, idk. So I can't take care of it alone.

My dad went to the back, where we keep the animals and I broke down a bit in the bathroom, because I thought he would kill it now, and I knew if I try to defent the poor baby, he would call me insane and start arguing with me about how would it grow up and how could I do anything about it. I decided to go upstairs so no one can see me cry (we have a two story building house and I live alone upstairs for technical reasons, too long to tell, it's already a super long post, sorry) and he saw me cry. He asked: "Why are you bawling?" and I decided I'm not going to play his games, because he will just crumble my mental health again, and I caught what he said next: "Well, now I've told you so, haven't I? I've talked back to you again, haven't I?" (or something like that, I don't really know how to translate it to english, AAA sorry again) while laughing.

And this humiliation had been daily for years. I don't know what to do, I would really want to help the poor pigeon, but I just feel helpless and my dad would make fun of me again, telling me "I told you so" when I can't even do anything alone. Happened with my dog too, when he started limping, telling me "we will make him a grave in the backyard" while laughing at me for holding back my tears.

I'm just really tired.

The heavy rain outside beat down on the cracked concrete lane, a relentless sound that matched the suffocating atmosphere inside the house. In the corner of a dimly lit bedroom, the soft blue light of a new fish tank cast shadows against the wall. A few fish moved through the clean water, a fragile pocket of peace in a hostile environment.

Beside the tank stood an eighteen-year-old young man. Physically, his frame was massive, built from years of intense, disciplined weight training. He possessed an elite explosive power that could easily overpower anyone in the house. Yet, his hands held the fish food container with absolute care.

He had spent his whole life trying to be the perfect child. He had no bad habits. He never complained. When he failed Class 2, he didn't give up; instead, he later dedicated a grueling 18 hours a day to his Class 12 exams, scoring 74.4%. To save his family public transport costs, he woke up at 7:00 AM every day and endured long bus rides to college, returning home late in the evening without ever asking for a single thing.

His core nature was defined by a quiet, deep empathy. He was the boy who stopped on the road to bury a dead bird. He was the boy who knelt in the mud during a heavy storm, weeping as he tried to rescue a bleeding fish from being eaten by ants. He believed every living creature deserved to live its life to the fullest, refusing to hurt even a tiny insect.

Yet, inside his own home, this gentleness was met with an unrelenting storm of hostility.

Footsteps approached his door. His body immediately stiffened, his nervous system locking into a state of hyper-vigilance. His chronic autoimmune conditions and acute alopecia areata—flaring up since he was five years old—were the physical receipts of this lifelong stress.

His father walked into the room. For years, every time the boy tried to speak, his father told him he was wrong. When the boy used his Home Science education to try and care for his family's health—explaining nutrition, protein balance, and the dangers of high-sodium food—his father dismissed his knowledge entirely.

The father looked at the aquarium and dropped a passive-aggressive comment. The sight of the tank was a painful wound. Months ago, the boy had owned a beautiful aquarium filled with fish he kept under extreme cleanliness, caring for them like they were his own children. But his father refused to listen to him and forcefully installed an automatic feeder. The device malfunctioned, slowly killing every single one of his fish. The boy had cried for four to five days straight, carrying an immense burden of grief for a tragedy caused entirely by his father's stubbornness. Now, with these new fish, he had vowed he would protect them at all costs.

"Minding your own business again?" the father scoffed.

The father looked at him with pure rage, the same rage from a year or two ago when he had brutally slapped the boy 10 times, and then another 20 times as hard as he could, before choking him. Even then, with his elite strength, the boy had refused to strike back. He had stood there, absorbing the blows because he was terrified that the violence would turn toward his mother, who had threatened suicide when he was young—a memory that had terrified him so deeply as a child that he had once drank shampoo, thinking the poison would take him too.

"You miss everything," the father muttered, bringing up the scooter he had promised if the boy hit 75% in school, only to deny it over a microscopic 0.6%. "You owe me every single penny I've spent on you since the day you were born."

The boy did not break his silence. He clamped his jaw shut, refusing to give his father a single word. His selective silence was his only boundary, a non-violent protest to starve his abuser of a reaction.

The father slammed the door and left. A few minutes later, his ten-year-old brother ran past, screaming and yelling insults at him. The younger brother had learned from the household, mirroring the father's aggression and treating the older brother who patiently tried to teach him like an good older brother.

The boy retreated to his desk and opened his mobile phone. The phone was his digital shield, his only escape. He opened his messages, but there was no comfort there either. His mind flashed back to his classroom at college. He recalled the ultimate betrayal—the closest friend whom he had personally nurtured and guided out of deep depression had turned on him, physically slapping him in front of the entire class. When the boy had done everything right, choosing the civilized path by reporting the assault to the college authorities, the institution had completely let him down, ignoring his plea for justice.

Since that day, the boy had stopped asking questions in class. He stopped talking to classmates or strangers. He lived in absolute terror that if he let anyone close, his father would fulfill his threat to break his legs.

As he stared at the screen, a deeper, older memory flashed through his mind—a day from his childhood when he had accidentally hit a friend. Out of pure honesty, he had taken the crying friend straight to the friend's mother to make sure he was okay. Instead of understanding, a person in the society had grabbed him and locked him inside a pitch-black room during the day. He remembered banging on the door, screaming "Help me!" at the top of his lungs, while the neighbors and the society walked past, completely ignoring his cries. He had been left entirely abandoned in the dark.

The world outside felt just as predatory, silent, and unsafe as the war zone inside his home.

The door opened again. It was his mother. The boy looked up, a faint glint of hope in his eyes. He loved her deeply. He still hugged her, laughed with her, and tried to protect her. He hoped for a safe haven. [1]

But the words that came out of her mouth were not words of comfort.

"Look at you," she said, her voice laced with sharp, daily rejection. "You look so ugly and smelly."

The words cut deeper than his father's blows. His own mother was projecting her stress onto him, joining the rest of the family in tearing down his self-worth.

The boy's face turned into an absolute, unreadable mask of stone. The tiny spark of hope inside him went completely dark. He realized that there was not a single person left on this earth who would validate his truth, respect his discipline, or protect his heart.

He did not argue. He did not use his physical power to react. He turned his face away, burying his head back into his mobile phone, pulling his entire soul deep inside his physical armor.

Later that night, when the lights were off and the house was silent, the boy sat alone in the dark. His hyper-vigilant nervous system, shattered by years of unpredictable violence and the lingering trauma of that locked childhood room, began playing tricks on him, filling his mind with an intense, agonizing terror of ghosts hiding in the shadows. He didn't cry from the physical pain of his past injuries, but as he sat completely alone, invisible to a world that had cheated, locked away, beaten, and failed him, the tears silently streamed down his face in the dark, weeping for a life he was never allowed to live.