I’m a 50 year old female who has never really lived and probably never will.
Look, I know I should take responsibility for my mistakes and failings but I feel trapped. It’s like I’m in a prison and there is only one way I’m getting out and that’s death.
It all started when I was 6, that’s when my step-father started molesting me. When I was 7 I told my mother what he was doing, that was the day she started beating me. When I was 12 he wanted to do more than fondle me and pleasure himself, when I said no he got into a mood and was angry with everyone. My mom asked what was wrong and I told him (btw she did nothing to stop him and never confronted him), she beat me until I agreed to do whatever he wanted.
That started the cycle, me trying to keep the peace making everyone else happy by sacrifing myself. Fast forward into my late teen years and that’s when I started eating myself to death. Call it comfort food or eaten nag my feeling or whatever, but food was is my drug of choice. Figured if I’m fat nobody would ever love me and guess that’s true.
I’m 50 and still live with the man who molested me and the woman who allowed him to. I stayed even when I had a great job and was making enough money to leave. Why? Self sabotage. As soon as anything was going well for myself, I’d mess it up and get fired or just change jobs. In the meantime I just kept getting fatter.
Now it’s all caught up with me…see I never put any money aside. I’d spend it as fast as I made it trying to buy people’s approval. My parents, brother niece and nephews, co-workers who have been my only friends in adult life until I change jobs. I ran up credit cards which ch was fine when I had the money to pay them, but what happened when there is no money. When I can no longer work because of health reasons caused by weight?
All those years I financially help my parents now I’m living off them. My choice is live on the street or be dependent on them. I have horrible credit, no “real friends”, very little family and no financial means to be ake care of myself. I filed for disability 2 years ago and was denied. Weighing nearly 409lbs, having high blood pressure, diabetes, a bad heart valve, chronic asthma and bronchitis as well as needed both knees and 1 hip replaced along with clinical depression was not reason enough to need assistance. I also do not qualify for any kind of assistance or healthcare. So I have all of these health issues and cannot see a doctor. I screwed up my life.
There is no way out without living on street or just die. My mother and I found fight constantly and she plays my step-dad like a fiddle. Who would of ever thought that of those two toxic relationships the one I have with him is the healthiest and best of the two?? She is a diagnosed as bi-polar with narcissistic tendencies. Tonight she had one of her fits, because my brother has the audacity to want a relationship with his 18 year old son. My mother did everything she could to undermine his relationship until my nephew was 14, that’s when my ex-sister in law took both kids away from all of us and left the state. 2 days ago they knocked on our door after 4 years, we should all be happy right now but my mother wants my nephew all to herself. Otherwise he’s not welcome in her house and my step-father is taking her side. We have all been miserable since we lost both kids and now we have another chance and they’re ruining everything. So she hits me during one of her tantrums and I push her down into the sofa using the palm of my hand on top of her head. Don’t like being hit or have things thrown at me and I’m told that she can hit me and I can’t defend myself. I’m also threatened to be thrown onto the street, reminded that I’m a horrible daughter and worthless human being. They pay my car insurance right now, so I’m told when I move out I cannot take my car which I paid for. I can only take what I can carry, although I paid for all my clothes, etc… And then I’m told not to leave or they’ll call the police and tell them I hit my mother, which I didn’t…she hit me and I pushed her down to defend myself.
Suicide sounds like a way out of this vicious cycle. Because the only difference between tonight’s madness and any other night is the topic. This happens almost every night and has for as long as I can remember. And still when I could have moved out I didn’t and I don’t know why. Maybe I’m one of those codependent personalities or don’t want to be happy or as nuts as they are or the most likely all of the above. I have had horrible things done to me, but the worst is what I’ve done to myself by putting me in a situation where they again hold all the cards. And yeah..I’m feeling pretty worthless not working, I feel horrible that I never married or had kids of my own. I hate that I stayed here, that I chose to stay despite knowing it wasn’t healthy. It was what I have always known and I don’t know how to live outside of type s nightmare.
I’ve tried committing suicide several times before obviously with no success. The first attemp was at 17, then at 19 again at 22 and 23. And then at 29 several more half ass attempts in my 30s and 40s, I guess I’m not all that serious about it and yet I want it to end. All the pain and feelings of worthlessness and failure. I want the fighting to end. I don’t want to live my life in a constant war zone anymore. I won’t leave so what do I do?
I wash I could explain why I choose to stay in this prison vs. just leaving either by walking out the door or by being carried out in a body bag but I chose to stay until I can’t and I know when I finally leave, I will not be walking out, I will be being carried. God help me.
5 comments
I am relating to this. Right now I don’t know what constructive thing to say other than that.
This might be the closest situation to my own on this site and I’ve been on this site for a couple years. Yet I am only 24, I’ve been trying to kill myself since 12, but Aimed for 18 as a healthy age to finally commit (12 is just TOO young, right? Well I wish I would have then..) like you now at 50 with your first attempt at 17, nothing ever improves. Same here: “We will call the police if you: TRY TO LEAVE AN ABUSIVE HOUSEHOLD” “You can’t leave with the car because WE PAY ON IT.” A lot like domestic violence. I am in the same predicament, live with abusers or run away – I always think I’d just suck it up and run away, I’ve been training myself to walk long distances i always think I would leave the state and go somewhere warm so I can survive in the forest or something. Complete isolation is the only life I can handle any more, I have an incredible distaste for mankind. It also doesn’t help that I’m a lesbian but everyone around me are married men and women and all I ever see are heterosexuals and their children. Never the lifestyle I would choose so rather disturbing at the rate they are going. I’ve been dreaming of leaving and living in the car for 5-6 years. It’s all I think about. They took the car away. The car would help me tremendously but they took it. Because you are their daughter it’s like they act like they own you.
I’ve come up with a few ideas: I do not get on well with the courts and I have been framed with an extensive criminal background, all of which involving alcohol and marijuana and driving (because I have no real safe space to use and they – barely – get me through the day and the only thing I’ve found to ease my suicidal feelings) but whether I commit or not file to seperate myself from the family – not claiming abuse or anything just to gain independence (I guess, overcontrolling) – disown myself from the family and with that.. just because some of the things they have done to me
2. File to Change my name, my name I see now with a negative connotation, like a reminder of the identity they’ve stuck on me, when I’ve always just wanted to be my own person.
I do not especially know how to do these things but if I am given the ability to drive again look into getting to the court house. I won’t tell the whole sh*t to my story
My sexual abuse was no where near as bad as your own, but when I was around that age my father was an alcoholic, there would be some nights where I would experience lying in beds with the sounds of humans f*cking blaring out of his computer speakers – shit hit the fan – my father was a porn addict. This happened way too often and went on until I was about 16. Probably 8-16. It seemed like all he ever did. I began to grow frightful of my father and have suicidal thoughts thinking I had to get away from them. He never touched me but I’d lay in bed and know there was a strange man in the room next to me. It’d be 2 maybe 3 in the morning and woman would be being f*cked and screaming a large amount of times and the sounds would make their way through my wall. You’d feel so dirty and rotten and like you just want to disappear. When I was maybe 9, you’d get up to play a game on the computer and in the history bar there’d be every porn site known to man, probably 50 sites. New ones each morning. He then learnt how to visit control panel and delete his searches at the end of each session. When I was around 14, I stayed home from school one day as sick as I’d ever been throwing up any glass of water I drank and as requested by my mother, I lie on the couch downstairs, I wake up from a nap and what do you know, it’s 1 pm and the porn has already began “ooohhhh yeaaahhhhh” I thought he saved it for each disturbing rotten night. I never lie on the downstairs couch again when I am ill and throwing up. He got a pair of headphones when I was 11, and when I’d work on school projects on the computer on the other side of the road you could still hear the woman being f*cked come through the headphones. If you’d go up and ask him a question: “will you take me to the gas station?” For example. You’d see the reflection of porn in his glasses, you wouldn’t dare go behind the desk. I then moved to a room that wasn’t directly beside his desk, but a floor above, you could still hear it and on those disturbing nights, I would move into the living room down the hall with the large glass doors and sleep on the couch with the music channel going. The worms ate his brain.
I was also denied disability. I don’t have one truly but I have a diagnosis (label) it was a last attempt effort at not having to commit suicide, I thought I could afford to live on street if I could get disability and then I wouldn’t lose what was left of my soul.
I like how you say “just die”
That’s how I think, better to just die than live in such pain and misery and especially the abuse is real insane. Best I can do is distance myself. My preferred method and what I was supposed to do when I turned 18 is shotgun to head.
Better to just die than live a terrible life you don’t want.
It just has gotten worse since 18 to be honest, 18 was probably my best year and better to leave it before more abuse
I thought once I turned 18, I’d get out broke or not but it seems I am still here…. was the only hope I had to get out.. the only place I “got out” to – at their call – the mental hospital and jail………… what a terrible end to a terrible start in life
Bless your heart for being this strong, kahann.
I feel super bad for you. It’s crazy that someone can get away with screwing up their stepdaughter’s psyche like that.
I know you probably don’t want advice, but I would focus 100% on your health. That should pretty much be all that matters to you. You’re a woman, and women seem somehow more resilient than men, so there’s some hope in that.
I think you can change. You don’t have to do it all at once. You can do it slowly, ever so slowly. It’ll probably take a long time, but if you start to eat the stuff we evolved to eat over hundreds of thousands of years, i.e. mostly unprocessed foods, and you move about a bit, you’re bound to get results.
You know, coming to this as an outsider, all one cares about is you having a life NOW. The past is too late to change, tragically. But you can still have a life now.
Hugs