I have no reliable parents

Ever since young, I don’t get along with my father. He is easily angry and would scold me for every little things I did (e.g. talking to him when he is playing a game which may cause him to lose his game). Although he never actually physically hit me, he makes me scared to hang around him. As I am older, I don’t talk to him much out of fear of getting yelled at (which still happens from time yo time) and I feel really uncomfortable when he tries to hug me. Due to many things that happened in my childhood, I stay away from him on weekdays and only with him on the weekends. When I come back, I’d find that he would do disgusting things like sleeping on my bed, leaving random tissue papers which may be unclean around my bed, and more. When confronted, he would either joke about it or get angry and scold me. I cannot confide him regarding friendship issues or any other issues either because he would just downplay it by going “Why are you even sad? It doesn’t even matter.”, etc. He also criticises my grades a lot but refuses to help me despite being educated in the topic as he says.

Now, moving onto my mum who I am more close with. I love my mum and I can talk freely to my mum about most things, but she also causes me a lot of stress. She has a very low self esteem and often apologises for everything. “I’m sorry I’m such a bad mother”, “I didn’t have friends either when I was young so you must’ve gotten that from me, sorry”, “It’s my fault…”, and more. You can bet that whenever we have disagreements and I try to confront her, the first thing she says is that she is a bad mother which makes me feel bad for even feeling anything. She also gets bullied (?) by my father a lot, they used to quarrel but now she keeps quiet and takes it while he scolds/yells at her. She often vent to me about my father and her parents (my grandparents), every single disagreement they have, etc. I used to think that it was good as it makes us closer and be proud that she trusts me enough to tell me her story. However, I find that I am having to carry the stress and burden of thinking about what to do between her and my father. Whenever I talk to her, I also have to think about how she’d feel etc.

Both sides of my grandparents are still alive, but neither of them are helpful in any way. I don’t know what to do, this is impacting the way I communicate with my friends alongside my grades in school and more. I don’t have anyone to talk to about this either because all my family member isn’t available and helpful and I don’t think all of this is appropriate to dump onto my friends.

To anyone who read until here, thank you

Hey, what you are going through sounds genuinely exhausting… It makes sense that it is affecting other parts of your life like your freindship and school… With your dad, the emotional unpredictability and boundary violations sounds very destabilising… It’s understandable that you are keeping your distance as a way to protect yourself… With your mum, when you need to take on the emotional support role for her, you are carrying weight that isn’t yours to carry… This can weigh you down over time… With both of these happening at the same time, you have had very little space to be a kid without having to navigate adult dynamics… That’s a lot… I hear that you might not want to “dump” this on your friends, but having at least one person to talk to and share what’s going on can matter more that you’d expect… You could start by reaching out to your school counsellor if there is one available at your school… They would be able to give you the space where you don’t need to manage anyone else’s feelings… Please also reach out to us at any time if you need someone to talk to… You can call us at 1771, or text us at 6669 1771… You have a lot of self-awareness about your situation, even if it doesn’t feel like it is enough… Do take care…