Hi. This gets really kinda heavy real fast and I sometimes wonder if my life is like a sitcom or something.
My dad got scammed recently and basically his mother, aunt and sister blamed me for it. So my grandaunt, grandmother and aunt. They said I had caused family politics and that it was my fault somehow that he got scammed. It was bad enough that we lost our house and car, and had to move to a rented flat. My late mom passed when my siblings and I was barely teens, and he got remarried to my toxic stepmother who would project her insecurities onto us. I was fine with her until she started to scream and cry in front of me and my siblings for really minor things like cleaning the house (yes. She has undiagnosed OCD and hoarding disorder) - so I had to step in to protect them. When my stepmother and dad failed to help my grandma with the chores (who was looking after us at the time), I just decided to help out. We had a three storey house, and she had convinced my dad to let go of the maid that was helping my grandmother after her old vintage plates were broken accidentally. Not only was she disrespectful to her mother in law and her own mother who enabled her, she also wasn’t exactly in the right frame of maturity either to look after a bunch of teens. Both my dad and stepmom focused on their own lives while I did my best to look after my siblings and the house. I want to emphasise I wasn’t perfect in doing so - I have an elder sibling with special needs and it used to be so difficult hearing her meltdown and throw tantrums in the house while I was doing my work. I used to wake up early To cook her breakfast and she would throw a tantrum at me occasionally and tell me she didn’t want to eat. Eventually my grandma left our house a few years ago to go for knee surgery and all duties were passed on to me…never felt so alone. I never felt so scared knowing I had to deal with the loss of another important figure’s presence in my life, my dad who barely listens and my stepmom who projected onto us, and dealing with a special needs older sibling while having to make sure my two other siblings were okay through all this. It felt like I lost two more people, my dad and grandmother. I had dropped out of JC a year prior because of the trauma, burnout and stress from being in IP, my fear of failure and also because I saw my grandma and siblings needed help. I took a degree in arts and it’s essentially kinda useless in making money in SG, but it made me a better person than I was before.
Moving on to the present, my really kinda toxic aunt who was helping my dad with the banks had actively tried to chase us out of the house during house viewing, shamed me indirectly in the family group chat, and rallied my cousins to confront me too. I’m grateful to her but she kept hanging the things she did for us over our heads…it didn’t help that over the years, she had mocked my family for the way we dress, the way we do things, the way we act. We weren’t perfect. But we do what we could do after my mom died. His entire family had to get involved and financially they gave us money too to cover for him. They also told me to look after my dad because he might commit suicide - not the first time: he tried to do it when my mom passed. Hahaha. They asked me why I couldn’t help more with my dad - because he refused to tell me anything or let me help him, and it was incredibly difficult to reach out to him when my stepmom was so abrasive and immature. My late mom also was a helicopter parent and it led to me just…being the way I am today. I feel guilt from once being so spoiled as a child, and now I feel even worse knowing I am a college dropout, and I should’ve just stuck to the school curriculum. I kind of severed so many connections because when I dropped out I felt so much shame I didn’t tell anyone except a few. I don’t know who I am, I don’t know why this is happening, I considered offing myself but could not because I didn’t want to leave my siblings behind. I don’t know why it had to happen to my siblings. I sometimes wish they weren’t born so they didn’t have to suffer through the toxicity of years of family drama. I see the effects of the family dynamics and trauma on them and my heart breaks. I don’t care that we really lost the house, or the car. I really just wanted a normal stable functioning family like others. I tried to be independent and take on more responsibilities to be seen as less dependent, but now I think I have undiagnosed OCD too. My grandma, grandaunt and my aunt and my stepmother gossip about me behind my back (Heard on phone calls, messages. It’s not hard to believe they are still doing this)…
I have a really complex relationship with my dad now. On one hand I’m resentful of him. His stubbornness and refusal to listen, his pride at being a medical professional led him down this hill. And on another I’m trying to forgive him. I’m doing this also out of fear that he would go and do really stupid things. I am so conflicted and it’s tearing me apart.
I don’t know where to go in life right now. I’m not trying to feel sorry for myself but like in less than a decade, I lost my mom, had to lose my dad metaphorically, had to lose myself defending my siblings, had to be seen as the villain in my family. I don’t have friends who I am able to open this up to without them telling me how I should feel or them trying to justify my dad’s actions. I didn’t tell anyone except two of my closest friends about the scam. My friends in college had apparently not liked my trauma dumping and talked behind my back previously, and actively do it sometimes in my presence because they think I’m slow.
I just hit and slap myself sometimes for being this weird college dropout, this imperfect thing. I’m just leaning on God right now. Sorry, this is really heavy. Thank you to whoever takes the time to read this jumbled message. God bless you.
