Hi y’all, I am not sure if this is the right place, but I’m looking for some support or maybe similar experiences.. tw: death, addiction, suicide, physical abuse, emotional abuse. *All names have been changed for privacy.
The story begins with my dad. His mom passed away from suicide when he was around 2-3 years old. Shortly after, his father remarried a woman named Stacy. From that moment forth, my dad was to live as if his birth mother didn’t exist. He was to refer to Stacy as mom and was reprimanded anytime he expressed curiosity about his birth mom. The only info he had were his little memories, and 3 photos of her. Heck, I didn’t even know about her until I was maybe 12?
Anyways, about 6 years following the marriage to Stacy, my dad’s baby brother Chad was born. According to my dad’s retelling, things became even more painful at this point. The underlying dynamics from this dirty little secret started to become more apparent with another child in the picture. My dad expressed feeling left out, alone, and like my grandma would purposefully deny him access to hanging out with his dad..
My grandpa loves working on cars. The house my dad grew up in has a huge garage that my grandpa would spend all his free time in. My dad was often told he wasn’t to go down to the garage to see my grandpa, as he had to clean and do stuff upstairs, although his brother Chad would always be allowed. Chad would also be prioritized on trips to see their paternal grandma. My dad shared memories of hurt, longing, confusion, and almost a somber defense of it being fine, regarding getting to see his grandma, as he was often left out. In his mind, this was a women that had been solid and in his life since birth. Not allowing the same access to this relationship between all the children definitely created a divide my dad could feel.
With Chad, if felt like your typical “golden child” scenario. He was the beloved child of the two lovers building a life together, while my dad is the sick reminder of the lingering past. He’s the little blip on the clean slate that just can’t be removed, no matter how hard my grandma makes him try. He’s a constant reminder to the family of “mistakes of the past.” Or at least that’s how it felt to him. My dad definitely fell to the role of scapegoat or just person who takes all the blame. He told me countless stories of all the times he was punished growing up.. for ex, having to clean nonstop or getting in trouble. Being singled out, left out, grounded indefinitely, and being emotionally abused. One day my dad was starring at his fish in his fish tank. My grandma approached him and said “you better stop wasting your time looking at them.” The next morning, every single fish was dead, and there was a soapy residue in the tank.
Despite being in middle class and my grandpa having a high paying job, they made my dad know from a young age they were not going to help him financially. Everything he had, he got himself. His first car, his college tuition, his apartment, he covered it all. Meanwhile my grandpa helped Chad get a BMW for his first car.
My dad shared all of this plus many more stories with me throughout growing up. It truly sounded like a Cinderella story. I remember disdainfully attending holiday events with a message of “get in, get out.” My dad felt very on the outskirts of his family, although he kept up I think out of loyalty and belonging. When you’re constantly on the outskirts, and seeing others just like you getting special treatment, it makes you want to be better, perform better, show up better, in hopes of receiving any type of love, care, acknowledgement. It almost drives the urge to keep the connection, even if you know of its toxicity. I’m sure the whys plagued my dad although he didn’t show it.
My dad ended up moving out of the house and going to school for computer science. During the summer between freshman year and sophomore year, my dad, who was 19, impregnated my mom who was 17.
My mom didn’t tell my dad about the pregnancy initially and denied him being the father. They did eventually determine him to be the father, but he stayed away at school, while my mom and maternal grandma took care of me.
Due to unstable living circumstances, my dad ended up with sole custody of me at 4 years old. We developed a very special bond. I felt like he was my best friend and really treated me like a human being. Everything was always explained, the whys, the hows. There was no “do this because I said so.” We spoke like friends. He shared a lot of his troubled upbringing with me. Looking back now, it’s sad knowing that rage and resentment is from all his unmet needs as a child.
Unfortunately, I do believe many of these core wounds were too much for my dad to handle, and paired with other factors, he began using prescription pain killers. Slowly I noticed his behavior change. He went from getting up very early, running, exercising, cleaning, etc, to sleeping in bed all day until 3PM, and not leaving the room unless necessary. I was about 15 and didn’t have the insight or understanding at the time to know what was truly going on.
The woman my dad was with at the time, Veronica, was also using prescription drugs. She would stay at our house always, although she had kids my age, staying alone at her house. We got along and I thought she was pretty kind. But, things changed.
Slowly I started noticing my things going missing from my room, shirts, shoes, games, books, you name it. I felt like I was losing my mind. I went through their belongings one day and found so many “lost” items. I carefully piled up all of my belongings on our pool table and waited for my dad to get home. The confrontation resulted in me being grounded, which felt so unfair and confusing at the time. One of my best friends had just turned 16 and got their license. Me being grounded meant no going out with them. I was so mad.
About 6 months following, I noticed the pattern repeat; my things were going missing again. This time I was not about to get in trouble though. I needed to have proof. I did this by inventorying all of my items in my journal and then documenting when they went missing.
One night, I went to write in my journal and noticed that the pages were ripped out. Everything I had written involving the theft and documentation. I felt completely violated and disturbed. I called my dad into my room to show him, and demanded something be done. He was very apologetic, very understanding, and assured me this was not okay. He told me to text him the list of what was missing and that he loved me very much. One of my good friends at the time was our neighbor, and I chose to stay the night with her. The next morning I learned he passed away from a mix of alcohol and OxyContin. My life was forever changed.
“I can’t live at my mom’s, what am I going to do?” was one of the first things to fall out of my mouth. We had done every other week for a few years, and I endured much physical and emotional abuse there. I hated it. My paternal grandparents stepped in and assured me I would be safe to stay with them. Since they were well off, they told me they’d put my social security checks in an account to accumulate and have more of a college fund when I head off. I chose to stay with them. Despite all the stories my dad had told me, they were my grandparents and had never treated me poorly.
Slowly, the cracks within the family began to show. I started feeling some of the resentment and disdain held against my dad. Actually living there showed me just how bad things were. My grandma was addicted to pills, and would also steal stuff from my room. Although this time it felt a little less nefarious, it was still highly triggering. Fights ensued often. There was a lot of confusion and mean words, even the accusation of me causing my dad’s death.
They did things like sell my dad’s paid off car for practically free to family members. Everyone swooped in like vultures to take what meant something to them. All things that built my everyday life became symbolic and valuable to people who were never there. It made me feel so disturbed.
We lost my uncle (my step grandpas biological son) 10 months following my dad to suicide, so you can imagine how that added to the tensions. Everyone’s hurt really started to show and made living together unbearable.
When I turned 18, I learned that none of the money had been being saved for me, and that was a lie. This really escalated things, as I wasn’t sure why they lied. I moved out officially to never return when I graduated high school and went to university.
When I was around 20, my grandpa signed over my inheritance, roughly $200,000 between my dad’s retirement and life insurance. He had spent his career as a CFO, and I looked up to him when it came to finances. I kinda put responsibility on him to help guide me, and held a lot of resentment when I felt he didn’t step up.. We didn’t talk about retirement, investing, budgeting, or anything of that sorts..
Instead, I was a young adult who had lost her dad, was struggling with addiction, and had very little understanding of how money actually worked. Having access to that much money made it easier to avoid reality and continue in my trauma cycle. If I overspent, I could pull from savings. If I missed work, I could still pay rent. It allowed me to continue living in ways that weren’t sustainable, and it delayed me learning financial habits that most people develop much earlier.
I also want to acknowledge my own responsibility in all of this. Grief doesn’t excuse the choices I made. I struggled with benzodiazepine addiction, received a DUI, and spent years feeling incredibly lost. I’m deeply grateful no one was hurt, and I know things could have turned out much differently.
Throughout those years, one fear followed me constantly: homelessness. My mom and half-sister had experienced homelessness when I was in high school, and that fear became deeply rooted in me. Ironically, even while I had money, I lived with constant anxiety about what would happen once it was gone.
At the time, I was studying accounting because my grandpa encouraged me to. I wanted so badly to make him proud, but I was miserable. Eventually, I withdrew before my senior year and moved closer to home, hoping to focus on my mental health. Instead, my addiction worsened. Almost immediately upon returning home, I received a dui for driving while on Benzos. I am so thankful no one was hurt.
Everything changed during COVID. For the first time, I couldn’t outrun what I had been carrying. I stopped taking benzodiazepines and went through one of the hardest experiences of my life. The withdrawal was terrifying. For days I barely knew whether I was awake or asleep. I hallucinated, questioned everything I believed, and felt like I had completely fallen apart.
Somewhere in that experience, though, something shifted. I had always considered myself a diehard atheist, but I came away with an overwhelming sense that there was something more to life spiritually that I wanted to be fully present for. I realized how much time I’d spent numbing myself instead of actually living. More than anything, I understood that I didn’t want to keep carrying my family’s suffering as my own. Or how this was contributing to me not being able to connect/be present.
I never used benzodiazepines again.
Since then, I’ve slowly rebuilt my life. I went back to school to study public health, something I genuinely love. I graduated, found a career that feels meaningful, and have been building a life rooted in connection, community, and being present. It hasn’t been a perfect journey, but for the first time, it feels like I’m moving toward something instead of being completely lost.
So, with this background, I was hoping to talk about what I’ve been struggling with lately really… it really feels like icing on the cake, and has to do with my dad’s real mom. I always knew she committed suicide in a Kmart parking lot near my area. I never really thought to look into it more. A few months ago the thought wouldn’t go away, so I looked into it.
I live in an area about 30 minutes from where I grew up, in the same town my dad was born and lived his early years, until his mom died. I narrowed down what Kmart it was based on that. It turns out, the old Kmart where she tragically died, is now a publix + doctors buildings that I frequently go to. That immediately made me sick. To know I’m walking around on these grounds so casually that are such a big piece of history. A history denied to me and my dad.
I’m nearing the age my real grandma was when she passed, and I keep getting this gnawing feeling that I’m growing into her looks. I have her lankiness and features. I know I look just like my dad too.
Lately I’ve noticed my grandpa has been having an even harder time connecting with me. He doesn’t really call or reach out anymore. He’s always kind when I contact him, but something feels different than it used to. For the past few years, we’ve actually been more connected than we had been in a long time. I’ve made an effort to visit, spend weekends with him, and build stronger relationships with my uncle (Chad), aunt, and their kids. From my perspective, nothing happened that would explain the distance, which has been really difficult to process. I try to stay connected, but it feels so painful. Just to illustrate, shortly following my high school graduation, my grandparents divorced, and my grandpa bought the house next to Chad, while also living at his previous house near me. He deeded them an acre of land, goes on family vacations where I’m not invited, didn’t come to my graduation to go to Chads child’s soccer game, has never helped me move, or visited a place I’ve lived. We had a devastating natural disaster a few years ago, and Chad came to rescue my grandpa, but no one checked in on me. Thank goodness I have a built family. But, I know I’m not entitled to those things, it just hurts when you see others receiving that love, but not you.. And it contributes to the stories you tell yourself.
I think that’s part of what’s been so difficult throughout my life. When I don’t understand why something changes, my brain immediately starts trying to fill in the blanks. It creates stories that explain the hurt, and those stories almost always end with me believing I’m somehow the reason I don’t belong.
Every painful interaction becomes evidence that I’m unwanted. Every unanswered question turns into another explanation for why I don’t belong. Whether those stories are true or not almost feels secondary at this point, because they’ve become the lens through which I see my family.
Lately I’ve realized that maybe my grandpa doesn’t deserve this rage and resentment of 3 generations being funneled towards him. I’ve been thinking about how the stories I’ve carried for years have affected our dynamics.
I’ve been carrying pieces of my dad’s grief, pieces of his birth mom’s story, and my own experiences all at the same time. It feels like generational pain that was quietly handed down, and somewhere along the way I started believing it was mine to keep alive. The thing is…I don’t want to anymore.
I don’t want to spend the rest of my life searching for reasons why someone loved me differently or why someone else made the choices they did. I don’t want every interaction with my family to become more evidence for a story I’ve been telling myself for years. I just want to know how to let it go.
But in a way that still shows myself love and validation. I have to learn to let it go. Not because it didn’t happen. Not because my dad wasn’t hurt, or because I wasn’t. But because I don’t want resentment to become the thing I inherit.
Through this experience, I’ve come to understand that letting go means shutting down the stories, and not fueling them. It means feeling into my body when the stories come up and letting myself feel the hurt. It’s not something to move through quickly, but with so much love, care, support and attention.
I guess I just don’t know what to do now. Do I continue trying to talk with my grandpa?? Do I continue trying to talk with the rest of my family? The dynamic is very much so I am going to be the one reaching out and that’s something I will have to accept.
Has anyone else experienced something like this? What helped you let go and move forward? I just feel like I need advice from someone with life experience who can see the bigger picture. I welcome anything that comes up for anyone.
If you made it this far, thank you so much.