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December 5, 2022

There has been a deep sense of shame that I have been struggling with for a few months at this point, and for the longest time I could not understand why. Tonight, as I'm sitting in one of my Labor and Employment Law courses, I realized where this shame when stemming from.

When I was a child, my mother decided to open up a dance studio. My sister and I were enrolled in dance at a local studio and my mother had taken dance classes when she was young, so, being the "entrepreneur" she is, she decided to open a dance studio, claiming that she did it for me and my sister, but in retrospect, its pretty obvious she did it for herself.

Over the years the studio became relatively successful. It ended up having over a hundred students and we were becoming pretty successful in the local competition circuit. By the time I began high school, my entire life revolved around this studio. All of my friends were people that I danced with. My mother would pull me out of school to rehearse or attend competitions and it was basically understood that my future would be to take over the studio once I graduated high school. At the time, I think part of me wanted that. However, I also think that I would have done anything possible to please my mother and was so blinded by that that I did not even know what I truly wanted.

So, fast forward to my senior year of high school. I was 17 years old, barely passing most of my classes, and had no intention of going to college. By this point my mother had completely lost interest in the dance studio. She stopped showing up and basically delegated all the dance classes to me and some of her employees to teach. The studio was basically falling apart and it was clear that it was just a ticking time bomb, and thats true--it was.

I don't even remember exactly what happened, to be honest. There are so many things that my parents lied to me about when I was growing up that even to this day I have a hard time deciphering what is true and what is not true. What I do know is, that one day, the entire competition team left the studio, as well as all of the teachers. Some how it had come out that my mother had not been paying her employers and that she had been embezzling the money that parents had been paying for competition entry fees. I don't know where that money went or what was done with it, but what I do know is that my mother and my father were both dealing with substance abuse during this time and had stolen money from me before, so this was unfortunately unsurprising. The difference this time, however, was that this time it was not just me and my siblings who were getting hurt, it was innocent people, many of whom were my friends or my friends parents and that makes me feel sick to this day.

Looking back, its been over 8 years and I still feel deeply upset and guilty about everything that happened. Logically, I know that there was nothing I could have done to prevent this from happening, and I know that it was not my fault, but at the same time, I still feel responsible. My parents have never apologized to anyone who was harmed by the studio and to this day my mother still says that she was the victim in this case. I have so much shame and guilt surrounding this situation because I do not understand how people I am related to could cause so much unnecessary pain. I wish they would at least take responsibility for their actions and offer an apology.

Connecting this back to my course that I'm taking, I can't help but sit in these classes and feel like a complete fraud. We're learning about Employment Law and how to defend the rights of workers but I'm related to someone who violated these very laws. I feel like I'm going to be found out, and its not something I'm very proud of.

Wow, I am truly overwhelmed by the amount of support and care you all have given me. It truly means a lot to me. Hearing all of your experiences helps me feel less alone in this and I think that that is one of the most important things for me right now, so thank you all for sharing your thoughts and your experiences.

Regarding my sister, after thinking a little more about our upbringing, I can definitely see how we could have had two much different experiences even while living in the same household. But the interesting thing is that we have always been able to bond over our poor relationship with our mother. I specifically remember a time when we were around 11 years old when we used to talk about how we would never let each other become like her, yet I feel like I kind of let her down in that aspect because sometimes she does act like my mother, but I just don't know how to tell her that without hurting her feelings. Its all very confusing and complicated and I appreciate all of your viewpoints so much!

November 29, 2022

Today was relatively uneventful, yet I've still been in some sort of funk that I've been attempting to dig myself out of for the entire day. I'm fairly certain that the trigger might have been a conversation I had last night. I was eating dinner with J and her family--which consists of her son V (who's a year younger than me), her husband T, her daughter F (she's a teenager), and her two young sons. The day before, my twin sister, A, came over to discuss potentially getting an apartment together. We're 25 years old, turning 26 in less than a month, and both finishing up Grad School. In September, I began my career (I work in a Public Administration position) and have been looking for housing for the past two months as I've been staying with J and her family for the past several months and don't want to continue to impose on them. I do pay rent and help out around the house, but I do feel bad that I'm always around and not giving them space to just be around each other as a family.

My sister and I have a complicated relationship. As twins, there is always a certain level of comparison that comes up, especially when you're identical. Growing up, my sister and I were compared in everything we did. We competed against each other in dance competitions and beauty pageants and I was always deemed as the "uglier" twin or as the dumb twin. It turns out I was never actually dumb, I just had severe undiagnosed ADHD until I totaled my fourth car when I was 22 years old and decided to finally take myself to get tested and put on medication. Now, I'm a Grad Student with a 4.0 GPA. But even still, I struggle with never feeling smart enough or pretty enough or just enough in general and I think this definitely stems from growing up like this.

My sister and I have tried to repair our relationship as we've gotten older. We did not go to the same colleges nor did we seek out degrees in the same field so there should be no comparison, but, of course there always is. My mother loves to talk about how pretty my sister is and never bothers to compliment me. As we've grown up, I've noticed our personalities have become more and more different. She's very assertive and can occasionally be very vain and even mean. I'm a people pleaser through and through. I want to make everyone else happy even if that comes at the expense of myself. So, when she came over to J's house to discuss moving in together, I was nervous. She's really the only person from my immediate family whom I have consistent contact with anymore, besides my grandparents, and I want this relationship to last so badly. I also desperately need a roommate--rent is so expensive and there is absolutely no way I can afford it on my own.

Our meeting went about as well as could be expected. She brought up how she wants her boyfriend to move in with us and when I tried to say that that would mean we would split rent and utilities 3 ways, she became defensive, claiming that that is not fair and her and her boyfriend should split HER portion of the rent only. Of course, I caved and agreed. We looked at apartments and she left after about 2 hours because she had a tattoo appointment. The next day at dinner, J's son, V, asked me how my meeting with my sister went and I explained what had happened. J has been trying to get me to be more assertive and develop more boundaries with my family and explained to her son that I had caved, and she's absolutely right, I had caved. J and her husband T pointed out that I was being manipulated and that my sister was taking advantage of me and that made my heart sink because I think they're probably right. My sister has been manipulative before. I've had issues with her lying to me and stealing things from my room back when I lived with my parents but I have always brushed it off because I want this relationship so badly. Having a twin is like having a built-in best friend. Its such a unique opportunity because there is no one else in the world who has had a life almost exactly like mine. We have been together for 25 years and losing that relationship would be devastating to me. It would be like losing a part of myself, like losing a part of my identity.

As I've been reflecting on this situation, I find myself coming to the same question: Why? why should I keep putting up boundaries and losing the only people I've ever known? Is it really worth it? I can't help but think that I am being slightly overdramatic about this entire situation and that everything could be solved if I just decided to reach out to my parents and apologize. I am so tired of losing people. I don't want to stand up for myself because I truly just don't understand the point. Why should I continue to cause conflict among my FOO when I could just deal with it? After all, I dealt with it for 25 years I'm sure I could deal with it for a few more. This has been something that I have struggled with immensely because I am so exhausted. Sometimes, I wish I could hit the rewind button and make things go back to normal, or whatever normal was before everything happened. I wish I could just make all the conflict and hurt go away, but I know I cannot and that is the hardest part.

Papa Coco,

Thank you so much for your heartfelt response, I appreciate it so much. Sometimes it is hard to see my parents as bullies as I have been taught for a long time that everything is always my fault, so it is super validating to read that from someone who only knows a little bit of the story. Thank you again for your kind words 

This will probably be a thread with more than one letter. I have consistently found myself writing these letters to my mother and I intend to post them here. This first letter was written on November 1, 2022.

To the woman who made me,

Yesterday, you sent me an email. You told me you had respected my request for boundaries but today you just HAD to email me to tell you how much you love me unconditionally. On the surface, this might seem like a nice email. You might seem like an anguished mother pleading with her stubborn and uncaring daughter to please contact her, and the worst part is, there's part of me that wants to believe you. Part of me wants to unblock you on every platform and crawl back to your house like a small child. I'd apologize for causing "drama," and you'd accept my apology without acknowledgement of the hurt you had caused me. You won't apology for all the sleepless nights or for the shame you inflicted on me for never being enough. You won't apologize for telling me that you wished I was as pretty as my sister and you won't apologize for ruining the only place I ever felt safe.

Now, I spend my time looking in the rearview mirror, staring at the backs of green SUVs until I can be certain its not yours. I avoid the city I grew up in and my grandparent's house because the "What Ifs" are enough to make my heart pound in my chest and my hands start to shake and the blood rush to my face. Did you know that just seeing a message from you pop up on my phone is enough to ruin my entire day? Do you even care? Do you care that I spend each and every day counting down the hours at work, because every clock tick closer to 3:30 is a clock tick of freedom, a clock tick where you didn't show up at my work like I've grown certain you will eventually do.

And its almost ironic really, how I'd left the self-imposed prison I had created for myself in your house only to enter another one. I swapped the four walls of my bedroom, plastered with posters from my favorite Broadway shows, with city lines and hyper vigilance. I've swapped my closed bedroom door with the need to be alert at all times, I'm constantly looking over my shoulder to make sure you're not there. All I've ever wanted was freedom and liberation. I wanted to feel without restrictions, to love as much as I wanted to love. I wanted to find comfort in my own home, instead I spent my days locked in my room with my headphones drowning out the sound of your yelling. I would press my ear against the door and listen for the sound of footsteps because I know what it sounds like when you're in a bad mood.

So, I barricaded myself in my own prison and when I left, thats what it was about. I never meant for my own liberation to cause so much pain and I am sorry for that. At the same time, I need you to understand that the house that I grew up in was not love, and I know you think it was, but it wasn't. Love doesn't demean their own children over left out dishes or overflowing trashcans. Love doesn't scream and slam doors in the middle of the night or call someone a selfish b**** over text messages. Love doesn't mock and shame someone's most difficult moments or dismiss their pain in favor of you own. Love doesn't make all of my accomplishments your own or pit siblings against each other. Love doesn't tell someone that they've caused their own harassment, their own abuse. Love doesn't have a favorite child.

Its taken me a long time to recognize this and to understand that I did not grow up loved because love and abuse cannot coexist. I know that now and I did not know that then.

There are so many things I wish to say to you. There is so much pain that I wish you would address, but you won't. You've never apologized for anything. so, right now I want you to know that I'm not falling for your tricks anymore. I refuse to silence myself for you. My silence has never and will not protect me.

Audre Lorde says that you've never a whole person if you remain silent and I believe her. She says: "For we have been socialized to respect fear more than the our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness the weight of that silence will choke us."

I will not let the wait of that silence choke me any longer.

Sincerely,

You oldest daughter, A

So, where to even begin.

I found OOTS several months ago when a friend of mine recommended I check it out. I made my first introductory post and then never ventured back. Now, months later, I find myself at an entirely different place in my journey, one that I would have not even imagined I would be at when I made my first post back in April of this year.

In my first post, I documented my history of emotional and financial abuse that took place at the hands of my parents. I spoke about how the closure and subsequent criminal investigation of my mother's business left me without any friends and almost entirely without an identity and how my father's work made him unable to be involved in our lives. I also spoke about my parents' history with drug abuse and how they used to offer me and my sister prescription drugs they bought off a friend and how they allowed us to drink and get high with them when we were as young as 13 years old. Looking back, this was already kind of a lot to deal with but in June of this year it everything just got so much worse.

On June 10, I was involved in a car accident. The accident was not my fault, but I had previously had a pretty poor driving record and at the time I had my boss's 15 year old daughter my car, this was the first time she had ever trusted me with that responsibility. Thankfully, everyone was physically okay, my car, on the other hand, was totaled. I was devastated and mortified. I was less than a year from paying this car off and thought I was going to finally be able to my financial situation together, but, clearly, that was not in the cards for me. Following the accident I reached out to my father and, I will admit, I was a complete disaster on the phone but in my defense I had just been involved in an accident and was clearly traumatized. He refused to offer me any support and simply told me I was being "overdramatic." So, I hung up the phone.

Eventually, I called my grandmother and my boss's daughter called her father, my boss's husband, and they both came and helped us out. That night, following the accident, my grandmother dropped me off at my boss's house, we'll call her "J." I had previously told J minor details about my relationship with my parents and she had offered many times to allow me to stay at her house to get away. I had never taken her up on this offer but that night I did. The second I walked in the door she gave me a massive hug and told me that everything was going to be okay. I have never felt that way before, even as I reflect on this moment I'm beginning to tear up. I felt like someone had actually seen me. I felt like someone actually cared. That night, she took me to the store and bought me clothes and toiletries and told me I could stay at her house for as long as I wanted, so I did and I've actually never left.

The night and the subsequent week following, my parents did not reach out to me. They never checked in to see if I was okay, nor did they check in to see if I needed help finding a car. They simply did not care. Meanwhile, at J's house, she and her family had taken me in as one of their own. For the first time I did not feel like I was walking around on eggshells. I was not afraid to be around people. I did not lock myself in my room all day. They didn't yell at each other, to this day I have never seen her fight with her husband. For the first time in my life, I felt safe.

Over the next couple of months, I began going to therapy (again) and while I was upset about how little my parents cared about me, I was beginning to enjoy my new, free life. However, of course that could not last long. In late-August, I received a message from my parents demanding that I drop everything and come over to their house and speak with them. I had no idea what was going on because I had not spoken to them in months but I felt my stomach drop. I had had a feeling that something like this was going to happen for several days, they had been much too quiet for much too long. Subsequent text messages would reveal that my mother had had lunch with her estranged mother (generational trauma is real folks!) and my grandmother had simply mentioned that there might have been a deeper reason as to why I was not staying at their house anymore which of course my mother automatically interpreted to be me being malicious.

For several days we played the same game. They would demand I come over and talk to them, so I would say that I would come over and then they would cancel on me claiming that they had more important things to deal with. For days, I spent my time in a dissociated state literally just staring blankly at my phone waiting for them to call me and tell me to come over, but after about 3 days I cracked. I had cancelled important plans that I had had for them to continue stringing me along and I was mentally exhausted. I finally told them I could not do it any longer and would no longer be going out of my way to accommodate them, which they obviously did not like. For about a month, they continued to send me abusive text messages multiple times a week where they would threaten to box up all the stuff that I had left at their house and then tell me that they had no idea why I was telling people they were kicking me out. Eventually, I blocked their numbers which only worked to enrage them even more and on September 27, this situation escalated to a level that I had not even been able to predict.

At around 7am that day, I received a Facebook message from my father stating: "I truly do not know what the h*** is going on with you or who you are. We are your parents we are not some acquaintances you just happen to meet that can be eliminated from your life in the blink of an eye. There is nothing that could possibly warrant this behavior from you. You have ripped out our hearts and s*** on them!!! You need to grow the f*** up. Maybe if you told us why you have removed us from your life we would be able to digest it. You have done this and given us NO IDEA WHATSOEVER as to why you have done this. Hopefully one day when I'm DEAD you'll reflect on this and have regret. WE DO NOT DESERVE THIS AT ALL!!! Person who helped give you life!!!!"

I received this message during my second day at a job that I have been dreaming of my entire life. I finally had a position where I made decent money and even had a pension, this should have been a good day but instead, I was overwhelmed with such an intense emotional flashback that I literally felt sick. But of course it didn't stop there, I ignored this message and about two hours late I received a message from my younger brother saying "dad told me to send you this" with a photo of my father in front of J's house. He had shown up there and was refusing to leave until I spoke with him. I messaged him pleading with him to leave J and her family alone and also messaged my grandmother begging her to talk some sense into him. After hours of him sending me message after message (none of which I responded to) J's husband threatened to call the police on him and he finally left.

The messages that he sent me haunt me every single day. I can hear his voice in my head every single day telling me how disgusting I am for abandoning my "blood." I can hear him telling me how much shame I have brought on the family and how he does not know who I am anymore. To make it worse, my mother decided to chime in the next day sending me a message in which she reiterated everything my father said and told me that it was my fault that he reacted like that: "We have only gotten this aggressive with you because you refuse to respond to us. You can assume all you want but its on you." I didn't respond and luckily I have not heard from them since.

The damage that this situation has done to my mental health is pretty severe. I have always been on-edge and hypervigilant but now it is so much worse. Every car that I see that looks like his makes my hands start to shake. I am terrified that he is going to show up at J's house again or my work. It truly just made me feel unsafe to an extent that I have never experienced before.

I'm mentioned these things and been working through them with my therapist but progress is slow. I am lucky to have some amazing people around me including J and her family and a friend who lives several states away, lets call her "Jo." Jo is someone who initially started out as a mentor figure to me in a program I participated in, she's several years older than me and someone whom I really look up to as a professional and as a person in general--shes truly just a lovely person all around. Following the completion of the program we kept in touch via social media and eventually became much closer. I knew that Jo had similar experiences with her parents and that she could probably relate but I am not one to reach out to people on my own. She began to notice somethings coming up on social media and spoke to J (they work for the same organization) and would sometimes reach out to me to check in, which I really appreciated. It wasn't until the initial fiasco with my parents back in August that, with a little encouragement from J, I reached out to Jo and asked if she was open to talking. We ended up video chatting and it was very helpful. She told me about some of the things she experienced and since then we have fallen into a mutually supportive friendship that I value very deeply. Last week, I was having a really difficult time dealing with Thanksgiving and I decided to reach out to her. The conversation we had was very validating as I felt like I was not alone for the first time in a long time.

So, I guess this is where I'll end for the day. I'm sure I'll be back to dive in a little deeper at some point. 

Hello everyone,

I found Out of the Storm because someone on a different site sent it to me. I think they felt I could really benefit from having a community and learning a little more about how things I have gone through might have impacted me, and from what I've been reading I think that's probably true. Right now, I am in my mid-20s, I just graduated from college, and am currently attending Grad School. I also recently started a new job which is heavily dependent on cultivating relationships with the people you work with and communication. This is where I struggle the most. I find it incredibly difficult to trust people and to emotionally connect with them because I am hyperviligant about the fact that they probably do not actually want to be around me or I annoy them. I am also a workaholic and perfectionist to the point where it is pretty debilitating. I am, however, starting therapy (for the third time) tomorrow, so here's to hoping that goes well. Anyway, here is my condensed story.

Okay, where to even begin...I grew up in an environment where emotional neglect was the norm. My father was always working, and my mother was just totally uninterested in taking care of me and my siblings, I have a twin sister and a younger brother. Still to this day, I don't remember the last time I hugged my parents or felt comforted by them, we don't say we love each other, and we don't interact with each other unless necessary.

When I was around 10, my mother decided she wanted to open a dance studio. This was great and me and my sister were heavily involved in dance. However, this would end up being a nightmare. My mother has never been diagnosed as a Narcissist but I am fairly certain she is one. For as far back as I can remember the entire world has revolved around her, She has never apologized for a single thing she has ever done, and even when we were children, made me and my siblings apologize to her. When I was a teenager, I had some pretty severe mental health issues and on my first session with my therapist, she monopolized the time while I sat in the waiting room alone. After she opened her dance studio, it ended up being relatively successful at one point and as my sister and I became teenagers, we were given more responsibility. All of my friends were from this dance studio as I barely attended school. However, this would all end at the end of my senior year of high school. I never applied to college and did pretty terribly in school because I had always been told that I was going to take over this dance studio. But, for the last two to three years, my mother had been neglecting the studio. It eventually came out that she was not paying staff and had embezzled money from all the dancers and their parents. When all of this came out, she had a "meltdown" and was hospitalized for a week, leaving me and my sister and father to pick up the pieces.

To make a long story short, I lost every single friend I had in the span of a week, I lost my future career and my parents stole all of my high school graduation money to help pay for the legal bills they had wracked up. To this day, I have never been apologized to and every time I was upset about it, I was told I was overdramatic, and my mother would offer me prescription medication she was buying off a friend to help me "calm down" (this started happening when I was around 14). Fast-forward to a few months ago, my sister and I decided to Google my mother's name and discover that she was actually convicted of a criminal charge and had been on probation until two years ago. We were never told, and to this day, my mother claims she is the victim.

So, yeah I guess that is kind of the condensed version as to why I am here. I am hoping to learn more about this and learn how to better cope as I unfortunately still live with my parents due to college debt.