I don't even know how to write this out, and it feels so weird but I just want to put my life out there somewhere. I originally posted this on a burner account but I decided to just post it on main anyway. I just need some kind of peace knowing that the whole story is out there somewhere, cause no one in my life really knows all of it. Sorry that it's such a long post literally a novel, but well, it's literally just most of my life story of how my dad ruined it.
When I was around 2-3 years old, my dad cheated on my mom for the first time, I don't have any memory of that of course but in later years I found out that was when my mom considered something drastic for the first time. She decided not to do that and was gonna stay with her parents for a bit after that, and apparently I must've known something at that age because I was crying and wanted to go with her and didn't wanna stay with my dad. Intuition I guess.
One of the first incidents like this that I have an actual memory of is when I was around 10 years old. My dad would go out to the bar all the time and drink till he couldn't even walk straight. My mom would be forced to go and pick him up at 3 am from the bar, and sometimes I had to come along too cause she couldn't leave me home alone in the middle of the night. I remember being scared of my dad every time he drank, he didn't abuse me or my mom, at least not physically. Mentally is a whole other thing.
But I just felt unsettled at how much he didn't seem like himself, that stuck with me forever cause it happened every time he drank too much. This kind of thing happened a lot where he would drink till late hours, then mom would be forced to go pick him up, guess i didn't think much of it back then cause it just happened so often it became normal. Once the three of us moved out of my dad's parent's house, I remember one of the really major incidents.
It was another late night of my dad drinking, but I guess this time he must've been talking to other girls or something (I'm assuming now because of what I know about him, but at the time just thought this came out of nowhere.) My mom was texting and calling him telling him he should come home now, and I guess he just snapped. He told her to pack her bags and get out of the house. Now of course my mother couldn't help but break down and cry, and I don't blame her. I know people say you shouldn't show this kind of emotion and stuff in front of your kid but man she didn't really have a great support system for herself and i don't regret being there for her.
So just imagine 11 year old me getting my iPad out and trying to text my father begging him to come home while I was crying and sitting with my mom, telling her not to divorce him while she kept saying she wanted to. I regret ever trying to convince them to stay together, I wish I knew enough back then to tell her that yes she should have divorced him. But I was just a kid man, of course I wanted my parents to stay together I didn't know any better. I don't really remember how this incident resolved but eventually it just faded away and we went back to "normal" life.
Sometime in between this and 2016, was when I started to realize how different I want from other kids. In more ways than one. I always had strange behaviors growing up, everyone just thought I was a weird kid. But eventually I ended up being diagnosed with Autism. It all started to make sense all the things in my life that never felt quite right.
Being Autistic never bothered me, but it did make me struggle with some things others flourished at. Being social, having life skills that I think are basic for most people. But none of that mattered too much to me when I was young. This was also around the time I started to realize that I was gay. I didn't know what my parents would think, and I didn't have any plans to come out to them any time soon because I was too scared.
I was able to tell a few friends of mine and felt comfortable with them, they supported me. Turns out this backfired because one night after I had come back from a movie with one of my friends, I paid for his movie ticket just cause I felt like doing something nice for him. Anyway my dad was convinced that this friend forced me to buy his ticket, and he ended up going through my phone. That's when he discovered the texts I had with my friends where I talked about being gay. And my parents ended up grounding me and taking everything away for a few hours.
My mom came and sat down with me and asked me if I was sure, then cried because she said she wanted grandkids. Remember how I said my mom was super nice and everything earlier? That's still completely true. I firmly believe she only had this sort of closed mindset because of my father. Because in later years and up to current day, she supports me fully. She even bought me makeup when I was thought I was into that during the MUA YouTube years. (I ended up not liking makeup lol) but she even painted my nails and stuff for me when I wanted it.
My dad on the other hand never talked about it, but obviously he didn't support me. The night they found out, he told me "I love you because you're my son, but I can never accept "that"". I remember one night a few years after this when we're having a party with my cousins. My little cousin just got a new makeup kit and wanted to use it so she painted cherries on my face.
I remember my dad was so shit faced drunk, when he came inside while we were all playing uno, he just grabbed my face, pushed my glasses off my face and just stared at the makeup. He didn't say anything, but the look of disgust on his face just shot right through me. And then he walked off to his room. I cried that night in my bed until I fell asleep.
The next major incident I remember was in 2016 when I was like 14 years old. I don't wanna say exactly where I lived but my town had a massive wildfire and every one had to evacuate. My mom was out of town on a trip with my grandmother and it was just me and my dad home. I remember helping pack up some emergency stuff and bringing our two big dogs in the vehicle and driving out of town as it was literally in a massive blaze. There's only one major highway out of my town and the fire was already in the woods surrounding it so we had to drive through a lot of smoke and haze.
Anyway so while this was all going on and I had no idea if my house was gonna burn down and if I'd have anywhere to live, my dad decided this was the perfect time to cheat on his wife yet again. So we met up with a woman who worked with my dad and he told me it was just out of convenience to stick together, and that she didn't have anywhere to go. We ended up meeting my mom and grandmother at our campground hours outside of town cause we had a camper there.
The woman from my dad's work stayed with us in our camper and took my bedroom. I used to huddle up in the tiny bed in that room when I felt anxious and I definitely could've used it that night, but my father wanted to let his mistress sleep in there, guess that was more important. A couple days of this goes by and one day while my mom is in town getting us food and everything, I look outside and realize my dad and the girl were not around. I didn't know where they went and my mom was already (rightfully) untrusting of him because of his previous cheating.
She had told me to text her if anything happened and since I couldn't find them i did text her, I had no idea what was gonna happen. My mom came back to the campground and confronted my dad who was already drunk by the way in the middle of the afternoon. They ended up getting into a fight and my dad yelled that my mom was "just a bitch who kept taking all his money" to paraphrase. She took off in her car and I remember calling her and crying that she had left me there with him, and begging her to come back. When she drove back, I ran outside and couldn't see her and I asked my grandmother where she went while my grandfather was talking to my dad.
I'll always remember this moment because it felt like a movie which sounds so stupid but I've always thought of it that way, even in the moment when it was happening. I think it was because it just didn't feel like my life, I couldn't believe it was actually happening. My mom ended up being on the shore of the lake of our campground crying, the sun was setting while it was starting to rain outside. I remember the pain in her voice as she cried asking why my father always did this to her, I wish I had an answer to that.
My mother's always been an amazing person. I might be biased but, she's the kind of person where she literally pays for strangers food in lines, gives money to people who need it all the time, donates to charity. And she was never using my father for money like he always said she was. She had a job when we first moved out of my grandparent's house, but he told her to quit because he landed a really huge job in my town.
Anyway back to that time though, I remember walking her back to our camper, and telling my parents to figure things out. I was 14, telling my parents to figure out their issues, trying to act mature. Within that month of this happening, we ended up going to stay at my grandparent's house across the country. Which took us 5 days of driving because we had all of our stuff and our big dogs with us still. Eventually the wildfire got under control and we were allowed to go back home.
Later this same year in 2016, my mom was diagnosed with cancer. I remember not even processing it well at all, I didn't deal with my emotions in a healthy way. Unfortunately one of my dogs in 2016 also developed cancer, and he rapidly declined. I never got to say goodbye to him. I was raised with that dog, he was my best friend.
After my mom had cancer and my dog passed away, combined with everything that happened during the fire, I started to give up on school. And life in general honestly. Before the fire, I remember how well I was doing, I was acing tests, I even took extra math classes just because I wanted to. Most of the other kids in my extra math class were forced into it because they had bad grades, but I was doing it because I wanted to lol. But after the fire, I didn't even try in 9th grade.
During this time when I was dealing with massive depression and anxiety. My father never took it seriously, he would force me to do stuff I didn’t wanna do because he said it would “cheer me up”. When I just wanted to lay in bed all day and cry. He was the kind of guy who doesn’t “believe in mental illness”.
Anyway after all this, we land in 2020. This was a half a year after I had already dropped out of school at this point. The world was in a super scary place as all of you know. My parents had been getting along so I thought, it made me happy when we all were staying in the house together and getting along. I did try getting a job towards the end of the year, but I felt so anxious and dreaded the idea of even going back, that I worked one day and quit. And felt like a total failure.
But fast forward just a couple more years into the future. 2023. That's when all the years of my dad constantly cheating on my mom just finally culminated I guess. One day out of the blue he just sat me down and told me he was going to our camper for a couple days cause he "needed some time to himself". My dad came home a couple days later, and sat both of us down and said he was probably gonna divorce my mom.
She was distraught. Despite everything he had done to her throughout their entire marriage, she still loved him. I don't know how. At this point throughout the last few years, I wasn't close with my dad at all naturally. I resented him quietly for everything he had done, and that was just the stuff I knew about. And I just wanna mention, he did all this a couple months after we just found out my other dog had developed cancer too. And he only had a few months left to live. We found this out in January and my dad did all this sometime in May.
We came to find out later that when he was having his "alone time", he was actually just spending it with yet another girl, in our family camper. We only found this out because that woman's husband messaged my mom on Facebook and told her what he discovered. Now that this was found out, and he already said he was gonna divorce her anyway, mom had had enough. My Uncle's girlfriend works for a lawyer, and we reached out to her and my mom filed the divorce papers and served him.
My Uncle's girlfriend ended up finding us a lawyer in town, and the divorce was officially sent through the court rather quickly. Granting us the right to stay in my childhood home without letting him have access anymore, and setting up spousal support payments. My dad lawyered up and tried to fight the spousal payments. But a judge took one look at his literal over $300,000+ salary and dismissed his attempt to get the amount lowered.
Time went by and me and my mom slowly adjusted to a new life. Things weren't so bad. My other dog lived until August.
Two years later in 2025, my dad wasn't done yet apparently. He had texted me one night and told me that I now had a "beautiful baby sister" that was going to be born in a few months and if I ever wanted to meet her, I could. I almost threw up at this message, because I had always wanted a sibling when I was younger, I would say it to my parents all the time. But having one in this way was just something I would never be able to accept.
At this point in time he had also stopped paying the mortgage for the house for a long time. My mom managed to get the payments transferred to her bank account because of the court order that gave us possession of the house. But now dad got a new lawyer after firing his last one, and was forcing us to sell my childhood home. There wasn't really much we could do to fight back against that, he was the one paying spousal support and we couldn't afford to keep paying for such an expensive mortgage anyway. So we said goodbye to that place and found a decent apartment.
In between this time, he also stopped paying most of the spousal support. He was only paying a fraction of what he was legally court ordered to pay. So while we were moving, my mom took out a small loan because we didn't really have any other options. Unfortunately that loan has been turned into an impossible debt in present times but we had no other choice back when this happened. We also needed the money to pay all the bills my father left us.
Just before he did all of this to my mom, he had her get a new truck for him in his name. And after he ended up leaving, he took the truck with him for a time. All while my mom still had to pay for it because it was in her name. (We still haven't managed to sell it to this day because there's way too much owed on it, and he drove it across the country twice to visit his parents. It was a brand new truck. So now it has way too many miles on it to sell for the price it was bought at back to the dealership.)
While this was all going on, is also when my father decided to text me and tell me that he only had a few months left to live, and that he needed to talk to me. I texted him back but he didn't respond. And the next day he said "nothing was wrong, i just wanted to see if you'd talk to me". Oh and did I mention my grandparents reaction to all of this? My father's parents, who had known my mother for over 20 years. Just decided to fully cut her off.
My dad later on had a second kid. Trying again to file to get spousal support payments lowered because he claimed he "was demoted and no longer made as much money". We know this is a lie because he continues to post about all the new things he's buying, He brought it before a judge, they took a look at his income statements, and denied him yet again because he could clearly afford it. The spousal payments were put through a program that's entire purpose is to enforce payments like this, so he started paying again for a time.
And now we're all caught up to this year, 2026. We had finally gotten used to a new life, things were going well. New apartment, we got some new furniture, were managing to pay off bills. And then suddenly a few months ago, my dad just fully stopped paying spousal support. We had some savings, so we figured we would just hold out until the program started collecting money from him again since he's legally still required to pay it.
The divorce is still not finalized. Because my father refuses to sign half of his pension over to my mother (which again he is legally required to do.) Among other things, he also tried to get my mom in trouble because we had to sell the furniture in the house in order to help us move out of it and get into the new apartment. He claimed it was an unequal division of family property. Which while it is true, we were only in that position because he was paying a fraction of the spousal support he was supposed to. A judge took one look at that and yet again, dismissed it. That was at the start of this year, which is why we believe he stopped the payments all together a few months later. Out of retaliation because he wasn't getting his way.
So we slowly burned through the savings we had. Months went by, and this program still hadn't managed to collect any more money from my father. For the last 3 months we've been borrowing money from family, just waiting and waiting for this program still. If you're wondering why my mother and I never ended up getting a job in all this time, we both are dealing with severe mental health issues.
Throughout these last few months, my mother has told me she has considered something drastic, she even ended up going to the ER (she didn't do anything, but wanted help with those thoughts) and calling a suicide hotline. We talked it through and we decided that we don't want my father to win like this. He doesn't deserve to ruin our lives and then continue on living a normal happy life as if we never existed. We will fight as hard as we can because we deserve to live a happy life to.
My mother also has had health complications for years since she had cancer, mobility issues and nerve damage. So she wasn't supposed to be working. And as for me, the same depression and severe anxiety I've had since 2016 has never gone away. I tried to get jobs in the past, but this overwhelming debilitating anxiety prevented me from going back, I just couldn't handle it.
I realize that I took advantage of my rather cushy life, my dad had a great job. And he would use money and gifts to "make up" for everything he had done, and I just accepted it. I was never forced to get a job, and I fell into complacency because of that combined with just generally being autistic, I feel like I never learned the normal life skills most 24 year old adults have.
Last month, my mom against her doctors wishes, was forced to get a job. We could only borrow so much money from family, they can't support us and all our bills, and themselves too. And this month, I also worked up the courage and effort. And managed to land two jobs. It's been extremely difficult for me, but we have no other options and I wont sit around and let my mother bare this burden by herself while I'm a fully grown adult, even with my hardships.
I have extreme anxiety about having to interact with the public and other coworkers, but luckily both of my jobs are full of extremely nice people. I'm trying my best to overcome all of my mental health issues and work through them. I'm trying my best to stay positive about it, but with the 3 part time jobs in total, we'll be able to just barely afford rent. It all feels so pointless, doing all of this work, and trying so hard to overcome my anxiety and for what. Just so we still can't afford rent anyway?
I just started one job a week ago, and my first real shift at my second isn't until November. I only get paid a fraction of what we need for this month, and the month ends in two weeks. Still waiting on this program to collect money from my dad. Still waiting to hear back from a local program who helps pay rent in our community. Still waiting to hear back from government income support.
And my mom's side of the family (the only family we have left) keeps telling me and my mom that they might not be able to support us anymore as they're running out of money too. And my dad by the way, filed yet again to try and get the spousal support lowered. Claiming that he quit his job and doesn't make as much anymore, but some old friends of my dad who still work at his job. Can clearly see him on the schedule that he's been on parental leave since the start of the year.
I won’t let me father continue to ruin my life. No matter what happens, I’m gonna keep trying my best to live a good life. There’s always a way to make things right and I’ll find it.
So yeah, I know this is a long ass post and I wrote all of this out just for a few people to end up seeing it. But I somehow feel better after letting all of this out. I don't know what's going to happen at the end of this month. But I'm still gonna keep doing all I can, and hope that something finally pulls through for us. I just wanted to get my story out there somewhere. If you read this all the way through, thanks for listening to my life. I wish you the best.
