Don't know what to do about family.

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My parents divorced when I was two. A few years later my mother meets and marries a guy called Lee who lived in a local forest where he was a deer stalker whom I felt some affection for. He taught me how to shoot and took us all on holiday to Ibiza once a year. Though this was all good it was obvious to me he had a temper in him also. At the time I was in boy scouts and my scout leader was also the local police officer. I loved my life in the forest and was happy and had friends.

Then they divorced and we moved away which devastated me as I liked Lee and the forest very much. Shortly after mum started dating another guy who owned a barge on the river. Lee found out about this. One night mum told me to get out of bed because we immediately had to go from her rented flat to this new guys boat because Lee had phoned up threatening to kill both myself and my mother with his bolt action rifle. He was going to kill me first then shoot her. The next day after school I see my scout leader in his police uniform interviewing my mother about the incident. I was hurt that he told me to go elsewhere whilst he talked to my mother as he no longer had the personality I knew him by, that and the fact that someone who I once cared for threatened my life proving to me that he wasn't who I thought he was. All I know was that the police confronted him and took all his guns away. I was also upset about leaving the forest and losing the friends I had when I lived there. It was the first and last time in my life I felt happy.

Fast forward to when I'm 17 and a couple more house moves later mum starts dating this guy Ken and decides to move in with him and marry him. Whilst he seemed okay he had a son who was a private school boy around my age and I felt alienated around them as we were just completely different people and I never felt any connection or warmth from either Ken or his son who became my step brother. It wasn't all bad but I never felt any true family connection either. Around this time I started drinking heavily and constantly and started taking drugs as a form of escapism, something I haven't really managed to shake off to this day. This all ended in tears and mother divorced him and we moved out again.

X amount of years later when I'm in my early 20's she starts dating this guy Peter who has five sons, some of whom went to my school. I disliked Peter and his sons as they were rough, had a history of thieving and fighting and I just didn't like or trust any of them. Mum practically ordered me out of the house to go live in a youth hostel so she could move in with this guy who had one of his own sons living with him. I was young and on my own and fell on hard times. I ended up in a terrible bedsit with rats in the kitchen and a heroin addict next door. I fell out with the people above me who were stealing my food and I didn't know how to defend myself as I've never been good with confrontation.In the end I asked if I could move back in with mum and this peter guy and they agreed.

Like before peter and his son were worlds apart from me. They were well paid tradesman and I was often unemployed as I had aspergers and struggled with jobs, but I wasn't diagnosed back then like I am now. At first I got on with his son Sam but as time went buy he started taking drugs like speed and even crack. He became delusional and aggressive and threatening towards me and because he was a tradesman who did heavy lifting he was much stronger than I was. Also he drank heavily. He would go on delusional rants to his father about me who always took his side and would agree together that I'm basically a lazy good for nothing who hardly worked. He became convinced that I was trying to steal off him and started issuing verbal threats. I was scared because I knew he was constantly thinking bad things and always had the feeling he was scheming something nasty.

One day he took my by surprise and jumped at me when I was coming back indoors from the garden shed. He knocked me to the ground and headbutted me three times which gave me a black eye and nosebleed. There was blood all over the patio which he just casually washed away with the hose. He told me it was for 'turning his dad against him' when all I did was make his dad aware of his increasingly hostile behavior. I told mum and peter about the assault and they just didn't seem to care. Then they went away on holiday and left me there alone with him. I was terrified. I pleaded with mum not to leave me with him and she was like how dare you expect me not to live my life because of your problems. I asked my older brother who lives a two hour drive away if he could stay with me and he didn't. One night Sam banged on my bedroom door accusing me of taking something which I didn't. He told me one day he was going to break in and kill me. After an assault this was now the second threat to kill me, all through mothers relationships. I didn't dare call the police because if I did he would have just used that as leverage to beat me up again or even worse. If I retaliated and beat him up his dad would have thrown me out and all his brothers would have been onto me too. So there I was alone with this abusive son and his father, a mother who didn't seem to care and nobody to fight my corner as the only family I had lived miles away or in another country. Also even though I was paying them £40 a week house keeping and an adult in mid 20's they treated me like I was just a child who lived in a bedroom. Nothing I said had any bearing or influence and I wasn't even allowed a girlfriend to stay as they didn't want 'some bloody stranger in the house'. In 2007 I finally managed to move out into my own place. However I have never managed to forgive either my mum, peter, his son or anyone for the past events in my life.

Every time as I was growing up whenever I tried to vent my frustrations about these things mum would start shouting how she 'couldn't cope anymore with my problems' and would then tell everyone in the family about how mean and nasty I was to her. She was always the victim and I was always the bad guy because I was always making life hard for her when all she did was try to look after me. So I just bottled things up which constantly messed me up inside with constant frustration.

Now when I'm 37 peter is an old man and I see mother every sunday for dinner. Thing is though I still deep inside resent mum and peter for the past as I never had an apology. I feel it's kind of patronizing to be expected to sit in a house I was treated so badly in and just eat Sunday dinner like nothing happened. I now have a heart condition and have to take beta blocker which doctors say is unusual for my age. Also I have terrible anxiety and cant sleep at night for weeks on end sometimes because all that goes through my mind is imagining myself beating up sam for what he did to me, beating up peter, disowning my mother and even using violence against her and basically fantasizing about getting revenge and disowning them all together. Sam should have gone to jail for what he did to me and he got away with it. Mum still lives with this peter and surrounded by his dodgy sons and insultingly sometimes talks about sam like his family..Oh sams got a girlfriend now...sams got a new job now..sams.. I have told her I don't appreciate her talking about sam like that after the way he treated me but sometime she still finds an excuse to do so 'oh, it just came up naturally in conversation'.


My mother has been very good to me financially. Shes paid for my driving lessons, bought me furniture and appliances for my flat and paid some bills for me when I've been on hard times. But I still don't feel that excuses the past. I didn't want her money- I wanted to be loved, to be felt appreciated and to have some feeling of warmth in my life. I've never had any of that. At 37 I have a potentially fatal heart condition, I have anxiety over the past I lose sleep, have never had a meaningful relationship and in general feel cheated, abused and unloved. I don't know the feeling of a loving family or the touch of a loved one, which most people experience in their teens. All I feel now is hate, anger resentment and confusion which alone is screwing with my aspergers and life in general.

Above all this, in the years I've lived alone not one member of my family has ever come to visit me. Not once. My mum has visited my flat to help me hang curtains etc but that's it. My relatives have flown over from Sweden to England to visit mother and Peter and from there taken a two hour drive to visit my brother to his home. But never once have they taken the twenty minute drive just down the road to see me or how I live. I have flown from the UK to see them in Sweden and drive almost very month with my mother two hours away to see my brother but none of them have ever been to my home or seen how I live or even the things I like. It's always me that has to make the effort and to be honest I don't think I'll bother anymore. Why should I? I confronted mother about this but she as usual was like 'oh, I cant cope with any more of your issues' or 'well you never invited them'. I shouldn't have to though. They're supposed to be family and I doubt my brother had to ask them. My brother is now sick with ME or otherwise known as chronic fatigue syndrome and is now housebound and even though I feel bad for him there still has been plenty of times in the past where he could have visited me when he had the chance. Same goes for granddad when he was still alive. My dad never had much contact with me and moved to Spain with his Asian wife where he eventually died from liver disease at 63, so he was out of the question.

To wrap this up I don't know what to do about my family. I feel angry, hateful, let down, outcast and basically taken as a joke and fantasize about disowning them all, or at least telling my mother I don't want to see her any more and both her and Peter can go do one, but I don't know if that would be going to extremes though. I just don't feel like I should continue pretending like everything's okay anymore whilst I'm being made to feel like I should be nice and polite to them at Sunday dinner whilst all that abuse and disrespect happened to me in the very same house. Nor do I feel like I want to continue making the effort to see people who have never seen me in my own home. I don't need abusive or neglectful people in my life and I feel like I'm better off without my 'family' full stop. Of course, if I told them I wanted nothing more to do with them that would make me the bad guy once again among themselves. I just don't know what the right move is. I just feel deep resentment for my mother as I have experienced aggression, violence and threats because of her relationships and I don't think she ever considers that, or she doesn't care.

Derpy, that was very emotional and honest post!
I am not surprised that no one could reply to it

You live in a world surrounded by neurotypicals
and perhaps that has defined your whole world,
but, now, your'e on Wrong Planet

We are going to meet and greet you with open arms!

Everyone on WP has been betrayed, alienated and confused by neurotypicals
and no-one has one answer


...What I want to say is...Wrong Planet is a community...
and we do not have answers, but we do have questions

OMG do they have questions OR what!

anyway,
we welcome you to join us

answers
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Welcome

Yes you can choose your friends but unfortunately not your family.

Thank you for sharing your long but very sincere and harrowing story here with us. We on WP understand.

It is sad when one's life is so disrupted during childhood when one needs some stability and a place to call home which should be a sanctuary.

Luckily my mom and stepfather have always been pretty supportive although we have disagreements. I never knew my real father very well after they divorced when I was only 6 or so, and I feel sad that I didn't see enough of him during brief visits - he passed away at age 57 from lung cancer.

Sometimes "family" life can be very dysfunctional to say the least and many here have been physically and / or emotionally abused in so many ways that it stretches one's faith in the sanity of the human species.

I hope you will find some true companionship here on WP.

I'm sorry I don't really have concrete answers to your dilemma at this point because it needs some thought and processing.