I have a step dad who is the father of my two younger sisters. My mom doesn’t know I know he is not my real father but idc. I’ve called him dad for as long as I can remember. He used to touch me inappropriately and force me to make out with him when I was around 8-10 years old. He would abuse me and my brother so inhumanely. He would punish my younger sisters (his actual kids) too but nothing like the way he hurt me and my brother. The abuse and sexual manners went on for as long as ive lived with him. Later in life he and my mom divorced and me and my siblings had to live with our abusive aunts. A couple years go by we find out he passed away and I was angry that he passed away because it hurt to see my sisters in pain. They don’t know the things he put me through when he was alive but I can’t tell them because it would ruin the image they have of him as a father before he passed. Not even my mother knows this. So when we attended his funeral, I was furious and angry at myself because I cried as if I loved him as a father. Years go by since his death and I’ve come to peace with the fact that i didn’t know how to be loved properly and it was okay to cry for him and I still cry for him whenever I visit his grave. But sometimes I wonder, is it fair for me that my younger sisters have this perfect image of him as a dad while I’m here not knowing what that was? But if I tell them, that would ruin them.

I been thinking real hard about even relaying these awful things about the person that I have admired the most, the person I have respected and revered my whole life but that now, has completely backstabbed me in the worst way possible. A few years ago, a scandal broke in my political family involving my mother. As you can imagine, it nearly broke my marriage and tore my husband’s family apart. My sister in law found my father in law and my mom talking on social media. The worst part of it, when I was confronted, I was accused of knowing about the whole affair and made it looked like I was an accomplice to the whole ordeal. When I had absolutely no clue to such a disgusting mess. I don’t know what neither of them were trying to accomplish and now, I’m the black sheep of the family. No one talks to me. While my father in law is still loved and honored. My mother the home wrecker and I pay the sins of her ordeals. She never once has said I’m sorry. Never! In her head, I’m better off without that side of the family. But it’s not about that; why did she do this to me? Why my father in law? Among so many men? Why him! I guess I’m just looking for an explanation and I know I will never get it from her. Because she just cannot accept she did anything wrong. I wish I could get her version because as of now, I only know everyone else’s but her’s. I always thought I didn’t need to hear her side because it’s not my place to question her, but I have kids who now have to suffer for her sins as well. I don’t think it’s fair to them either. I guess the damage is done as well and the past is the past. I won’t get nothing accomplished but I just want an acknowledgment from her part that she messed up.

• August 12, 2023