So there’s a lot of backstory required in order to explain my situation but i’ll try to keep it as short as possible. I’m adopted and have no real clue as to who my parents are. I was adopted in a country where it is very difficult to adopt kids, especially of my gender. This is relevant to the story later. (Any time I refer to my parents, it will be my adopted one’s, not my real ones).
My mother was extremely abusive and hit me, starved me, and tried to kill me multiple times (one of which was trying to strangle me, leaving me with ptsd resulting in panic attacks and social anxiety). She isolated me by homeschooling me, and controlled every minute of my life. I learned that I was adopted when I was 9 years old because she was upset I wanted to quit the swim team, and told me that she could “send me back where I came from” because I was “an ungrateful daughter who had no appreciation for the life she gave me”.
My father knew of my abuse but not to what extent because I was too scared to tell him, he was always working and didn’t have the time to focus on me during the day, and my mother worked night shifts. We always spent time together when my mom was gone and he tried to make up for her abuse by spoiling me.
I begged him to leave her so much but he was never able to. When I was 11, me and my dad went on a trip to go to a meeting of his, and when we came home, my mother had hung herself in our garage.
My father has had 3 previous marriages before my mom that ended in one death and 2 divorces. This left him with 9 kids all above 30 at this point in time. I am currently 17, and he is in his 70’s. I had never had much contact with my siblings because my mother despised them and we lived hours away from them.
My father doesn’t believe in depression, and has never cared much for my mental health. After about a year, he wanted me to be over my mothers death and move on. For a long time I acted out and had a horrible track record in online schooling throughout all of middle school because I wanted attention but I never got any. I was expected to handle everything on my own.
I should mention that my father also has extreme anger issues and throws tantrums when he doesn’t get his way, often attacking me for everything. He neglected all of his previous children, so I believe I got the most attention as a kid because of him trying to make up for my mothers abuse. But it became clear that I traded one evil for another. I still care about him but it got to the point where I genuinely gave up on a relationship with him.
He got even older and his health conditions worsened so about 3-4 years ago we moved closer to his other kids. (In order to lessen my burden of taking care of him on my own). I suddenly was in a new area, going to public school for the first time and entering highschool. It was very confusing but I thrived on communicating socially with others and genuinely interacting with people that cared about my mental health.
My depression had spiked after my mother died and I had tried to take my life multiple times, but it went unnoticed by my father because I failed and hid it for a while. He thought I was faking it when I did tell him. I have felt isolated in this family because everyone has little cliques, there is no one in my age range that lives close to me and even if they were, they would be my nieces and nephews which just makes everything awkward. They’re nice people, but not a family to me. I lost all sense of what that was a long time ago.
I have not been able to attend therapy because my father doesn’t approve, well he’s agreed to it multiple times and then conveniently forgets about it. He has many heart problems and was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and dementia about a year ago which has exacerbated his anger towards me. I am not a saint, I’ve done some shitty things in my time and am currently in my depression pit mess of a room, and I know I need help and I should do better but I can’t on my own.
Now we go to why I can’t reach out for help, my adoption process wasn’t through the best terms so there are a lot of legal issues that have to be taken care of before I can work and there’s so much information I do not have about my own existence here. Things that should’ve been handled a long time ago but have not, and now I don’t know how i’m going to do it. Because i’ve been living here for 13 years it should be easier but it’s still up in the air. I’ve been told for a long time that I need to have care and understanding for my father because he is older and his health problems make it worse. But for me all I want to do is leave this family, but I don’t have the means or money to do so, and they make me feel guilty for not being grateful that I was taken from a country that would’ve been extremely abusive towards me.
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/immigration/comments/ov4ok1/i_need_help_figuring_out_what_to_do/