I am new to Daily Strength. My family issues have gotten so bad that I recently decided to cut ties to my father & my sister. All my life my parents were children. They never knew where I was or what I was doing after I turned about 13. I parented myself through my teen years & when I turned 18 I moved out. I had to parent my siblings because my parents had no idea how to be parents. I was the parent. As we all got older & started our own families, it was nothing but dysfunction. I have tried for 30 years to keep my family together after blow up after blow up. It got so bad that my husband & I moved out of the state for 10 years. We were convinced that everything had changed & everything was great. We moved back & even bought a huge house so we could have family over all of the time. Big mistake! Things were worse than ever in no time. We have been back for 13 years & I have done nothing but try to put my broken family back together. I have realized that because of my father & my sister, it will never happen. They both put an end to my efforts every time. They are both narsisists. Nobody in the family matters to them more than they matter to themselves. Neither of them is ever willing to make the effort to heal our broken family. My father has been insisting on an appology from my brother for 5 years for no reason. My brother, his wife & their kids have all cut ties to my father because of the endless hurtful things that he has done to their family. My father was very abusive when we were growing up. He would hit my brothers with a closed fist when he was drinking. He would call us all names (calling my sister & I sluts, cu-ts and whores in front of our friends). We all did our best to look past the abuse and try to have him in our lives as adults. But he acts like a king that wants complete control of each of us (I have 3 brothers & 1 sister). I have never let him control me so I was always his least favorite. He adores the kids he can control & can take or leave the ones that he can't. Recently my sister and her second husband sent horrible emails to the entire family. I had cut ties to them 7 months before the emails went out because I just could not take her lies and hurtful behavior anymore. Her new husband is worse than she is & continues to make everything worse. So while I was on vacation, these horrible emails went our to the entire family bashing me and my brother & his family and children. I was so upset that I was physically ill. I reached out to the rest of my family for support to make these people stop. Everyone except my father stood behind me and told them to stop. My father refused. Instead, he sent a letter to ALL of his kids telling us to stop. He refused to put the blame where it belonged. That is what he does with my sister. No matter what she does, he will back her up because he can control her. Little does he know she is waiting for him to die so she can claim her in heritance. I told my father that I will not have people in my life who attack me or people who refuse to support me when I need it. He wrote me and my brother a horrible letter blaming us (the peacemakers of the family) for everything that is wrong with our family. He did not hear me when I was saying that all I wanted was his support. He twisted my words & made it look like I am the one who is cutting ties to him for no reason. He continues to support my sister & her husband who are responsible for ripping our family appart once & for all. I will never understand that logic. My relationship with my father was hanging by a thread & that letter was the last straw for me. There is nothing left to hold on to so I had to let go of my sister and my father. My father is not well & has used his health my entire life as an excuse for a free pass for his bad behavior. All my life he would say that he is going to die young, even when he was healthy! Now that he is in his late 70s his heart is bad & he uses that to control his kids & grandkids. I've heard my dad say he is dying my whole life & now that our relationship is broken, I'm not sure what I will do when he really is. My sister has told him so many lies that I'm sure he thinks I am a horrible person. When if fact, I have spent my entire adult life trying to keep our family together including giving my sister free passes & clean slates just to keep the peace. She would have none of it. She does not want me in her life because she only surrounds herself with the people who will believe her lies. I know the truth & there is no place for that in her life. Its sad because all I ever wanted was to be close to my sister. I realize now that it was always a one-way street.