Physical & Emotional Abuse Support Group
Abuse is a general term for the treatment of someone that causes some kind of harm (to the abused person, to the abusers themselves, or to someone else) that is unlawful or wrongful. No one deserves abuse, period. Abuse can be emotional, physical, or sexual.
Everyone who has read my personal stories and rants knows that I have issues of my own--after all I have stayed and kept my kids in a volatile hell for so many years. I don't kid myself that I know ANY of the answers. Why, then, is it so difficult and frustrating to see someone you love going through the same situation and be unable to help them?!
My younger sister was living in FL with my 8 year old nephews father several years ago. He was apparently very abusive, wouldn't work, and had a severe addiction to prescription drugs. In 2008, our middle sister was having a double mastectomy due to advanced metastatic breast cancer. That evening, my younger sister went to work--leaving my nephew's father to babysit him, but she asked his aunt to come over and help because he was so messed up on drugs. During the course of the evening, his cousin (who was like a brother to him) came to the house, they got into an altercation, and my nephew's father shot him twice, killing him, and then ran from the police with my 3 year old nephew in his arms. He is now serving a 25 year sentence, but my nephew still has 'issues' from this event.
Fast forward to about 2 years ago (or so). She is now back in MD, our middle sister passed away in '09, my sister has her own home, a car, a job, and things are looking up for her. She gets involved with this man who refuses to work. He takes her car at will to go to the "store" or other nonsense and then doesn't return for two or three days. She knows he is dealing, and he always has some excuse about getting jumped or arrested each and every time he leaves--what bad luck right (she actually believed his excuses!) He has 5 other children by 3 different mothers and is constantly in jail for child support. She is at this point taking the money that should be caring for her and her son and bailing him out of jail every time. She ends up losing everything she has and moves into a small, dirty, basement apartment. Now she has no car and no job and no real place to live.
She ends up marrying this loser in 2011. She is pregnant. I had bought a vehicle from our dad for my escape, but I end up giving it to her as a wedding gift because they have 1.5 kids and they need to get jobs. Instead of doing that, he destroys the vehicle. He broke out two windows because he was angry at her one evening. The tires get slashed, finally the motor blows up. In the meantime, I have been paying insurance on this vehicle for over a year, and they still have nothing except two children now living in a hellhole.
They lose their place to live and move in with his mother. She finally tells me that he has a bad drug problem, that each time he does get a side job he spends the money on pills. He is constantly sick when he is withdrawing and sometimes gets scary (although she claims he never hits her). Finally, she threatens to leave with the kids. He starts crying that it isn't his fault, she doesn't know how hard this is, he will go into rehab if that's what she wants him to do.
She dropped him off Monday. She called to tell me he will be home Friday. He is a changed man suddenly and is going to support his family finally. She believes him. Now.....I may be no expert on drug addiction, and I don't want to minimize the difficulty a person has getting clean--I can't even quit cigarettes, so I do believe it is difficult. However, I am worried for my sister, and I don't understand her thought process. She's been through this before and look how it ended. I have tried to talk to her about the manipulations men will come up with, the buttons they will push, to hook us back in without coming right out and saying he is a bigger piece of crap than my a**hole. But, it's hard! I so want to snatch her and my nephews and take them far away. I am finding it hard to be objective, which is so ironic because was this how my family felt in the beginning with me and my h?! Funny how patterns cycle around isn't it.
My younger sister was living in FL with my 8 year old nephews father several years ago. He was apparently very abusive, wouldn't work, and had a severe addiction to prescription drugs. In 2008, our middle sister was having a double mastectomy due to advanced metastatic breast cancer. That evening, my younger sister went to work--leaving my nephew's father to babysit him, but she asked his aunt to come over and help because he was so messed up on drugs. During the course of the evening, his cousin (who was like a brother to him) came to the house, they got into an altercation, and my nephew's father shot him twice, killing him, and then ran from the police with my 3 year old nephew in his arms. He is now serving a 25 year sentence, but my nephew still has 'issues' from this event.
Fast forward to about 2 years ago (or so). She is now back in MD, our middle sister passed away in '09, my sister has her own home, a car, a job, and things are looking up for her. She gets involved with this man who refuses to work. He takes her car at will to go to the "store" or other nonsense and then doesn't return for two or three days. She knows he is dealing, and he always has some excuse about getting jumped or arrested each and every time he leaves--what bad luck right (she actually believed his excuses!) He has 5 other children by 3 different mothers and is constantly in jail for child support. She is at this point taking the money that should be caring for her and her son and bailing him out of jail every time. She ends up losing everything she has and moves into a small, dirty, basement apartment. Now she has no car and no job and no real place to live.
She ends up marrying this loser in 2011. She is pregnant. I had bought a vehicle from our dad for my escape, but I end up giving it to her as a wedding gift because they have 1.5 kids and they need to get jobs. Instead of doing that, he destroys the vehicle. He broke out two windows because he was angry at her one evening. The tires get slashed, finally the motor blows up. In the meantime, I have been paying insurance on this vehicle for over a year, and they still have nothing except two children now living in a hellhole.
They lose their place to live and move in with his mother. She finally tells me that he has a bad drug problem, that each time he does get a side job he spends the money on pills. He is constantly sick when he is withdrawing and sometimes gets scary (although she claims he never hits her). Finally, she threatens to leave with the kids. He starts crying that it isn't his fault, she doesn't know how hard this is, he will go into rehab if that's what she wants him to do.
She dropped him off Monday. She called to tell me he will be home Friday. He is a changed man suddenly and is going to support his family finally. She believes him. Now.....I may be no expert on drug addiction, and I don't want to minimize the difficulty a person has getting clean--I can't even quit cigarettes, so I do believe it is difficult. However, I am worried for my sister, and I don't understand her thought process. She's been through this before and look how it ended. I have tried to talk to her about the manipulations men will come up with, the buttons they will push, to hook us back in without coming right out and saying he is a bigger piece of crap than my a**hole. But, it's hard! I so want to snatch her and my nephews and take them far away. I am finding it hard to be objective, which is so ironic because was this how my family felt in the beginning with me and my h?! Funny how patterns cycle around isn't it.
gem111
I am so sorry sweet. Yes it would be very frustrating and painful to watch that happen with your sister. I hope she wakes up soon and realizes she needs to get her life back. Yes, things do cycle around, over and over and over. It's so sad.
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