I (17F) feel like I'm single handedly running the household and I'm beginning to go off the rails. I've come to resent everyone in my family and it's taking a toll on my mental and physical health. Really really need some advice before I fucking yeet myself over a cliff in frustration.

This is going to be a long one. First, some context. Both of my parents are doctors and I have a sister still in elementary school. I graduated high school a couple of months ago and I'm set to start college overseas in like 3 weeks.

My family is super dysfunctional. My dad has generalised anxiety and depression and in addition to that, he has an undiagnosed mental illness wherein he fucking loses his mind and screams at the smallest things going wrong, slurs his speech, becomes super clumsy and absent minded and generally acts totally drunk even though he doesn't drink. This continues for long stretches of time, often more than a month at a time, with a brief period of relative normalcy in between that lasts about a week. His refusal to get treatment or even admit to this problem has caused my parents marriage to fall apart completely; they can't speak without screaming at each other; and my sister and I are dead scared of him to the point that we'll do anything he says and hide in our room when he gets home. He's developed some binge eating problem as well where he skips dinner and then eats trash all night and also now has this disturbing habit of munching ice cubes all the time. It's gotten to the point that he gets mad at us for using ice to make drinks, etc.

That being said, he cares about us a lot. He is covering all my expenses for college and handled all of the issues with obtaining my visa, etc and has given me the best education available in this country. He would die before letting any harm come to us or our futures. However, this has now become really suffocating for me. All college emails go to his email address. He doesn't trust me to check over the documents required myself or generally figure my shit out even though it's high time that I start doing so. He's obsessive about my future to the point that throughout this summer, he's called me at least 6 times throughout the day everyday to stress over the same issue and I've gotten so fucking tired of it that I'm not even looking forward to university. He's sucked the fun out of it to the point that the thought of it stresses me out. He's dangerously codependent on me; he calls up to rant about all his stresses and there are many, especially bc his anxiety makes him worry over literally everything.

It's not just him. My sister depends on me for everything from emotional support that my parents don't give her, to company as none of her school friends live nearby, to the discipline, rules and structure that parents are supposed to give small children. She is attached to me to the point that she calls up several times when I'm out, or begs to go out with me and my friends. This strikes everyone outside my family as extremely weird- which it should- as what kind of 4th grader wants to hang out with 17/18 year olds? My mom encourages it; when I was 15 or 16 I wasn't allowed to go out unless I took my sister with me. Or I would be allowed but she'd guilt trip me to the point that I'd bring her along anyway.

My mother and I have a strange relationship. We bonded over our mutual difficulty dealing with my father and his constant beration of everything about us, from our weight to our lifestyles. His psychotic behaviour and refusal to fix it has led to my mother basically disengaging herself from family life; although they work on the same floor of the same hospital, they barely speak to each other. Any communication between them that doesn't involve family finances or work occurs through me. My mother has been having an affair for a really long time. I'm aware of it, and while I don't like it, I understand why she's doing it. She has gone through hardships no one should ever have to go through and without any support from our extended family when dealing with my father, it's no wonder that she's given up on the marriage and now looks for comfort and companionship elsewhere. My sister is aware of it too but I don't think she understands the nature of the relationship; she just knows that it's not something she should ever talk about. But my mom's disconnection from the household beyond cooking dinner for us and talking with us briefly about our lives means that the bulk of supporting my sister and father emotionally has fallen to me.

I only realised just how bad it was when I left my house for the first time in weeks since graduation to hang out with my friends at someone's house. Before i left, my dad called up and started to yell about how my mom wasn't picking up the phone and he had something important to discuss so how dare she not answer. I said "Why are you shouting? I'll just go get her." About half an hour later, I left the house just as he came home for lunch and he asked me "why were you yelling at me?" I hadn't even raised my voice... My sister called me up several times during the day, each to ask me what time I was coming home.

We were chilling at my friends house watching a horror movie with ice cream, and over the course of the 2 hour movie, I got literally 7 calls from my dad, 3 calls from my mother and 2 from my sister. I noticed that 4 of the calls I missed from my dad were within the first half an hour of me leaving. This was the day before the results of an extremely important exam were released and he was more stressed than I was. When I called him back he literally went on a 20 minute rant about it and I was almost on the point of tears bc all I wanted to do was forget about the results and the fact that my friends were waiting to play the movie again for 20 minutes was extremely embarrassing. Once I hung up I was furious. I called up my mom and yelled at her for telling him that I thought the grade boundaries were going to be high this year and told her that if either of them called me up again in the next few hours, I wouldn't come home.

I felt like total shit. My friends and I went out for dinner but I was completely out of it the whole time. Although my phone didn't ring again, all I could think about was how angry I was, about how much I hated my life, how much I wanted to just enjoy being a teenager with my friends. I have turned down countless invitations from my friends to go partying this summer, and as I sat there, I realised how much I had missed out on. One of my friends lit a cigarette and passed it around, and everyone took a drag except me, and they did it like they'd done it a hundred times. One of my friends laughingly commented about how "innocent" i was, and though she absolutely meant no harm, it struck a chord in me. I'm extremely academically inclined and for the past few years have focussed on college as I saw it as my only way out of this life. But I had planned to spend this summer doing all the things I hadn't let myself do in school, to just enjoy being 17. I knew people perceived me as a stick in the mud but inside, I did want to let loose, I did want to just live in the moment. But when your family keeps calling you every few minutes, it's difficult to do so. I had secluded myself in my house for several weeks bc it didn't seem worth the effort and my experience on this day just proved me right.

It wasn't just the cigarette. My friends now had inside jokes that I wasn't part of. My closest friend seemed surprised that I didn't know some of the stories she was referring to during conversation (we've always told each other everything, and this was a reflection of how distant I'd become from everyone). Most of my friends go to a different school, so I was used to not always knowing what they were reminiscing about, but this time it was different. This time, I felt more isolated than I have ever felt before. As I sat there with the evening light fading and my friends laughing over their pizza and their cokes, I wondered whether the reason I couldn't enjoy myself was really my family or just myself. Maybe I was a stick in the mud after all and my years of dealing with my family had led me to develop anxiety over the simplest things.

It's been a few weeks since that day, and I've been going out more and gone to a party at a club and proven to myself that I can in fact enjoy myself. But the family pressure is getting worse and worse. Wherever I go, I'm in fear of my phone ringing. When I'm at home and watching a show or showering, I'm afraid my maid will ask me for instructions or the landlady next door will ask me to give my parents a message, or my sister will throw a tantrum over my parents not giving her what she wants.

My snap at my mother that day did not reduce my anger; I'm continuously raging on the inside and I feel like I've been snapping at everyone in the last few weeks. And I'm especially angry with myself. After all, I've always lived in comfort; no financial issues, roof over my head, good homemade food, maid to take care of domestic work. So what if I'm a little too sheltered and a little too reclusive? So what if it's only since recently that I've been allowed to leave my house on my own? Such things are common in my culture; in fact, I would say my father is almost liberal compared to other men from our culture. Surely, the cost of carrying the burden of my parents failed marriage, their fucked up issues and caring for my sister like a parent more than a sibling is justified by the fact that at least I'm going to college. My course was decided by my father, much like everything else in my life, but again, unlike many fathers in my culture, he at least picked something I have a slight interest in. And I'm not going to be in debt.

I guess the point of this post is that I'm fucking exhausted. I don't know right from wrong, I don't know how to be independent, I can't differentiate codependency from a healthy relationship and I'm so, so tired of being told what to do and of the expectations on me all the time. I've lost a lot of weight over the past year through healthy eating and portion control and am no longer overweight as I used to be, but I've started eating trash again due to stress and I've stopped working out. I've started to sleep for 10 to 11 hours which is not at all normal for me; when I sort of had my shit together I'd sleep 7 hours max. I'm physically exhausted all the time, constantly stressed out or depressed and keep snapping at everyone over everything. I'm afraid I'm turning into my father. My mom keeps comparing me to him. It's my worst fear. I just really really need some advice and motivation to try to take back control of my life.

TL;DR- my family is codependent on me and the stress has led me to lose control over my eating and sleeping patterns and I'm now stressed, anxious and depressed all the time. Cutting them off is not an option and I'm leaving to study overseas, but I just need some advice on how to get my shit together.

Damn, it feels good to just vent this.

Submitted August 24, 2019 at 01:14AM by dorothyxx2 https://ift.tt/2L4lh9f