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The original was posted on /r/bestofredditorupdates by /u/Direct-Caterpillar77 on 2024-02-29 15:08:30.
I am not The OOP, OOP is u/Zoe13asd
Parents [40s] treated me [21F] very badly and I cut them off. Now they want a new beginning.
TRIGGER WARNING: child neglect, favoritism, golden child syndrome
MOOD SPOILER: the lion, the witch and...you know what? No, just eject them into the sun.
Original Post July 16, 2015
Sorry if this is long.
I have a non-identical twin sister. The two of us couldn't be any more different. She is lucky enough to be very beautiful and tall and very good looking. She has always ticked every box on her looks. I wasn't so lucky. I wasn't on the beautiful side and was shorter (right now I'm 5-1, she's 5-8). She was also better at making friends and being sociable while I was always her awkward sister (now I know I'm on the autism spectrum but was only diagnosed two years ago, parents never bothered with that).
Now none of these make my parents horrible. What makes them horrible is the way the treated me and my sister. They always treated her like she is an angel and treated me like I'm a loser. This goes back as early as we were 3-4 years old. For each 20 picture that they have of her childhood, they have maybe 2-3 of mine. Literally they have over 10 times as many pictures of her, and most of mine are of both of us. She would always get a lot of attention from everyone and I got none. Parent spent much more money on her too. Say if they wanted to spend $100 on clothes, $80 goes to her and $20 to me. Their reasoning has always been that she's more beautiful and it's worth spending more on her as she's gets a lot more attention while nobody looks at me anyway so why bother with better clothes, they have literally told me that many times. I was in a sports team, they never once came to see me playing while they go see my sister cheerleading every week. Extend this to everything and you know the story of my life.
I hated every second of my childhood. I hated my sister (yes I know none of this was actually her fault, I worked on myself with a therapist so I no longer feel any hate/blame towards her). Since I was 15 I was counting the days until I become 18 and can leave and never come back and that's what I did (that's the age which you can leave home without parent consent where we live). I left home the day after my 18th birthday. The night before parents threw a birthday party for us (well, for her). Their gift for her was a $1000 gift card from a luxury designer brand, for me a $100 gift card for a bookstore, arguing that this $100 gives me the same level of ability to buy the things I like (books) as that $1000 would to her (expensive clothes). OK. Their logic. They knew I was thinking of leaving but had no idea I wanted out ASAP. I left that day. They asked me to stay and allow them to help out but I was like "I've had enough of you, leave me alone".
I never made any contact with them after that. As soon as I was able to I moved to another city (to get even as further away as I hated that city too). They called/texted me for a while for a while but I never answered or replied and changed my number eventually. I had also removed them from all my social media. I set so that if they sent me any emails it would automatically get deleted and a reply "automatically deleted, do not waste your time" to be sent. That's the current status of things on my side.
Two days ago my dad sent me a message on Facebook. My initial instinct was to delete it but I opened it and started reading. This was the first message in months from them. He explained that he understands that they were not good parents and they did a lot of wrong but maybe we can start over. He asked if I can come over for dinner at some point so all of us can get to know "the new" each other better. I haven't responded.
I don't know if I should give them another chance or just delete this message and don't look back.
tl;dr: Parents treated me much worse than my twin sister because she was/is more beautiful. I left right after my 18th birthday and ceased all contacts. Now they want a new beginning after 3 years.
RELEVANT COMMENTS
Lordica
What do you want? Do you long for a repaired relationship with them, or are you happier with them out of your life? You might explore your options with a therapist. Remember, if you aren't ready now, you can always respond with a "Maybe later. I'll be in touch."
OOP
I wanted a good relationship with them for many many years. When I was growing up every night I prayed for them to become nicer to me and like me for who I am but that was three years ago and my world is much bigger now. I'm thinking of talking to my therapist about this.
~
tevicbon
My first thought is maybe your sister needs a kidney?
OOP
To be honest that came to my mind at first when I was reading the message.
~
[deleted]
Did you not have grandparents or aunts and uncles who tried to tell they they were unfair? I have 3 daughters, and while I have probably done birthdays where I didn't spend the same of them, they at least got what they asked for. Parents are not perfect people, but my gosh, your parents need a kick in the pants
OOP
They were all in on it. Grandparents, aunt, uncles, everyone adored her and were at best indifferent to me. I remember my grandfather telling me to learn from my sister to be a nice and popular girl that everybody loves. I was maybe 12.
Update July 23, 2015
Thanks for your comments and suggestions there. They were super helpful and helped me see things a lot more clearly. Love you all.
This is a big big update and something quite shocking. I've got to go back to my therapist.
Before I get to it, a lot of you asked about my relationship with my sister. Well. There's no relationship really. I spent all of my childhood hating her and never really had a nice relationship with her. She was not like my parents but they had spoiled the hell out of her and she sort of always saw herself as the better one of the two of us. Not surprised there and right now I don't even blame her for that. On the day that I was leaving I gave her a hug and told her that maybe if we had different parents we could have really been sisters but it's not how it turned out in this life but maybe we can make up for it later ourselves. I told her that if she wants to talk to me about this she can call me and we can meet up. She never called me.
As it appeared from the last post, I went to talk to my therapist about this and she suggested that I can initiate some conversation and see how it goes. Based on her assessment she was happy if I wanted to go and see them I just need to understand that there's no obligation to go or stay. Good.
I replied to my father's message with this:
Hi dad
For us to ever have a chance of seriously starting over, you owe me an answer. Why?
I expect an honest answer. No "why what?", no "come and let's talk in person" or anything of that sort, just give it to me straight, believe me I can handle reading it if you could handle doing it. If you're not willing to give me that then I'm not willing to start over.
He came back to me the next day with a long message, explaining "why". Let's get right to it:
He told me that him and my mom wanted a child, and only one child as they didn't have the resources and energy of having more than one. They realized that we're twins, that screwed up everything and actually made them sad rather than happy.
They decided to give one of us up for adoption. They looked around and even found a couple. In case you wondered, I was the one they decided to give away because I was smaller and my eyes weren't blue (yeah, that's how you decide which one of your kids to keep). They arranged everything, even took me to the them but that couple bailed out before signing the papers, when they saw me and my sister. Their conscience couldn't handle separating twin sisters like this. After this they looked for some couples and nobody seemed willing to adopt one of twin sisters. They entertained the idea of putting me into foster care but they couldn't live with themselves if they did.
I think that says a lot. Stranger couples, who so badly wanted to adopt a child, couldn't be heartless enough to separate twin sisters but their fucking parents wanted to do it. It's beyond me.
So they had to raise me themselves and they didn't enjoy it at all. In their minds the fact that they didn't put me into foster care was a favor in itself, more than what I apparently deserved and that's why they never cared to do more for me. Their full time and resources belonged to my sister and the small part of it that got to me, they saw it as me taking what's my sister's away. That's how they saw me. No wonder my childhood turned out the way it did.
He said that deep inside they always knew what they were doing was wrong but they could never step up and do the right thing during this 18 years. Why not? They thought that changing the dynamic would negatively affect my sister as she's now used to ...
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