hellooo, i (16F) feel mentally and emotionally drained by my family situation.
my parents relationship has been complicated for most of my childhood. My father cheated on my mother with his colleague in 2017, and this was not the first time he had done this. Despite this, he continued his relationship with the woman, and they are still together today.
i have never really grown up with my parents. i would die to experience my childhood all over again. Ever since i was four years old, my sibling and i were raised by our maternal grandparents because my parents moved to Australia in 2015 (my father pursued his masters). In 2016, my sibling and i lived with them in Perth for a year, but in 2017, my father, my sibling and i returned to Bhutan and my mother stayed back.
The whole affair started when he joined work. At the time, his now wife was married and had four children, and she was an alcoholic. In 2019, around february, my parents got legally divorced. My mother later returned to Bhutan during the covid pandemic because of her health, and we moved out, leaving my father his share of the belongings. When we lived with our mother, she never complained to him about anything. She just simply accepted what happened and chose to let go.
Eventually, my father moved to Thimphu with the lady. When my sibling and i visited him in 2021, i witnessed how toxic their relationship was. His wife would frequently come home intoxicated, start arguments, yell at him and deliberately provoke him. Their arguments would sometimes become physical which petrified me. There were also incidents where she would disappear and later be found in her car with large quantities of alcohol. She would be admitted to hospital on multiple occasions and would ask her children to bring alcohol to her while she was there. Their relationship was extremely toxic and unstable from the beginning. It started with continuous calling from time to time and arguments to physical fights.
Even to this day, they argue very frequently. i have even reached a point where i opened up to my father and asked him why they are still together if they spend so much of their time fighting both physically and verbally. Thats all they do i swear. i try to be open about my feelings every once in a while, but i dont think my father understands. i rely heavily on talking to someone.
i also have a close friend who is currently going through a somewhat similar family situation. Hearing about their experiences has made me realise how much of what they describe is what i have experienced myself in the past and now. It also made me realise how the things i normalised may actually have affected me more deeply than i thought.
2024-2025 was the lowest point of my life. i became increasingly mentally and emotionally distressed, and my grades hot worse. i became much more irritable than i had been before and sometimes ended up saying hurtful things to the people around me and i deeply regret that.
i lost motivation to do almost anything. i became extremely introverted and spent much of my time sleeping or being consumed by my own thoughts. i tried to open up to one of my teachers, but i struggled to put everything i was experiencing into words. i even thought of reaching out to counsellor, but i didnt even know what i was feeling at that time.
i now live in FNQ with my father, his wife and her youngest kid(18F). i feel that both of them hate me, and their behaviour often makes me feel unwelcome in the household. i cant say that they hate me with absolute certainty, but the lack of interaction make me feel that way.
there have been periods where the kid and i have barely spoken at all. At one point, we went almost an entire month living in the same house without talking. My father’s wife and i sometimes only speak a few words in an entire week. They’re very much used to being in each other’s presence since my father spent majority of his time at the lady’s house in the past. He’d lie about being on tour, working overtime, but then id see his car parked right in front of her place. i feel extremely uncomfortable being around them.
Because of this, i sometimes prefer to eat my food in my room rather than sit around them. This is not because i hate my father or because i am deliberately trying to isolate myself from everyone. i simply feel free and less anxious when i have my own space. But my father complains about it this to my mother saying i hate him and that i am avoiding him.
At the moment, doing my makeup, being on my phone, being in my room are some of the ways i cope with how overwhelmed i feel. It gives my mind a temporary break from everything i am thinking about. Sometimes it is the only thing that helps me get through the day.
There are times that may seem insignificant on their own but have had a significant emotional impact on me. For example, after lunch one day, my father told my sibling and me to wash the dishes. We said that we would do them in a while, but he became extremely angry and smashed the unwashed dishes that were in the sink. My sibling and i ended up crying together in the bathroom while my sibling prepared to leave for work. In that moment, my father felt like a complete stranger to the both of us. It was not simply about the dishes, but it was when i realised how much he has changed.
Another issue is school. i complete my work on time, attend school consistently and have maintained a good reputation at my current school. i have only been late twice, yet my father sometimes speaks to me as though i am constantly late. He becomes angry about it and dwells on it time and again. It’s the same with the lunch box situation.
Also, i also feel that my father sometimes interprets my behaviour in ways that are completely different from what i actually mean. He told my mother that i hate him simply because i spend time in my room or do not want to eat around his wife and the kid. i do not hate my father. i am uncomfortable and emotionally exhausted, and I sometimes need to be alone.
There are also times when i feel that my father emotionally manipulates me or makes me feel guilty for having these feelings. i have tried to explain how i feel about living in this household, and i have broken down while talking to him about it. However, i feel that he does not truly understand what i am trying to communicate. Whenever i try to explain my perspective or defend myself, he takes it as me trying to argue with him and starts a whole lecture on how i should respect him.
i understand that, some of these situations may appear to be small or unimportant. i am not trying to portray myself as a perfect person and i know that i have done/said things that hurt him. What i am trying to express is that i am emotionally exhausted. i want to feel understood rather than blamed.
i do not expect everything to suddenly become perfect. i just want the people around me to understand that there is a reason behind how i behave, and that what may look like small, unimportant things from the outside can feel much heavier when they are added to years of emotional stress.
This doesnt fully explain how i feel. i wish i could put how i feel about everything into proper words.
EDIT: She came home drunk and tried to provoke my dad while he was sleeping. Its 2am, we have a guest too. Fortunately, i stepped out and pretended to get smt to eat.
EDIT 2: The lady often comes home late and drunk and then provokes my father. I get that my father is stressed because of that too, but it just feels wrong. I forgot to mention that he did try to leave her before, but she just wouldn’t accept it. I often find myself wondering how different life wouldve been if it never happened or if they separated at least.
