I went through divorce, physical, emotional and sexual abuse, adoption and a fucked-up childhood. AMA.

Reddit, I’ve had a pretty fucked up life. I will try to summarise it for you.

• Age 1: my biological parents got divorced. I visited dad #1 every other weekend while staying with my mother.

• Age 2 – 3: my mother married dad #2.

• Age 4: dad #1 married dad #2’s ex-wife, who was pregnant when he met her. She couldn’t stand me and made me go through some physical and emotional abuse.

• Age 6: they offer me the choice to permanently stay with my mother or keep visiting my father. I chose the first option.

• Age 7: I was legally adopted by dad #2, thus taking his last name. My biological father agreed to this adoption because he was offered money to do so. I would not have any contact with my biological father after this.

• Age 7 – 9: for two years, multiple times a week, I was sexually abused by dad #2’s nephew. I recall what you would call ‘foreplay’, but the times that there may have been penetration stay blanks in my memory. I was lead to believe this was normal, even by dad #2. I am still traumatised by this experience.

• Age 10: mom and dad #2 separate. She files a divorce. He steals everything we have and are left with literally, practically nothing.

• Age 11: mom meets a new man, dad #3.

• Age 12: mom and dad #3 have a baby. Since dad #2 had been postponing the divorce, this has been legally ‘his child’ for half a year. He also stalked us for several years, trying to win custody over me and getting himself into debts he couldn’t pay so they were shoved onto his legal wife, my mother.

• Age 14: I informed my mother that I wanted to meet my biological father. I expected no support and got none, either. So I found him on my own and established contact and a relationship.

• Age 20: my mom and I talk about my biological father for the first time in my life, after a night out. She casually informs me that he had also sexually abused me when I was 4. (It wasn’t until I was 6 that the contact with my biological father had been cut.) I, in turn, informed her of the sexual abuse that had been going on in her house between age 7 and age 9, to which she shrugged and told me to leave her alone with the television.

• Even though I seemed to have been an independent girl/woman up until now, able to deal with this pretty well, I am still left with severe trust issues, traumatic flashbacks (which I surprisingly never had before half a year ago).

TL;DR: Went through a couple of divorces, was adopted by my mother’s second husband, was sexually abused by my cousin and apparently also my biological father, had a pretty fucked up time growing up.

I made this AMA because I feel that talking about it would relieve me. So there, Reddit, please ask me (almost?) anything.