If you had to break your life into "Before" and "After", what incident would divide them?

Finding out my dad sexually abused my younger sister.

It was only one time, and it was mild--not even something he would go to jail for--but it was still inappropriate, and it affected her enormously. She was 12, and he gave her a (topless?) massage in her room in the dark. I don't have all the details because she only told me about it once and didn't explain much.

We're both adults now, and she only just told me last year. It broke my brain. Really, it broke my sense of my own ability to conceive reality. I love my dad so, so much. He's a flawed person, and he makes bad choices sometimes, and is totally emotionally stunted, but he's also so full of love and generosity and childlike wonder.

My sister forgives him, mostly because she found out that his mom did the same kind of thing to him when he was young. (This is equally horrifying to me. I love my grandma. I'm so much like her. How can someone so great be an abuser?)

I grew up thinking I had a perfect family. And I always had a big sibling rivalry with my sister, and the rift between us only grew when she became a sullen teenager, hated being in the house, and got an older boyfriend. I thought she was just a teenage idiot; but it turns out she didn't feel safe at home anymore and wanted someone to protect her.

I have nightmares about screaming at my dad, I think because I can never confront him about this or some of the other stupid things he's done to hurt the family. But he's also one of my go-to people when I need to feel understood and loved. How can I reconcile the pain he's caused with the love I feel for him?

I can pinpoint the moment of finding out about all this as the moment I really started doubting my ability to recall the past, to assess the present, and to understand myself as a person. I constantly catch myself gaslighting myself. I second-guess everything. I take blame for mistakes at work before I even know if I'm the one who made the mistake.

I constantly fantasize about being able to go back in time and stop it from happening. I wish I had a second chance to be a great sister when she needed me to be.

I desperately want to talk to someone about this, and I also never, ever want to talk about it. I can't bring myself to say the words, even to a therapist. I am not a secret-keeping person; but this isn't my secret to tell. ^Please help.

/r/AskReddit Thread