redditors who grew up in a "broken family", how was it like , do you have any close relationships with your family now?

100% true.

My parents were married for seventeen years. When I was twelve they divorced and we were warded to our mother. This is where shit gets fucked.

During the marriage, my fathers side of the family (lived out of state) would come to visit three of four times a year. My uncle/aunt were my god parents. I loved them so much as a child. I had fond memories of their visits.

Then one night on the 23rd day of December, I heard sobbing. I instantly knew it was a painful sort of sobbing, not the I've fallen down the stairs and I can't get up kind. Not even the regretful sob of leaving your life alert in your medicine cabinet, which is three flights away.

I ran downstairs and found two sisters sitting close together and huddling. They were crying hysterically. If you've ever been in that situation as a child. The feels are tremendous at that age. I started crying. In short they admitted to me that our father had been molesting the both of them. I began to sob harder and if I wasn't twelve, weak, and had a shirt on, I would've tore it.

He'd been molesting me for five years at that point. The three of us sat there holding each other sobbing for what felt like an eternity, until my mother finally came to investigate.

He was an alcoholic, twelve pack a night kind of dude. She was disconnected from the family and paid little attention to us.

She divorced him, after putting us through painful court trials ad sessions with lawyers for a year, only to drop all the charges claiming "we had made the whole thing up".

I'm fourteen now and she shipped off to a boys home, citing inabilities to control my erratic behavior. She said it was only for a few weeks and I'd be able to see my friends. Nine months later and dozens of phone calls home, she finally has me released only to kick me out of the house two weeks later.

You're probably wondering...it was due to my erratic behavior that caused my expulsion from the family home. It wasn't.

I looked like/spoke like/ reminded her of guess who? That was the reason.

I'm fifteen now Living on the streets. I embodied the definition of homelessness for four long months. I joined a local neighborhood gang. We stole everything and sold it off to other members of the gang for profit. That's how I got out of being homeless. I sold pot for several more months until I could buy clothing and get a place to stay.

Fast-forward

I see my father once every ten years. I've tried for years to mend the relationship but it has to begin with admittance and an apology, of which he refuses.

I see my mother once every five years. She also invited herald to events and pretends like life is peachy and nothing ever happened. She pretends to be a loving mother to us around everyone. It's fake.

Our family was torn in half over these events. It's been twenty years now and I haven't seen my god parents. Almost everyone on my fathers side of the family pretends like we do not exist.

The embodiment of a broken family comes from a child molesting father and a mother that let it happen because she was too lazy to get up and get a job. She didn't want to work and if she would've acknowledged the issue, it would've forced her to be a human being.

TL;DR Three out of four siblings were molest by our sperm donor. We were disgraced and forgotten. I was tossed away like a piece of garbage. He never served prison time. The fam still pretends like nothing ever happened and we made the whole thin up.

/r/AskReddit Thread