[Serious]Why did you go no-contact with your parents?

It was more my parents individually going no-contact with me.

My parents were unmarried (not even in a relationship) and 19 years old when I was born. My mom wanted to abort, but her (devout Catholic) mom offered to raise me, so I was raised by my maternal grandma until I was 10. I think because of this, they didn't feel as attached to me as they did to my younger brother (who is 5 years younger than me and was born after they married out of religious guilt). They divorced when I was 15, and it was brutally messy. They used my brother and me pawns, and my mom somehow decided that the divorce was my fault. My mom had always been scary, extremely controlling, and not the most emotionally stable, but she became out-of-control abusive after the divorce.

When I was sixteen, my dad remarried a woman he'd met online. He hadn't told her he had children, and she was not pleased to discover that we existed. We saw less and less of him, and he eventually decided he wanted nothing to do with us--first me, then my brother a few years later. It's been ten years since I saw him. He called on the phone once when I was in college, but never answered any of my calls.

When I turned 18, I moved out of my mom's house and struck out on my own, putting myself through college. I was sort of kicked out (my mom used to "kick me out" all the time, and I wasn't sure how serious she was, but I decided to actually go and spend the summer with my coworker who needed a roommate. Apparently my mom assumed I'd beg to be allowed back and fail on my own, and she was enraged that I didn't. She didn't speak to me again until my grandma died, when I was 21. We corresponded via email and saw each other a few times, quite cordially, until I graduated college and moved even further away...at which point she gave up trying to talk to me, and stopped answering my emails. She texts me on my birthday, and that's about it. I'm still scared to talk to her, but will respond and be friendly if she reaches out.

My brother and I haven't spoken in years. He's financially dependent on my mom, and usually took her side when she was abusing me because he was just a kid and she treated him like a king. We only lived together from when he was 5 to 12 years old, so we don't even know each other as well as siblings should. I want to reach out to him now that he's graduated college, but I'm too scared. Who knows who he thinks I am because of all the lies my mom tells?

/r/AskReddit Thread