A few individuals. Some I haven't met but their influence lives past them.

1. A former family friend, initials JR. Marries a woman who now runs the local UPS store. They have a few kids together, and she already had had some kids. He seemed like a cool guy compared to the other people in my Catholic-homeschooler "community." Not as nutty, though still religious. A licensed foster parent.

But it turned out that he and good, actual Christianity mixed less than it seemed to all of us. He was charged with rape and other child-sex crimes involving two children, one 7 years old and the other 13. The latter, IIRC, was his step-daughter. He was having an affair with another piece of shit, whose charge involved a 2-year-old child.

JR's own kids were asked about it, and they were like toddlers at the time. From what I remember, the little girl said that JR told her to "drink lots of water." He is now in prison for life without parole for 19 years (of which 3 have passed). The woman had a similar sentence but only has to wait 10 years for parole.

1. My great-great-grandmother, Sabriel, and her direct descendants until my mother. According to my mother Sabriel was the meanest person who ever lived. She abused he daughter, and began a cycle of abuse from it. Her daughter abused her son, who abused his wife and my mother, and very likely my aunt as well.

Incidents I have been told about include him pointing a gun at my grandmother's head and relentlessly beating my mother. In recent times, he has mellowed out somewhat, but his narcissistic tendencies still are present.

He has threatened to cut off my mother's inheritance unless she acts exactly like she wants. My mother has PTSD and anxiety problems, which in the company of her then-husband manifested as controlling, neurotic parenting.

She would physically beat me on occasion, punish me arbitrarily, and tied my sense of self-worth to how good I made her look in front of the aforementioned Catholic homeschooler community. My dad at the time was of little help. He would try and be the cool dad type but was utterly impotent about it.

She is not on this list, however. When she left him in 2016, she has become a much more accepting, relaxed, and loving figure. She's not even a Christian anymore. I call her daily, and we help each other get through our problems.

1. My father. His whole cool dad shtick was just an attempt to make my mother look crazy for hating him, for what I presume was a constant barrage of narcissistic abuse. So before she left he was still horrid.

He was never home, going out to bars at night with his friends after work. He is permanently disinvited from family reunions for having stolen thousands of dollars from a cousin. He tried to convince his father not to let my aunt go to college on account of her being "too stupid." Knowing how good of a man my grandfather was, I like to believe he didn't take kindly to this. His mother was abusive towards her daughter as much as my father was and together they made her childhood a living hell.

When mom left him 3 years ago, he briefly took on the appearance of a responsible, loving father. He took us to events, put photos of us on Facebook, and so on. That image lasted for maybe a month before he found his new supply, which was me. He nitpicked, gaslit, the whole package. Around this time I realized he was only doing these things to turn the family against my mother.

He has gradually let our house fall into a state of relative disrepair. It only gets cleaned every other week by a maid (makes us sound richer than we are) who wouldn't have done it if my mother hadn't begged her to take the job. The maid hates my father too. Half the people he's ever met does.

He installed surveillance cameras throughout the house and makes me and my two younger brothers use Life360 so he can constantly know what we're doing.

Last year my second youngest brother got his shit kicked in by a psychopath who went to the same high school. Twice. Once at a Speedway, the other on our own driveway. He hates my brother because he reported him to the school when he said he was planning on bringing a gun there (it was actually my brother's girlfriend at the time who reported it, but my brother claimed he did it to protect her).

I told my mom about these incidents, and dad found out. He screamed at me and told me to get out of his sight. Now he couldn't make it look like my mother just didn't care about what happened. I called my oldest brother (I am the middle of five) to talk about this. My older brother is a saint. He is never angry, always kind to me, he's what a big brother ought to be. His reaction to what happened to my little brother, and how my dad treated me, was the first time in 20 years of knowing him that he got well and truly angry. Knowing that dad had crossed this line, the quiet hate I nursed for two years came out and I snapped completely.

I retaliated, and he now regrets giving me the code to his safe. I don't excuse what I did, but I will say he deserved it. His reaction to what I did was to punch me and then pin me down on a nearby bed and strangle me for several minutes. The people in the house, like my little brother, thought the sounds were coming from my dad's girlfriend. I remember the room taking on a yellowish tint. After my younger brother got him to stop, I spent half a week at my grandmother's house and the other half at my oldest brother's. At his place I discovered that my sclerae had filled with blood. The combination of events has left me with nightmares about familial strife that would end with blood vessels in my eyes bursting.