What experience made you grow the fuck up?

My parents divorced before I was able to walk but I spent most of my childhood watching them fight. By the time they really separated, I only saw my dad when he either picked me up for or from school, and sometimes for the holidays.

As I got used to that, my mom remarried to a man she had worked with for nearly a decade. He was a nation guard, and took great pride in being on the county swat team as a hobby. Their marriage happened really suddenly, when I was around 13. He was a horrible person. He would make comments about my weight, how weird or unattractive I was, or talk badly about my family. My grandparents lived with is at the time and e hated that, but he moved in anyway and began to remodel my childhood home. I was unaware then but he became physically abusive to my mother and tried to convince my older brother to enlist in the army.

During this time, I was enrolled in private school and my father remarried by eloping. It was pretty stressful already, but my mothers husband didn't seem to think so. He routinely had the police called, would hide guns in my mothers car, and also had her arrested. He would try to convince us it was all her fault. She started the divorce and things got even crazier.

He and my mom were together only a short time, but he managed to desert her in Germany, encourage her to have a back surgery that would take her out of work for the next two years, have a psychotic break in which she attempted suicide (he was taunting her by stalking her, leaving notes and mean calls) and gain possession of our home, kicking us out. My grandmother died only a few weeks later, and he took a restraining order out on us (LOL, still amazes me).

After a long time it seems he's left us alone. I think he's been remarried twice, but he still lives in my old home. I've moved a handful of times, renting here and there and then went off to college. I almost can't believe it all happened but it definitely changed my life. My mom later told me broke one of his cats neck, shot one of his dogs, and essentially killed his ex-wife (I don't remember the details.) Just nuts.

/r/AskReddit Thread