Goodstorie

My dad threw me out of the house after he married my mom’s sister because I resembled my mom too much. So I moved in with his brother. But now dad is desperate to reconcile because he just had a baby with Aunt, and everyone is treating his baby like he treated me years ago.

The Beginning: Loss and Grief

Years ago, my mom was diagnosed with **breast cancer**. It all started when she went in for a routine health checkup. During the exam, the doctors found a lump on her breast. When she came back home with her results, she kept repeating that it couldn’t be real and that there must have been some kind of a mistake. At the time, I was just a young teenager, so I couldn’t comprehend exactly how cancer would ultimately destroy my family. Mom visited three different doctors after that, only to receive the same results each time. I remember coming home from school one day and seeing my mom crying on the floor. I didn’t understand why and kept asking her if something was wrong. She looked tired and broken in a way I had never seen before.

That night, she sat me and my dad down in the living room and told us the news: that she had breast cancer and would be starting chemotherapy soon. My dad looked devastated. His face seemed to crumble in slow motion, and he just went numb. He didn’t speak a word after that. My mom, on the other hand, tried to stay composed. She smiled at me in a comforting way, as if to say everything would be okay. She reassured me that she was going to fight and that I shouldn’t worry too much about her. I had so many questions, but I was scared to ask. So later that night, I retreated to my room, opened my laptop, and started Googling everything I could about breast cancer. It was overwhelming. Words like “stages,” “chemotherapy,” and “survival rates” flashed across the screen, each more terrifying than the last. I didn’t know how to handle what was happening to my mom. I didn’t know how to help her. I was just a kid, and the enormity of it all was crushing.

The weeks and months that followed my mom’s diagnosis were some of the darkest and most difficult times I have ever experienced. My mom, who had always been the strongest person I knew, was now fighting for her life every single day. And as strong as she was, the disease started to take a visible toll on her. She began to lose weight, becoming thinner and more fragile by the day. Her skin lost its glow, and she was often too exhausted to even get out of bed. The **chemotherapy was brutal**, wearing her down physically and emotionally, and it felt like no matter how hard she fought, the cancer was always one step ahead. One of the hardest moments was the day I came home to find my mom standing in front of the bathroom mirror, shaving off her hair. Her beautiful golden hair, something she had always taken pride in, was falling out in clumps because of the chemo. It was heartbreaking to watch her shave it all off, tears streaming down her face, weeping uncontrollably. I stood frozen in the doorway, watching her as she struggled to hold the razor, her hands shaking with emotion. I wanted so desperately to help her, to say something that would make it better, but I felt so helpless. How do you comfort someone when their entire identity is being stripped away by something beyond their control?

If you’re wondering where my dad was through all of this, he had completely **checked out emotionally**. My dad has never been the kind of person who can express his emotions well. He’s always been quiet and reserved and keeps his feelings to himself. Even in the face of something as terrifying as my mom’s cancer, he stayed true to that nature. He was physically there with us, but it was like he had built a wall around himself; his mind was somewhere else. I could sometimes tell he was suffering too, in his own way, but he never talked about it with us. All I remember is him refusing to accompany my mom to her chemotherapy appointments or spend time with her after she cut off all her hair. They would have huge fights about his lack of support, but he would just sit silently at the dinner table, staring at his plate, or disappear into his workshop after coming back from the office for hours at a time. Over time, my dad distanced himself more and more from us as her condition worsened.

When my mom finally lost her battle with cancer and passed away, it was devastating. That was the first day I ever saw my dad break down. He sobbed uncontrollably, as though all the emotion he had kept buried inside was finally pouring out. For just that one day, he felt like my father again. I remember thinking, “Maybe this is it. Maybe we can get through this together. Maybe we could finally lean on each other, share our grief, and find a way to heal.” But that wasn’t what happened. In fact, after that one day, everything got worse. My dad sank deeper into his pain, but instead of facing it, he **turned to alcohol**. It became his escape, his way of numbing the unbearable loss. He started drinking every day, and it quickly spiraled out of control. He would miss work, disappearing for hours, sometimes the entire day, only to spend his time sitting in empty bars, drinking himself into oblivion. I’d come home from school to an empty, silent house. I would miss my mom terribly, as the house no longer felt warm without her. Most days, I had to scrounge for whatever food I could find in the fridge because Dad would forget to go to the grocery store. Bread and jam became my go-to dinner because it was all that was left in the pantry. I still remember the hollow feeling of eating alone at the kitchen table, with the overwhelming silence, trying to focus on schoolwork or anything to distract myself from the growing loneliness. But the hardest part wasn’t just being alone; it was what happened when my dad did come home.

More and more often, it would be strangers—random people I didn’t know—bringing him back to the house, practically carrying him because he was too drunk and couldn’t even stand on his own. My dad would be hanging on to them, slurring his words, barely conscious. It was humiliating and heartbreaking to see my father that way. He never talked to me anymore, never asked how I was doing or how I was handling the loss of my mom. It was like I didn’t exist to him. There were days when he would avoid even looking at me, as if seeing me reminded him too much of what he had lost. I often wondered if he blamed himself for not being there for my mom during her last days, but he never said a word. His lack of interest in my life often made me feel like I’d lost both my parents.

Maddie’s Arrival and the Unthinkable Betrayal

Then my mom’s sister, **Maddie**, came into our lives just one and a half years after mom had passed away. She had landed a job in our town and had nowhere to live at the time, so she asked if she could stay with us temporarily until she found her own place. My dad wasn’t thrilled about the idea; he was resistant to almost everything back then, but I was the one who convinced him. I thought it might help to have someone else around the house. Honestly, I was just relieved to have an adult in the house who wasn’t drowning in grief or miserable like my dad. At the time, I had no way of knowing what would happen between them. If I had, I would have never suggested it.

In the beginning, I was happy to have Maddie with us. She was just like my mom: energetic and outgoing. She would cook my favorite meals, something I hadn’t had since my mom passed away. Sitting down to a real dinner again felt almost strange, like I was remembering what it was like to be part of a family. Maddie also spent time with me, asking me about school, my friends, my life. She would tell me stories about her and my mom growing up together, sharing memories that made me feel connected to my mom in a way I hadn’t felt since she had died. She would show me old photos of them, reminding me of how much my mom loved life and how full of joy she had been before everything changed. It was comforting to be with an adult who understood the pain I was going through and was trying to help me.

However, as the days went on, Maddie started spending more and more time with my dad as well. They became unusually close. At first, I didn’t think much of it; she was trying to help, and I was grateful. My dad had been lost in his grief for so long, and Maddie seemed to be the only person who could reach him. She would urge him to stop drinking, telling him it was time to start living again, to be there for me and for himself. And somehow, he would listen to her. After months of watching him spiral, suddenly he was staying home more often, spending his evenings with us instead of drinking at the bar. Maddie convinced him to watch movies with us, and for the first time in what felt like forever, we were doing something together as a family. She even got him to be more involved with me. Sometimes she would gently nudge him to ask about my day, and he would actually do it. Other times, she would convince him to come to my school games, something he hadn’t done in ages. It was almost surreal to see my dad slowly coming back to life. I started thinking that Maddie’s presence was the best thing that could have happened to us. In fact, I was so foolishly convinced that Maddie staying with us was helping my dad that I started praying she wouldn’t move out anytime soon. I would drop little hints, asking her if she had found an apartment yet, but secretly hoping she hadn’t. I wanted her to stay because she was the only person who seemed to be able to get through to my dad. I thought maybe she was the answer to our prayers, the person who would fix everything. Little did I know that her presence would lead to something I never could have anticipated.

One day, as I came home from school, I accidentally walked into my dad and Maddie **kissing** right there in the kitchen where we used to eat together as a family. They were now wrapped up in each other’s arms, like my mom had never even existed. I couldn’t speak, and all I felt was an overwhelming sense of disgust. They froze too, the second they saw me. My dad’s face turned pale, and he immediately rushed towards me, apologizing, stammering, trying to explain. But I couldn’t even process what he was saying. I didn’t know how to respond or what to say. I just knew I had to get out of there. Without thinking, I turned and ran out of the house. I didn’t know where I was going, only that I couldn’t stay in that house a second longer. My stomach turned, and I felt sick to my core. How could they do this? How could *she* do this? Maddie, my mom’s sister, was now kissing my dad like my mom had never mattered. It hadn’t even been that long since she passed away. He was my mom’s husband; they had shared a life together, and Maddie knew better than anyone the love my parents had. It felt like a complete violation of my Mom’s memory, like something sacred had been torn apart.

Eventually, my dad did find me sitting on the curb in front of our local grocery store. He tried to comfort me, telling me that I needed to come back home, but I couldn’t even look at him. When we finally got back to the house, Dad and Maddie both sat me down and tried to explain themselves. They said they both loved my mom, that nothing would ever change that, but they had fallen for each other over time and couldn’t help what they felt. My dad called it “**moving on**,” like it was something that should make sense to me, as though their feelings for each other somehow made everything okay. And then Maddie had the audacity to try to emotionally manipulate me. She told me that instead of being upset, I should be happy for my dad because he was finally finding peace after the pain of losing my mom. I was furious. How could she stand there and try to justify what she and dad were doing? My emotions were boiling over, and before I could stop myself, I screamed at her. I yelled that she was my mom’s sister, that she was supposed to be loyal to her, not kiss her husband after her death and try to justify it to me. I asked her how she thought my mom would feel if she knew what was happening between them. Maddie’s face flushed with embarrassment, and for a moment, I could see the guilt on her face. But my dad got pissed, and he shouted at me and told me I had no right to talk that way to Maddie, that I was just a child so that it was none of my business what was going on between them. He grounded me and asked me to go up to my room. I was so hurt, so angry, and so disgusted that I just ran up to my room, slammed the door shut, and started to cry. I couldn’t understand why my dad and Maddie were behaving this way. I hoped that this was just a bad nightmare, but unfortunately, things only got worse.

The Erasing and the Truth

Over the following weeks, my dad and Maddie didn’t try to hide their relationship anymore. They became more and more open with their affection, as if I was supposed to accept it forcefully and move on as quickly as they had. It made my skin crawl watching them. Maddie, who had been sleeping in the guest room when she first moved in with us, gradually began moving her things into my parents’ bedroom—the room that had once belonged to my mom and dad, where their memories, their love, and their life together had existed, was now being taken over by Maddie. Every day when I came home from school, it was like my mom was disappearing a little more. First, it was her portraits—framed photos of her smiling face that had always decorated the walls of our home. One by one, Maddie removed them and stashed them away in storage. Then it was my mom’s other belongings: her favorite chair, her trinkets, the things that reminded me of her presence in our home. They were all being put away, hidden out of sight. It felt like I was losing my mother all over again. Maddie, who had once been a source of comfort to me, now felt like an intruder. She acted like the house was hers, like she had the right to make all these changes without even trying to understand me. Every time she moved another one of my mom’s things, I would protest, but she would end up complaining to my dad about me. She would tell him how difficult I was being, how I wasn’t listening, how I was making life hard for them. And my dad, he always took her side, every single time. He would usually tell me that I needed to let Maddie take care of me and acted like I was the one being unreasonable, like my grief and my anger were inconveniences in his new life with Maddie. He would shout at me, saying I was unnecessarily causing problems. It felt like a complete betrayal. My own father, the person who should have understood me, who should have let me process things on my own, was shutting me out and siding with someone who was erasing my Mom’s memory from our home.

Then one evening, our fights just got worse when Maddie crossed yet another line. This time, she wanted to **move me out of my own bedroom**—the room I had grown up in all my life. She wanted me to move into the much smaller guest room of the house because she needed more space for her work and exercise. It was absurd. I couldn’t believe the audacity she had. I argued that she could use the guest room instead, but she insisted that it was too small for her needs. She had the nerve to say that the guest room would be perfect for me because I’d be moving out in a few years anyway, so I might as well give her my room. Her reasoning left me completely appalled. I went straight to my dad, desperate for him to step in and do something. I tried to explain how unreasonable Maddie was being, how this was about more than just a room, but he didn’t want to hear any of it. He grew frustrated, dismissing my concerns as if I was making a big deal out of nothing. The back and forth with him grew heated quickly. I couldn’t understand why he kept siding with her, why he refused to stand up for me, his own daughter. I finally blurted out what had been gnawing at me for months:

I yelled, feeling all the anger, the frustration, and sadness boiling over. I needed an answer, something that would explain why my dad had been treating me this way since my mom passed. Without hesitation, he replied:

His words hit me like a punch to the gut. I froze. My own father had just confessed that he couldn’t stand to look at me because I reminded him of the person he had supposedly loved the most—my mom. Without thinking, I screamed at him in the heat of the moment:

The moment the words left my mouth, I regretted them, but it was too late; the damage was done. My dad’s face twisted with rage, and before I could even react, he slapped me hard. The impact knocked the breath out of me. It was the first time my dad had ever laid a hand on me. My cheek stung from the blow, but the emotional pain was far worse than the physical. I burst into tears, sobbing uncontrollably. I felt completely broken, and I knew at that moment I couldn’t live with him anymore. I couldn’t stay in a house where I was constantly reminded of my mom’s absence, where Maddie was trying to erase her, and where my dad had not only failed me but hurt me in the worst possible way.

A New Beginning with Uncle Colin

This is when I reached out to the only family member I could think of who could help me out: my uncle Colin. Colin was my dad’s younger brother and was always the fun uncle—the one who’d crack jokes, play games, and make every family gathering a little more bearable. He was laid-back and kind, and we always got along. When I reached out to my uncle, I wasn’t entirely sure what I was doing. I didn’t have a clear plan, I wasn’t even sure what I was asking for, but I needed help, and I hoped that Colin could offer it. I explained everything to him: the mess with my dad and Maddie, how I felt, and the incident where my dad had slapped me. Colin immediately reassured me that I was not wrong for how I felt and promised me that he would take care of everything. The very next day, he showed up at our house, ready to confront my dad and talk to him about everything. I remember hearing my dad and uncle arguing from upstairs. Colin was furious, just as disgusted as I had been when he found out about my dad and Maddie’s relationship. I could hear him accusing my dad of disrespecting my mom’s memory and mistreating me. He didn’t hold back; he listed off all the ways my dad had failed me as a father. Colin stood up for me in a way I had desperately needed someone to, and for the first time in a long time, I felt like someone was on my side.

Apparently, Colin had also informed my **paternal grandparents** about everything that was happening. They had no idea about my dad’s relationship with Maddie, and once they found out, they were livid. They called my dad immediately, berating him for his choices and how he had let things spiral so far out of control. My grandparents were traditional, and the idea of their son being involved with their late daughter-in-law’s sister was appalling to them. Between Colin’s confrontation and the pressure from my grandparents, my dad finally relented. In the end, it was decided that I would move in with Colin for the time being while my dad would sort things out with Maddie. My dad informed me almost coldly that he would be paying Colin every month to cover my expenses. I was shocked at how quickly everything happened, but I knew continuing to stay with him was far more dangerous. Living anywhere away from my dad and Maddie was fine with me. I felt completely detached from him by that point. When Colin asked me to pack my things and go with him, I did so without hesitation.

Since the day I left my dad’s house, Colin and his girlfriend Cheryl have been my family ever since. It’s been years now, and living with them has been a completely different experience. They’ve given me the stability, love, and care that I had been craving for so long. Cheryl is warm and supportive, and she makes me feel like I belong, something I hadn’t felt in my own home for ages. My paternal grandparents visit me regularly, and they’ve been there for me. They don’t talk much about what happened with my dad and Maddie, but I know they all disapprove of their relationship. My dad, on the other hand, has been almost completely absent from my life since I left. He used to try to call me and talk to me, but after I showed a lack of interest, he stopped calling altogether and blamed me for pushing him away. In a way, I’ve come to terms with it; he made his choices, I’ve made mine. It still hurts, but I’ve found people who care, and that’s what’s helped me move forward.

Recently, when my paternal grandparents visited me at Colin’s place, I overheard them whispering something about how my dad and Maddie had a baby together. It seemed like everyone in the room was disgusted by the news, since they didn’t even know that Maddie had been pregnant because my dad had kept it so hush-hush. I could tell that my family were trying to keep this news quiet, maybe because they thought it would hurt me if I found out. I tried to listen closely as the adults discussed how my dad had been trying to reach out to them after Maddie had given birth, calling and trying to convince them to meet the baby, but no one wanted anything to do with him—not my grandparents, not Colin, no one. I could hear the tension in their voices and disapproval that still lingered after all these years. Even Maddie’s side of the family, my maternal relatives, had cut ties with her. I hadn’t kept in touch with my mom’s side of the family very much since everything happened, but hearing that my mom’s family also wanted nothing to do with Maddie made me feel a sense of validation I hadn’t expected. It felt good to know that people still supported and respected my mom, that they could see how wrong Maddie had been for getting involved with my dad. There was a certain satisfaction in knowing that both sides of my family, paternal and maternal, stood by my mom’s memory. I didn’t think much about their conversation after that, but imagine my surprise when out of nowhere, my dad called me yesterday.

It felt surreal, given how distant and disconnected we’ve been for the past years. He started by telling me how he missed having me around, which caught me off guard. He went on to tell me he had some good news to share. I remained quiet, unsure of where this was going, though I had a sinking feeling I already knew. Then he said he and Maddie had a baby, and he wanted me to meet my little brother. I couldn’t believe he actually thought that introducing me to this new baby would somehow make things okay between us. I scoffed at him, unable to hold back. I told him flat out that the baby wasn’t my sibling and he had no right to call me when he had never cared about me before. That’s when my dad started arguing, trying to convince me to move back in with him. He said he wanted to put the family back together and that he wanted me to give him another chance by going back home. At that point, the words felt so empty to me. Where was this concern when I needed him most, when he and Maddie were pushing me out of my own home? Now that they have a baby, he wants to play family again, as if I should just forget everything that happened. He was almost laughable the way he thought he could erase the past so easily. I refused him point blank. That’s when he accused me of holding a grudge and how my mom would be disappointed in me for not having any grace. He told me that Maddie and my half-sibling deserved to have a supportive family around them and that he was counting on me to do the right thing. So, Reddit, am I the AITA if I don’t go crawling back to my dad after he was the one to kick me out?

To clarify, I’m turning **[Age, assuming early 20s based on context]** this year, so I’m no longer obligated to stay with my dad. I know I’m not a dependent kid, but Colin has basically taken on a parental role for me, and he would never let my dad force me to go back home. Tonight, I’ll be telling Colin about what my dad said so he’s prepared in case anything happens. I also agree with many of your comments: it’s obvious my dad only wants me back because now his baby is being treated the same way he treated me after mom died. I do feel sorry for the baby, but I have no sympathy for him or Maddie. He’s trying to manipulate me into forgiving him, and that’s not going to happen.

It’s been a week since my last update, and today my dad showed up unannounced at Colin’s house. Colin and Cheryl tried to keep him out, but he just kept yelling about how he wanted to see me. So I came downstairs and asked him to stop yelling in front of the neighbors. He then started guilt-tripping me again, saying he regrets what he did to me and wishes I would just come back home with him now. I told him as firmly as I could that Colin and Cheryl were my family and that I had no intention of leaving my home behind. He responded by saying that after I moved out, his whole family basically shunned him and Maddie, and now that his baby was here, they were still treating him like an outcast. He called me selfish for not seeing things his way and insisted that all I had to do was go back home with him so everyone could see that we were still very much a family. I was growing increasingly frustrated with his constant talking, so I finally told him:

I watched as his face fell, clearly pained and hurt, but I didn’t feel an ounce of sympathy for him. After that, he pretty much left without saying a word.

It’s been months since my last update, and I wanted to share that I’m officially **[age, e.g., 18]** now. To clarify a few things: my dad hasn’t contacted me since the last time he showed up at our place. My family continues to shun him, and no one has even gone to check on him or his baby. I’ll be starting college this year, and I’m also working part-time, so I don’t need my dad’s help anymore. Colin and my paternal grandparents have offered to help me out financially if I need anything, so I think I’m going to be okay. Stay tuned for more stories.