Goodstorie

I’m 17, and for a pretty long time now, I’ve been preparing for the **SAT**. But my family is literally the worst, and so they decided to kick me out of the house and wanted to send me to stay with my aunt in the suburbs just because my sister is getting married in 2 weeks, and she had invited her friends over to stay in our house. I don’t understand why she couldn’t have just asked them to stay in a hotel like all the other guests. It would have cost her money, but given the fact that it’s her wedding, I think she shouldn’t be such a miser. Besides, our parents are paying for a lot of things anyway, so I don’t think it would have been an issue for them to cover that too.

My parents didn’t even tell me beforehand so I could make some arrangements for myself. They decided to spring it on me the evening before her friends were supposed to fly in, and they told me that I needed to vacate my room by the next evening, within 24 hours. I tried to argue and tell them that her friends could all just stay in the living room or the guest room since there were almost seven of them, but they told me that it would be impolite to have her friends stay in the living room when I’m getting one full room to myself. They started lecturing me about how important it is to have some sense of hospitality when we have guests over, even though these are not even my guests, and I didn’t even know that we were having them over until the very last minute.

Also, Melissa, my sister, and her fiancé, Jack, have their own apartment, so I suggested that maybe some of them could stay with them, but my parents told me that it would not be possible because they don’t want any guests staying with them since that will only add to the stress of the wedding. Basically, I tried everything to convince them not to push me out of the house, but my parents were not having it. Melissa had promised her friends that they would be staying with her parents, and they had agreed, so now I would just have to do what they asked of me.

I made a huge stink about it because honestly, I had no intention of going and staying with my aunt before my SATs. She’s a really eccentric person and doesn’t even believe in the internet, so she has no Wi-Fi, and that would seriously affect my studies because I didn’t want to use up all my data. I even tried to explain that to my parents, but they told me that I could just take my books with me, as if that was enough. Another major reason that I didn’t want to go live with my aunt this week was that it’s in the suburbs, and that’s really far away from the place where I’m supposed to be taking my SATs, and I simply could not afford to be late for something like this, and the commute would take way too long from her place.

I tried to request my parents not to do this, and I even said that I would make the sacrifice and stay in the living room myself, but they told me that it would be “unseemly” and I just had to go away. They were not ready to entertain any more arguments. I had told them that I would refuse to leave and they couldn’t make me, but my parents told me that if I didn’t go away by myself, they would throw all my stuff out on the streets and warned me not to test them. So that was it, and I couldn’t argue with them anymore.

A couple of hours later, I had pretty much given up and packed up my stuff, and my parents told me that they were happy that I had made the right choice and was doing something good for the family. They then told me that I needed to call my aunt and ask her if she would be okay with having me over until the wedding. That is when I realized that my parents hadn’t even taken the trouble to speak to my aunt about this, and they expected me to do everything. So I lost it, and I started screaming at them about it, and they told me that it was not their responsibility to take care of me because I was “almost an adult now” and I “needed to look out for myself.” I thought that was insane because I wasn’t actually an adult yet; I was just 17, and even if I was technically 18, they still would have had some sort of responsibility to me because they are literally my parents.

I was very upset with them, and I decided to start unpacking and I told my parents that I was not going anywhere. Then they started yelling at me and told me that I couldn’t do this because they had already promised Melissa that they would have her friends over and they would be treated well, which means that I had to give up my room. I tried to tell them that Melissa’s friends being accommodated in our home was not as important as my SATs, and as my parents, they should be more understanding of what I need instead of constantly prioritizing Melissa over me, but they were just not interested.

Eventually, even though I knew that would be pointless, I decided to call Melissa up for help. She and I have never really gotten along, and I know she doesn’t like me; neither do I like her. But I thought that just for this once, maybe she would be willing to speak to our parents and help me out because I really did not want to get kicked out of my house with just a couple of days before the SAT. But when I called her up and told her to do something about the situation and speak to our parents, she told me to put her on speaker and then she told me that she wanted me to hear it loud and clear that she had already promised her friends that they would be living with her, and she was not going back on that promise. So now she didn’t care if I had to prepare for the SAT or whatever, she wanted me out of the house, and if I couldn’t find any place to live, I could “go live on the streets” if I wanted to, but she just wanted me out. And I think that was probably the most heartless thing that she has ever done, and the fact that my parents were just standing by and not even saying anything after she hung up, that made me realize that I was really not an important part of this family. Also, if I’m being honest, I don’t even think they consider me their family at all.

So that was pretty much the last straw for me, and without another word, I took my bags and went over to a friend’s place. Obviously, it was not an ideal situation because I feel like a burden on their family, even though they have been very nice to me and have told me that I’m welcome to stay with them for as long as I need to because they can understand that I’m in a very difficult situation right now. It has been 4 days since I left home, and yesterday I finally took the SAT, and thankfully it went pretty well in spite of the fact that I’d been very troubled the past couple of days.

But after that, when I came back, I decided to allow myself to actually think about what happened. Ever since I had left, everything had been a blur for me because even though I’d been feeling terrible about what had happened, I hadn’t let myself think about it much because I needed to focus on scoring well, and that’s what I had channeled all my energy into. But now that I didn’t have to worry about the SAT anymore, I could think about how my family had treated me, and the more that I thought about it, the angrier I felt because it was all just so unfair. I really couldn’t see any reason why I couldn’t stay in the house and why I absolutely had to leave because even if I didn’t give up my room, I could always just stay in the living room. But for some reason, they just didn’t want me around. It was humiliating, and I was so upset that I decided to reach out to Jack, Melissa’s fiancé, and tell him all about it. I didn’t have any intentions to ruin things for her as such, I just thought that he should know that this was the kind of person that he was marrying and this was the kind of family that he was marrying into. I honestly had no idea that this one move would have such extreme repercussions.

There is just one week to go before the wedding now, and this morning I found out from my parents that everyone is losing their mind because apparently Jack has decided to call off the wedding, and they know that this is my fault because they are among the very few people who know the real reason why Jack had made this decision. Apparently, after I sent him that message last night, he decided to confront Melissa about it and ask her what was going on, and she decided to tell him the truth: that she had made her parents kick me out of the house so that they could accommodate her friends who had flown in for her wedding. Just like any reasonable person, Jack had also not been happy about it because it seemed very unnecessary to have me kicked out of the house during such an important phase of my life, right before the SATs. I had mentioned that I had been preparing for the past couple of months, and everyone knew about it, including Melissa and my parents.

He came up with the same solutions that I had come up with earlier, like I could have just stayed in the living room, or maybe some of her friends could have come over and stayed with them, or maybe they could have all just stayed in a hotel. But Melissa continued to make lame excuses about it until she finally admitted that she just didn’t want me in the house or even at the wedding. The reason she didn’t want me staying in the house was because she would be visiting frequently to meet her friends and stuff, and even though they would be out most of the time, she just found me really annoying, and she didn’t want to constantly have to see me around, and that was it. The only reason that she didn’t want me around and put me through so much trouble was because she found me annoying. My parents had also been on board with it, which is even worse.

Of course, when she said this to Jack, they got into a huge fight because he accused her of being heartless and told her that she was one of the most selfish people he’d ever met. He demanded that Melissa apologize to me and make it up to me somehow, but she refused to do that because she didn’t like me and she didn’t think that I deserved it. That made the fight even worse, and eventually he said that he couldn’t be with somebody like her and called off the wedding. After the fight, he hadn’t even contacted her and just left the house last night. Until this morning, she hadn’t been taking it seriously, and she thought that he would come back, but when he didn’t return even in the morning, she started going crazy, and that’s when my parents called me.

They told me that since I had been the one who was responsible for all of this drama, I needed to talk to Jack and fix this, and I really didn’t even know what they expected me to say to him because I told him the truth. What was I supposed to do now? Tell him that it was all a lie and that I was just making it up? I couldn’t do that, and I told my parents that even if I could, I wouldn’t be doing that because in my opinion, he had done the right thing, and it was not my responsibility to fix her relationship. It was her relationship; she should be the one fixing it, not me. Besides, she had told me to go live on the streets if I needed to when I had asked her for help, so I really didn’t see any reason to be helping her out right now.

My family has always treated me badly, but I never had anywhere else to go because I’m not very close to anybody else, and my grandparents live out of state. Also, I’m the kind of person who feels really weird asking for help from people, and even showing up at my friend’s place to ask her to let me stay with her was very difficult for me to do. So far, I haven’t ever reached out to anybody to tell them how badly my parents and my sister have been treating me, but now that I had finally found the courage to do it, I was not going to go back on my word and try to fix her relationship with Jack. I told my parents that not only was I not going to speak to him again to try and make this right, I was also going to make sure that everybody found out what kind of a person she was and how terrible they were because they deserved it. I told them I was going to write a post about this and put it on social media for everyone to know exactly why they were calling off the wedding.

Now that’s when my parents started begging me not to do it, and all of a sudden their attitude towards me changed completely because Melissa and Jack hadn’t made any formal announcement yet, and if I decided to go out of my way to tell people about this incident, she would definitely find a way to blame our parents for letting me know that Jack had called off the wedding after that fight. They were desperate to keep it quiet and told me that they were ready to promise whatever I wanted as long as I did not post about this online. I personally think it’s pathetic that they’re acting like this just because they don’t want Melissa to get mad at them, but I also don’t know if it would be the right thing for me to post about this incident right now. So, would I be the A-hole if I made a post and told everyone that my sister’s fiancé had called off the wedding before she made any statement about it herself?

Seeking Support from Grandparents

So I decided not to make any posts. I went through the comments and I realized that I honestly just didn’t want to get more caught up in this mess, and if I spoke about this online, that’s what would happen. I would end up getting dragged into it even more, and I didn’t want to deal with that. So now that I’m staying out of it, I’ve decided to block my parents and Melissa because I really don’t want anything to do with them. I have spoken to my paternal grandparents because even though we don’t meet frequently, I’ve always felt closer to them, and now that I finally decided that I was going to discuss these things with my family because that’s the only way that I can get out of it somehow, I thought I would start with them.

So I told them everything. I told them about the things that had happened recently, and I also told them everything that happened in the past. I don’t really want to get into it, but there have been a lot of incidents in the past where I realize that I’m not really very important to my family. Melissa obviously cannot stand me, and she has made that very clear now, but she has always been like this. It’s just what happened recently was a bit more extreme, but other than that, I’d always known that she did not like me, and the feelings were mutual. I was also aware of the fact that when it really came down to it, my parents would always prefer Melissa over me because she was “the golden child of the family” and she was “the darling daughter” and whatever. But for them to take it to such levels of favoritism, that’s something that even I hadn’t expected.

So basically, I’ve always been treated badly by my family, and so far I never felt comfortable enough to talk about it anyway because I didn’t think anybody was close enough for me to bring it up. I also didn’t like asking people for help, so I’ve always been keeping it quiet. However, after telling Jack about what happened with Melissa and learning about his reaction, I decided that I better start speaking up to people about it because if even Jack, somebody who is not even related to me, could be a decent person and cut ties with my family, I’m sure that my grandparents and other people would do the same. That’s why I finally opened up about this part of my life to my grandparents, and they reacted exactly the way I had expected them to, for which I’m very glad.

I had to speak to them over the phone because they live out of state. I’ve narrated everything to them. My grandfather told me that they were going to fly in by the end of this week, and they were going to make sure that I was taken care of. They didn’t tell me about their plans, but they just told me that whatever my parents have put me through so far and the way that Melissa had behaved with me was not something that they could ever accept. My grandmother was very upset, and she kept apologizing to me because she felt like she had failed her son to be a good man, because if he actually had been a good man, he never would have treated his own daughter like this. That cleared up a major concern of mine: that I was actually my parents’ biological daughter and not adopted somehow. Because of the way they had been treating me so far, it always felt like maybe I was not actually related to them, which is why they felt like they could afford to push me to the sidelines. At least that way I would have had an explanation for their behavior. But now that I know that I’m not even an adopted kid, I can’t understand why they have always hated me.

As for why Melissa never liked me, that has never been a concern of mine because I always just chalked it up to her being an insecure brat who always wants all eyes on her, and that’s why, you know, she couldn’t stand the thought of me, her younger sister, getting as much attention from other people as she does. So that’s why she went out of her way to make me feel small and insignificant in her own ways, and my parents always helped her out. I’m sure that she is very upset about the fact that Jack has decided to leave her over a fight that has technically been caused by me, because if I had never spoken to him about what had happened, he never would have found out, and they would have been getting married this week. But right now everything is just a huge mess, and I’m sure she’s blaming me for it.

From what I know, she hasn’t put out any official statement yet about her wedding, and neither has Jack. I have blocked her, but I haven’t blocked Jack yet, and I still follow him on social media, so I’ll get to know if he decides to post anything. Anyway, that’s the problem to deal with right now. I’m just waiting for my grandparents to come by, and then maybe I’ll finally be able to get out of my friend’s hair. She and her parents have been very kind to me, and she actually seemed a little disappointed when I told her that I was going to be leaving by the end of this week after my grandparents showed up. But I’ll still get to see her at school and stuff, so both of us will be fine, and she knows that this had to happen at some point. I’ll miss her, and I’ll really miss her parents too because they have been great. For the first time in my life, I felt like I was wanted somewhere, which is bittersweet in its own way.

Grandparents Arrive and New Living Arrangements

Hey, so my grandparents finally made it here. They had to wait until the end of this week because they had a lot of work to wrap up before they came by since they were not sure how much time this was going to take. A lot of things have happened in the past couple of days. It has been 4 days since my last update, and yesterday Melissa put out a statement on social media along with Jack saying that they had decided to **postpone their wedding indefinitely**. The post had both their names at the end, so I’m guessing that they had finally managed to discuss things, and that’s the conclusion that they had come to.

It’s surprising that they said that they were postponing indefinitely and not canceling it altogether, because last I’d heard they were calling off the wedding. But I guess it’s reasonable enough because Jack and Melissa have been together since middle school, and they used to have an on-and-off relationship in the past, but in the last few years, they had mostly managed to stay together apart from a few rough patches. I’m guessing that maybe this time also they intend on working it out, and I don’t mind that, good for them. Jack never responded to my message that I sent him about what happened. It was through my parents that I found out that he had picked a fight with Melissa over it and told her that he was going to call off the wedding. But from whatever interactions I’ve had with him so far, I know that he’s a good guy, and if Melissa can make him stay, I think it’ll be a good decision for her.

Anyway, my grandparents came by last night, and they arrived at my friend’s house directly from the airport to thank her parents and my friend for letting me stay with them for so long and taking such good care of me. I was overjoyed to see them and even happier to know that now that they were here, they planned on telling my other grandparents about what was going on as well, but they wanted to speak to me about it first. I’m not that close to my maternal grandparents, so I was kind of doubtful, but then I decided to go through with it, and now everyone knows because we finally called them up last night and told them everything about my family and how they’ve been treating me since forever.

Now, after my grandparents showed up last night, they thanked my friend and her parents, and I was already packed by then, so I finally left with them and moved to the hotel that they were staying in. I have my own room here, so that’s pretty cool. But anyway, last night after we reached the hotel, they called my other grandparents and told them everything, and they were just as furious. Unfortunately, my maternal grandparents cannot fly out to see me right now because my grandma’s extremely sick; she can barely move, so it wouldn’t be wise for her to come over, and I totally understand. But we still had a discussion about everything over the phone, and all of us decided that it would be better for me not to go back home anymore because ever since I had left home and blocked my parents, they had made no attempt to get in touch with me or even check up on how I was doing. The only time they had contacted me was when they wanted to yell at me about the chaos that I had caused by sending Jack that message, but after that, I did not hear from them again. It had been made very clear to me that I was not wanted there.

And now my grandparents believed that since I still had a year to go before school finally ended, I could stay here with my friend if they would be ready to have me still, and then once I graduated from high school, I could move to my paternal grandparents’ place and stay with them until I started college. I thought it was a great idea, and this morning my grandparents and I spoke to my friend’s parents once again and told them about this plan. They seemed more than content to take me back in until high school ended, and my grandparents told them that they would take care of all the expenses for all the trouble that they had gone to. My friend’s parents were so nice that they refused to even take money because they were well off enough on their own and didn’t think it was necessary, but my grandparents insisted on reimbursing them for everything that they were doing for our family.

And I’m really happy that I get to live with my best friend because even in the past, when I sometimes used to complain to her about how my parents treated me, she would constantly tell me that she and her parents would be more than happy to have me over, and I could leave whenever I wanted to. She really is a true friend of mine because I realized that she wasn’t just saying it for the sake of it, she actually meant it, and I think that very few people in the world are lucky enough to find friends like this. At this point, honestly, she’s as good as my real sister, and she’s definitely better than Melissa, that’s for sure. Anyway, I’m glad that my grandparents came over and made arrangements for me. The legal stuff will also be taken care of by them, and they’re getting in touch with my parents as I type this out, and I’ll keep you guys updated on what happens on that front.

No Contact and a Brighter Future

Hi everyone, so a couple of weeks have passed since my last update, and things have changed for the better. For instance, I’m now living with my friend, and I have no contact with my parents. They decided to **sign away their parental rights** over me after being confronted by my grandparents, and now my grandparents have primary custody of me. So I’m going to finish high school, and then I’m going to live with them. None of my grandparents want to stay in touch with my parents, so that’s great, and it serves them right for treating me so badly all these years. I also don’t have to worry about college anymore because earlier I was sure that I would have to either take a student loan or work through college to pay off my tuition, but now my grandparents have reassured me that they’re going to take care of all my expenses, and I have nothing to worry about anymore.

Honestly, I tried really hard to feel bad about the fact that my parents had found it so easy to terminate their parental rights, but all that I felt was relief. I don’t have to deal with my family anymore, and I can’t find any reason to be sad about it. Also, from whatever my grandparents have told me, the rest of the family also knows about how they had been treating me and how they just gave up their rights over me, and I think for a while at least, our other relatives are going to keep their distance from them. A lot of people have messaged me to check up on me, and while they haven’t referred to the situation directly, I know why they have messaged me all of a sudden, and I really appreciate it.

Another thing that happened was that Melissa and Jack officially broke up and called off their wedding. Apparently, it was not just what I had told Jack, but her own behavior had been quite controlling ever since she got engaged, and Jack had been finding it difficult to deal with that anyway, so they had already been fighting a lot, and my revelation had just been the cherry on top. Anyway, I’m not taking their breakup seriously because this has happened many times in the past, and if they want to, I’m sure that they will end up getting back together, but that’s none of my business. I’m just glad that I get to live the way that I want to now, and I don’t have to see or meet my parents or Melissa anymore. My best friend and her parents are great, and I’m a lot happier than I used to be. Even all my other friends have noticed this change because earlier apparently I used to be very stressed out constantly.