My Mother's Secret

I want to make it clear that I do not consent to this story being shared anywhere else. However, I will share my personal experience. When I was 17 years old, I became pregnant with my son. At that time, my family was going through a difficult period. My mother was struggling with depression and disconnected from her husband and our family. She became addicted to the computer, leaving me, as a pregnant teenager, to take care of my younger brother.

I realized that I had been raised to be my mother's protector and support system. Despite the toxic nature of our relationship, I deeply loved her and craved her approval. During this time, my mother confided in me about a man she had met online. They had been talking for several months and had become close friends. Eventually, she revealed that she was in love with him, but there was a significant age difference...he was 27 years old.

I was not happy about this situation, but I felt it was not my place to question her choices. Unfortunately, things took a turn for the worse when my mother decided to divorce my hateful stepfather, leaving us without a place to live and nobody had a job. We ended up moving in with my mother's stepfather, which created a toxic environment he is mentally unstable and an alcoholic. thankfully It was a short-lived arrangement, and eventually, my grandfather(moms bio dad) helped us get an apartment and helped my mom get a nightshift job as a caretaker which I find ironic to be honest looking back.

Unfortunately, she had become even more consumed with her online relationship that she neglected her responsibilities. She would stay on the phone and computer with this man all day, even during times when she should have been sleeping, she didn't even hang up the whole drive to work when my boyfriend would take her. It fell on me, at 17 and pregnant, to take care of my brother and handle household responsibilities. I would even bring meals to my mother's room because she wouldn't even come out to eat.

To make matters worse, my mother lost her job because of her excessive phone use. Neither my boyfriend nor I had jobs, as we were essentially full-time parents to my mother and brother. Additionally, my mother discovered that her online boyfriend had lied to her about his age, but she forgave him because she believed he was her soul mate. It turned out he was only 19 years old, which was deeply troubling to me, but my mother didn't want to hear any concerns I had and would lash out saying that her great grandparents had the same age gap, saying it's ok for men to have that age gap relationship with younger women so it's a sexist double standard to be judging her.

In desperation, my brother reached out to my stepfather for help (his dad), and he came back into our lives temporarily, He gave my boyfriend and I 1,000 dollars and literally kicked us out. Predictably, my mother and stepfather's reconciliation was short-lived, and she eventually kicked him out, but my stepfather had my brother most of the time. At this point, I had given birth to my son and was living in difficult circumstances.

I reached out to my mother for help, but she refused and informed me that her boyfriend had took a bus to visit her for the first time in person and she was moving away with him to his state. Eventually, when my son was around 8 months old, my boyfriend and been broken up, and I moved in with my supportive grandmother while working a part-time job. Life improved for me during this time.

Unexpectedly, my mother called me, begging for help to return home with her boyfriend. I know this is wild but my stepmother, my late father's wife, agreed to let them move in with her, yeah I know my family dynamics are crazy. When I met her boyfriend, Kyle, he appeared very young, and their relationship was very clingy and uncomfortable. They were together constantly, every minute of the day to the point it was just incredibly unhealthy.

Over the next ten years, the relationship between my mother and Kyle became increasingly toxic. They lived with me and my husband at various times, and Kyle struggled with drug addiction. There were many more troubling events that would take years to explain. My mother was staying at my house because of Kyle's drug use and infidelity, but were constantly on the phone going back and forth and i knew she would go back, I wanted to distance myself from the drama and toxicity, I already had a full plate and I had been dealing with this for years now, and to make it worse i had literally just given birth to twins.

My mom had been staying at my house for a few days at this point and my brother called me in a state of panic. He had conducted a background check on Kyle to try and dig up dirt to finally end this toxic cycle finally....but he found out some real life sickening lifetime movie type information... Kyle was not the age he claimed to be; he was actually a year YOUNGER than me. Realizing that my mother must have started a relationship with him when he was only 15 or 16 years old and slept with him and everything at that age, I confronted her. She broke down in tears, admitting that she didn't know and feeling disgusted with herself.

As I comforted her, it dawned on me that they were married and filed taxes together. She knew how old her was the whole freakin time. Things started to make sense, such as why Kyle's mother had such animosity towards my mom in the past and why she had said she would make my mom suffer and why my mother had called me begging for my help to return to our state. She had fled.

It has been almost a year since then, and I haven't spoken to my mother. She and Kyle have moved back to his state. It makes me physically ill to know what my mother did and what that makes her. I have five sons and a lifetime of trauma she gave me to heal from. I don't know why but i finally wanted to share my story.