This is very hard for me to share but I need to get this out.

My parents always had a very messed up relationship (eventually they divorced. It still wasn’t normal coparenting after that)

Us kids were thrown in between their fights and told things we were way too young to know and had no business ever knowing. We were told simply to be hurt rather than protected as their children

These days I have a good relationship with my mother

My father has dementia and left the state to live with someone he met on the internet

Our relationship is now strained for various reasons.

Me and my siblings have decided to visit him in a week. I pretty much saw it as a way to try to have a last good memory with him as we haven’t spoken in years.

I’m uncomfortable with the thought of going and seeing who he’s living with and pretending everything is okay as we have always done. That alone was something I had to prepare myself for but at least my siblings will be with me.

Now today I found out some things I never knew. I knew my mom and dad had a lot of mental and emotional abuse, my mom was no angel either, but today I found out more than I knew.

I found out my older siblings would hear my mom being raped by my dad. They have also seen her face covered in stitches. I found out my father tried locking my naked mother outside our home as I slept. I found out my father also made my mom abort a child before me. I can’t believe there could’ve been another sibling in my family. It hurts me they aren’t here. At the same time if they were here I probably wouldn’t have been born. I wish it could’ve been all of us as I have felt there was someone missing.

This is a lot of information for me to get at once. (I’m in my 30s.)

I’m disturbed. My dad raped my mom… he humiliated her so much but I didn’t know he tried locking her outside naked and then laughed about it. My boyfriend is out of the country so I haven’t been able to talk to anyone about this. I am supposed to see my mom tomorrow but now I feel emotional thinking of her. I don’t know how to feel about my father other than disgust. I don’t know how to visit him soon knowing what I now know. I wish a lot of things went differently in my life.