Step Dad Wanted Me Gone

When I was 15, My parents got a divorce. It happened right before holiday season. My mother accepted me, and my father seemed like he disapproved of me being gay. My father throughout my life had been physically and verbally abusive to me from when I first started remembering, to about 13 or so. Which is when I finally got up the courage to tell him to deal with his own issues or I would call the police.

My mother started dating again. After a week or two of dating a guy, she brought him home to meet me, and my 18 year old brother. We got along alright, but then my mother told him that I was gay. This changed his attitude towards me, instead of welcoming me into his life he began to isolate me from my mother. At this point my father had moved 600 miles away to live with his brother, taking my brother with him. I didn’t want to live with him because he was so abusive earlier in my life that I was afraid of what he would/could do to me without my mother there to stop him. So I decided to live with my stepfather’s negligence.

When my mother and him became engaged, I knew that I had a problem. A few weeks before he moved in, he got exceedingly hostile towards me. I was forced to move out at the age of 15 into my 20 year old friend’s apartment. We both lied to the landlord and told him I was 18 and a senior in high school. He gladly let me stay with my friend. After a few days my friend, who was bi, started making advances towards me. Until one night, he raped me. After that happened I decided I needed somewhere new to live.

I didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t want to be forced to live with my father in one of the more impoverished neighborhoods I’ve seen. I also, for the longest time, thought it was my fault. I actually believed that he raped me because I was a bad person, or that I had been asking for it. Looking back, this was not the case. After living on the streets for several days, visiting friends for food and bathing, I decided it was in my best interest for me to go and live with my dad. So I called him up and told him that I needed a place to stay. That I had been kicked out by my new stepfather and had nowhere to live.

He drove all 600 miles that night, calling in sick for work at his new job, and picked me up. During that car ride, I had never cried more in my life, I cried for 6 hours straight. When we got back to his brother’s house, he was nicer than he had ever been to me. He worked harder than I’d ever seen someone work. He had absolutely no money, and was nearly drowning in debt from what he got from the divorce. He spent 80% of his time working and the other 20% sleeping, but he worked until we could afford to rent a place. We lived there for about 2 months, and we finally got out of the slump we were in. We moved to a nicer city. To this day I still believe I owe him my life. To this day, he is still the best father ever. To this day, I’m happy.

I had learned a lot from this whole experience, and while I would never wish to go through it again, I never wished it didn’t happen.