u/GothMoleRat

So I’m in this one class that’s required for my major called “Critical Thinking”, it isn’t hard and pretty self explanatory, but the issue with this class is that at the beginning of the year we got placed with a random group and told that this is the group we’re going to stay in until we leave this class. Isn’t the worst, plus if anything that means I don’t have to force myself to talk to new people, and that’s always a bonus for me.

Issue with this though, is very quickly I got singled out as the “smart person” of the group. I’m good with public speaking, I can make really nice presentations rather quickly, and I’m good at writing when I have to be. Everyone else in my group, all seem to struggle in all of those boats and quickly asked me for help in basically every regard.

Helping them isn’t the issue, at that I actually am used to doing all of the people and writing stuff in group projects and overall don’t mind it. My issue lies when it quickly turned from, “hey can you help make the presentation look better?” To flat out none of them doing any of the work at all, me taking in the entire project load every week for our weekly presentations, and the backing off of my work and even bringing down my grades a few time from what would be straight A’s because none of them can seem to be bothered with giving a presentation without sounding like they’d rather throw themselves in front of a semi causing me to do all of the speaking. I’m now on my 5th presentation with this group of idiots who put all the responsibility onto me since I’m the “smart one” and then reminding me how hard their lives are with them being mostly Finance and Computer Science majors and how easy I must have it as a Criminal Justice major.

I get not everyone is good at speaking, I’m not expecting everyone to even want to do presentations, but my god would it kill you to even create a basic Google Slide???

Context: At 13 my half brother who was 17 would start to rape me almost daily. At some point when I was 14 the rape caused me to not have my period for 3-4 months straight. I noticed I started to experience the symptoms of pregnancy and in a desperate attempt to get rid of the child I ended up starving myself for a week before attempting suicide in hopes of escaping being a mother at 14 to my brothers rape incest baby.

My boyfriend and I have been together for 4 years, he’s genuinely the sweetest and the only person I’ve ever felt safe with being sexual with without having to drug myself to not have a panic attack while having sex. A few weeks ago while we were getting it on we completely forgot about wearing a condom since it was very spur of the moment and both of us were extremely excited and being idiots. While we were having sex he ended up finishing in me by accident and by the time we finally realized I ended up completely panicking, downing 3 things of Plan B, and had to have him calm me down as I completely spiraled about how I’m not ready to be a mom. He reminded me that I’m on the Copper IUD, I took more than enough Plan B, and if anything goes wrong he promises me that he’ll pay for the abortion. But now a few weeks has passed and it’s been 50 days since my last period and I’m constantly at the being of breaking down. All I can think about is the same feelings I felt at 14, how I’m not ready to be a mom and how desperately I want to have control of my body and not have some creature grow inside of me when I’m not ready to be a mom. I genuinely have no idea how to calm my nerves, my boyfriend has made his promise clear that he’ll pay for the abortion and promises to never tell anyone for our safety but my head still feels like it’s spinning.

When I was 13 my half brother who was 17 moved in with our mom and my dad after having just gotten into contact with us after years of his dad isolating him from our mom. I never knew him growing up, the last time I saw him I was maybe 3? Truly, I honestly forgot he even existed for a majority of my childhood. Shortly after he moved in he started to get extremely physically affectionate, would shower me with gifts and praise, and basically be the only “good” person in my life.

Our mom was a drug addict and deeply abusive and neglectful and my dad was stationed overseas and made it clear how little he wanted to do with me or my mom. I had already been in CPS custody 6-8 times in my life, and on top of all of that I went to an all girls religious school of which I had never once learned anything about sex other than even thinking of it was a sin, so even at 13 I never thought about it and would freak out at even the idea of middle school relationships because it was a sin.

My brother knew I had nobody to go to, I had no friends since I was the socially awkward loner, I had no mother since she was always on drugs, I had no dad since he was across the globe and never answered his phone, and I had no family members to go to since they all lived states away. I only had him, and he’d remind me constantly of that fact, that he’s the only person who loves me and is there for me. Then the night when he raped me and told me how he did what he did because he loved me and if I ever told anyone about what happened not only would they never believe me, but he’d make my life a living hell. He’d record him raping me, he’d tie me up with zip ties and physically hold me down, he’d hold knives to me, and this would continue on for years until I was 17 and I had completely given up on fighting anymore.

My issue with why I feel like nobody ever takes me seriously is that when people talk about sexual abuse we only tend to cover the extreme black and white cases of the 30 year old neighbor who kidnapped and raped the 5 year old girl next door or the 40 year old none related uncle who raped their 8 year old niece (not to discredit those cases either, those are complete tragedies and deserved to get spoken out about), but when people are met with cases like mine, a 13 year old sheltered and isolated child and their 17 year old half brother, people tend to want to try and sympathize more with the perpetrator and tend to disregard the victim. Especially in a case like mine where I never told anyone for years about my brother because he’s just that, my brother. I honestly just feel like there’s a massive double standard as to who gets respected and their stories heard compared to who gets blamed, my brother was a pedophile and a rapist, and yet I’ve heard countless times people defending him since I was 13 and “13 year olds know better”. I can’t be the only one to feel this way, right?

Long story short, I didn’t grow up around my half brother and don’t really even know who he was until he moved in with our mom when he was 17 and I was 13, from there he’d start to sexually abuse me until the age of 18 due to him being extremely physically violent (chasing me with knives, strangling me almost unconscious, pointing guns at me, etc.) to keep me from speaking out, but that’s besides the point.

My curiously is how common is it that a sibling sexually abuses another sibling? Is sibling sexual abuse treated any differently from other sexual abuse cases? How would I even begin to have this conversation with a therapist?

So my friend (20F) is currently on her second year of college and is already going through it rough. She was already the person to struggle throughout high school and I too fell in that same boat. Both of us were the people to barely pass with a 3.0 on a good day and both of us came from backgrounds of which we struggled in schools due to rough home lives and constant moving. So when she originally came out about how she’s going to college for Radiology I gave a bunch of benefit of the doubt, since she always mentioned how I’m doing pre law and have an easy 3.95 GPA, so it isn’t impossible for someone to struggle in high school and then succeed in college.

Well here’s the thing, she’s failed basically all of her classes to this point and although on her second year, she has gotten almost nowhere. Here’s just a basic list so far…

-She failed the basic intro to college class because she refused to do the work and argued with the professor about how useless it is and how she doesn’t want to think that far ahead about her future.
-She’s failed Chemistry twice now and is on her third time since she refused to listen to her guidance counselor and even argue with them until they kicked her out of their office since the counselor mentioned she needed a B in Chemistry to pass with her major, not a D-
-She barely passed English because she don’t want to do the final project since she doesn’t like writing scientific essays
-She failed human biology and couldn’t even barely name basic bones in the body like the femur and then argued with the professor about them being bias towards her since she has dyslexia and can’t be expected to remember bones.
-The literal only 3 classes she’s passed with A’s were all Welding classes, that’s it.

I do care about her, but watching her sit there and kick and scream about how she’s going to go to medical school and be a doctor when she can’t handle any form of authority or pressure has been a dumpster fire. So a couple of nights ago I flat out told her I really think she should just do welding, she seems to like it, it’s a good paying job, it’s high demand, etc. her response? “No, I’m going to be a doctor and make good money and have nobody tell me what to do again”. At this point I finally got so fed up with this happening again and again I flat out told her, “No, you aren’t. You’re failing all of your classes, being a doctor doesn’t mean you can do whatever, it’s years of education and being told what to do for the rest of your life, if you can’t even follow basic instructions now then there’s no way you’re being a doctor. It won’t kill you to maybe do something easier”. From here she blew up about my degree choices and how I’ll never get into law, etc, etc. For the last few days she’s doubled down a lot more on how she’s going to be a doctor and prove everyone wrong, particularly me. So AITA for telling her she shouldn’t be a doctor?

I know I should hate my brother, he started raping me when I was 13 and he was 18, having just moved in from his bio dads house into our moms house. This would continue for years, years until I was 18 and he finally got kicked out of our moms house for refusing to get a job or an education and laying around the house all day drinking and playing video games.

I should hate him, he was an extremely physically violent and manipulative person who tormented me for years. But that’s the thing, I can’t even be mad at him. I have to see him at every family reunion, I have to hear his voice whenever I call my parents since he now lives with our moms house again, I honestly have accepted the fact that he’ll never leave my life and I’ll always be made to deal with him and play pretend like everything is normal. I can’t even hate him, just feel a deep sense of sadness whenever I think of him, and can only blame myself for years of never telling anyone about what he’s done to me and still to this day being too afraid to do anything legally about him out of fear of hurting the lives of my other family members in the process.