I feel like have prevented my stepdads death
TLDR: I kept a huge secret from my stepdad that I feel like could have changed to trajectory of his choices if I’d told him.
For context, my stepdad was a 2nd father to me and had been in my life prior to me forming long term memories. My sister and I share a mom but my stepdad was her biological dad. I’m going to refer to him and my mom as my parents in this post because my other parents are not contextually relevant.
So when I was around 16 my parents started to have issues, I really started butting heads with my mom, and all in all our family dynamic was very off. My mom had started to bring up this “friend” of hers a lot to all of us. Hanging out with him and grabbing coffees together. I didn’t trust this man because she told me this was the same dude that took her virginity at 13 when he was 18. Gross. My stepdad was super trusting though and she often did this with some of her other male friends but for some reason this felt different to me.
My mom use to make me keep my phone downstairs when I went to bed so that she could check it and so I would go to bed at a reasonable hour but I’d often sneak back downstairs to check it and mess around with it after they went to bed. One night I noticed my mom’s phone charging next to mine and I was nosy so i decided to go through it. I’d done this before and had found things I didn’t want to see but I was super curious about why she had all the sudden become so close with this new man. While I was going through it I had discovered explicit messages that she had exchanged with this new friend. Picture and videos from both parties and written messages expressing desires and plans. My heart was racing at this point because what I had discovered was going to ruin our family. I was so conflicted because I felt like I needed to tell my stepdad but I was doing something I shouldn’t have been doing and would have to admit to that in order to tell him.
Ultimately I never told him and I regret it to this day. a few months after my discovery things went south and fast. Long story short, one day we get home from school and my mom starts with this story that my stepdad was missing and telling all these lies and she was fearful of my stepdad. Had my sister and I convinced he was being sketchy and had us block him and go to the police station to file an order of protection. Come to find out years later that my stepdad had walked in on my mom and her new friend on the couch and had left to stay at a hotel. My stepdad ended up moving back in with his parents and eventually got to have occasional visits with my sister. I realized things weren’t adding up and tried to get visits with him as well. I only got to see him twice in the year after he’d moved out. A few days after the last time I’d seen him he took his own life while his parents were out of town.
I have so much deep regret from the way things transpired. We were suppose to have a lunch together the week after I found out what he’d done and I was going to tell him everything and apologize. Now I can’t shake the feeling that if I had pulled him aside and let him know when I had found out, then he wouldn’t have been blind sided. He would have been able to divorce her and leave on his terms. She wouldn’t have been able to spin him into a villain because he would have had the upper hand and we would have know that he was leaving so we wouldn’t have been able to be convinced that he was having some sort of mental break by our mom. The order of protection wouldn’t have happened, maybe he could have kept the house, and maybe he wouldn’t have gotten as depressed as he did. Most of all, maybe he wouldnt have had to stay away from my sister and I for so long so he could have seen what he needed to keep fighting for. Even if it didn’t stop him from doing what he did I still feel like we wouldn’t have lost the last year we had with him if I had told him. If I hadn’t have been such a dumb teenager I probably would have seen through my mom’s story sooner and if I had told him she probably wouldn’t have had his sudden disappearance to build her story and lies off of.
Im only writing this because anyone I’ve talked to tries to convince me that me telling him wouldn’t have made a difference but deep down I know it’s not true and I just need to get it out to people who aren’t going to spare my feelings.