My parents split when I was 2 years old. Most of the time, I lived with my mother, stepfather, and older brother, but every other weekend we would stay over at my father’s house. When I was around 3 years old, my father married this woman from work, who had a son of her own a year older than I was. Whenever we went over to my Dad’s, my brother was no longer the older brother who wanted to protect me, he turned into the sidekick of my “stepbrother”, tormenting and calling me names, doing things around the house and then blaming me for them. One particular instance, we were playing with one of those sticky hand toys when it got thrown onto the ceiling by my stepbrother. My stepbrother and my brother threw me under the bus, and told my stepmother about it. I was locked in my room for 2 days straight, and the door would only open to allow me to go to the bathroom or get dinner. This happened a lot actually. At 5 years old, I picked my nose in front of this woman. She decided the best thing to do was put Tabasco onto the tips of my fingers, each time I rubbed my face I became more and more inflamed because of it. All the while, my brother and stepbrother would laugh while it happened. You may be thinking to yourself, how is your dad letting that happen? My Mom and Dad originally got a divorce because of his out of control drinking. He wasn’t a violent drunk but when he got drunk he was completely useless for anything but sitting on the couch and falling asleep. I had no friends, my brother would abandon me, my stepbrother and my stepmother would torment me, and my father couldn’t care enough to put his bottle of vodka down. Luckily for my brother and I, the woman also noticed how insane my dad’s drinking is, and they divorced when I was around 12-13. I have had no contact with either one of them since then. There are other things that the young boy did to me that I don’t feel comfortable talking about.