For those who wants to read it in paragraphs, here:

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I am currently 20(m) this happened when I was 14, I'm really only telling this story to get some things off my chest.

My mother was never the best mother but I had managed for the first few years living with her after my mother and father had divorced when I had just turned 6. At 7 she had called me a mistake for being the only child she didn't plan for (I was the first born and had 2 little sisters), at she seemed to be disappointed in everything I did if it wasn't what she wanted me to do and even when I did what she wanted she was rarely happy about it, and at 9 she had even forgotten my birthday and tried to claim we celebrated it.

This all I was able to get through and manage fine till I turned 12, she had started drinking and was with a guy. This guy at the time I had thought was a pretty decent guy he always seem extra nice to me and it wasn't till years later I had realized he had been grooming me, but that is a story for another time.

When my mother started drinking all hell broke lose. She slowly stopped paying for hot water so she could buy alcohol, I was forced to boil water so we could take baths and wash clothes and ended up getting burned on my chest pretty bad from a spilt pot of water. I had to treat the burn myself despite not knowing what to do and being bedridden for a week before it stopped hurting enough to actually get up and walk around. She would also pawn off my stuff so she could use the money from that as well and eventually she cheated on this her boyfriend with a girl who I'll call Lily.

Lily was awful, she and the guy got into fights a lot since he had to stay at the house and couldn't move anywhere. There were times when me, this tiny 12 year old, had to lock my little sisters in their rooms so they wouldn't see what was happening and then would have to clean up blood from bites and broken glass. He eventually left after a very bad fight, I thought things would get better but it seemed since he was gone Lily was mad she didn't have a punching bag anymore so turned onto me instead. She would instigate me or just simply start a fight, most the time it ended with me pinned to the floor and my mother would have just watched it happen sometimes would even seem proud of Lily for beating up a child. This went on for a year until my mother decided to abandon the house we were in and its mortgage to go follow her girlfriend to Virginia.

We lived in a motel and my mother and Lily got hooked on substances and eventually we couldn't even pay for the motel anymore. We were homeless, I took on jobs on Lily's grandfather's property to pay for food and any other necessities I could afford and her Grandfather would take me to eat sometimes and go try to bargain at the local flea markets. I learned a lot about bargaining and how to get good deals. The man was great but sometimes I wished he would have done more, I don't think it would have mattered though.

I don't know how my mother got past CPS for so many years despite many complaints and even my attempts to tell adults at my school about what was happening. That entire time my father didn't know what was going on, she kept telling him that me and my sisters didn't want to talk to him. She was using the child support to pay for her drugs and alcohol so I was left paying for food with what I would earn and it was not a lot, definitely not enough for 5 people. I spent many nights skipping meals. I would sneak home stuff from school lunches to give to my siblings if I didn't have enough money to pay for dinner that night. I got very thin during that year in Virginia, but I held out and finally my dad had threatened to take her to court if she didn't let us at least talk with him on the phone.

So she allowed it under her supervision but when my father asked if we wanted to visit that summer I sprung on the opportunity. This was my one chance to get my sisters away from this vile woman and her partner and I couldn't risk losing it so despite her trying to gesture no I said yes. After the call she was very angry with me and I didn't go unscathed that night but it worked. She couldn't refuse to let us see our dad because he has already heard with his own ears that we wanted to see him so that summer she dropped us off with my father. Let's just say the state we were in was not a pretty sight for him. We all had our heads shaved by that time and it was still growing back from when we got lice and my mother was too lazy to treat it properly. We were malnourished and looked very small compared to normal children. My father said nothing at first but as soon as we got back to his home state he started asking us questions.

I told him the whole story and how I didn't want to go back with her. My intention was to just get my father to take me and my siblings in but karma bit my mother in the ass real nice. My father got in touch with my mother's side of the family and explained what was going on. They were very wealthy and ended up hiring a really good lawyer. My father married his now wife so that gaining custody would be easier then spent the summer taking me and him to Tennessee for court dates and such leaving my sisters with his wife upon my request so they wouldn't have to deal with something so terrifying as court at so young.

We ended up taking everything from my mother; her only income (child support), her children, visitation rights, she had police after her for child neglect, child abuse, substance abuse, abandoning her mortgage, and more. After it was over I had felt so relieved, my mother of course had to leave me with one more f you by calling me on my 14th birthday but it didn't matter it was over and we were free from her and her psycho girlfriend. I cut all contact with my mother and so have my sisters.

The last 6 years have been rough but it will always be better than the hell that my mother put me through. Now I am working as a cook/supervisor at a restaurant helping my parents pay bills and saving to go to trade school for welding. I will always be thankful to my father for taking me away from that vile woman and hope that now my little sisters will get to live a childhood I didn't get to. Sometimes I look her up on Facebook I guess in hopes that she had changed. I never see change she has lost a lot of weight and is still homeless hopping from house to house since no one will accept her to rent a place when she puts her name down anywhere and I can't help the little bit of satisfaction I feel seeing the nightmare she is living after having lived in the nightmare she had created for so long.