So far I've only been a casual lurker around here, skimming through posts, but I started really reading today.

I see plenty of "at least you have parents". I have them too, and a family. But I always feel as if they're joining outsiders to make me miserable. Have always felt that way since childhood. I could be bullied by anyone and I wouldn't give a damn. But coming home to find not comfort but more bullying from family really hurts. They support the people who take pleasure in making me miserable. They outright tell me I deserve it, good riddance.

It took many years and a lot of courage to confront them about it but they just brush me off, as if it's a recent, isolated incident. I've confronted them multiple times but to no avail.

We see a number of crazy and/or homeless people everyday. When I get into an argument with my family, they tell me I should join them because I'm no better. I know I have problems too. I've gone for help for a brief time with my family in my last year of high school. But my family didn't accept any of it. They thought it was a waste of time, I was just being a troublemaker and should stay away from the crazies so I wouldn't be labeled one. I stopped going all of a sudden because no matter how much better I'd feel after the session, my family would undo it all and make me feel worse than before. Just the things they tell me on the way home would do it.

I feel as if I can sympathize with those people, more and more each time they bring it up to use against me. If they had a family, they're probably in their current state because of family like mine. I'm sure all of them want to live a good life too. But what for, when you know the people closest to you in your life don't care about you? They only want to share your success if you bring fame and/or fortune to them and will use any means to get rid of you if you can't bring them enough of it. These people are family related by blood, not people who are family from a political marriage, and they're just as shallow as strangers if not more.

Having family doesn't mean a thing unless they genuinely cared. They resent me for not being gifted like those kids they see on TV, for not having an army of men after me, for not marrying into a rich family that would give them a fortune like the women they read about in the tabloids, for not having kids by my age like someone else already did. They resent me for making them look bad for not having or being all these things. Why can't I live the life I want? I'd rather not have a family at all if this is what family is about.