Hello everyone, Reddit!
I want to share my story, and I apologize for any mistakes — I don’t know English well and translate everything through a translator.
I want to start this story from early 2016. My uncle — let’s call him Alex — always lived with his mother Jessica (my grandmother) and another grandmother Alice (the sister of my late grandfather, Jessica’s husband) in a village, from his childhood until he was about 27(?).
In the village, when he became an adult, he often drank alcohol, but not every day (although we can’t know for sure because I was small and we lived in another city).
We lived for a long time in a city — let’s call it N — until I was 7. Then my mom decided to move to the capital.
I should also mention that at the moment I am 16 years old, I don’t have a father, and I have a little sister — she’s 10 now.
We rented apartments for 4 years, but then COVID suddenly started, and my grandmother had a stroke. We quickly went to the village.
At that time, my mom had already taken a loan of about 8,000 dollars and invested it somewhere, but it failed, and she didn’t pay this loan while we lived with my grandmothers (because she lost her job).
So we spent 2 years there, living entirely on my grandmothers’ pensions because my mom was unemployed.
When I finished 6th grade, my mom decided that we needed to move again. We moved back to city A (the capital — I’ll keep calling it A for convenience).
There, we lived in a one-bedroom apartment belonging to my other uncle — let’s call him Carl — together with his family (yes, things were that bad).
But then my grandmother Alice was always interested in getting a mortgage, and finally, she saved enough for the down payment and wanted to get the mortgage in my mom’s name. But my mom still had the unpaid loan.
So Alex decided to help her: he took a loan to fully close my mom’s debt. Then the bank reduced the mortgage amount, and it became more favorable for us.
I want to remind you — I was small then and didn’t know a lot. My mom is a very strong, proud woman, and she never tells anyone about her feelings or problems.
That’s how we bought a two-bedroom apartment in city A. First, grandmother Alice and David came to help with the purchase, and later grandmother Jessica joined us.
By then, my mom had started working in a good company, though the pay wasn’t high.
After the purchase, we all began living together (the grandmothers were supposed to leave soon). At home, it was me, my mom, my sister Sunday, Jessica, Alice, and David.
My mom got David a job at her office, and he made new friends. At that moment, we decided that we could “expand” — maybe buy another apartment on his name with a mortgage. We bought a new apartment but without renovation, and it stayed that way for about 2 years.
When my uncle took the mortgage, he also took a loan of about 1,000 dollars (about 2,000 in local currency) to do renovations. But my mom kept that money with her because half of it went to pay off some other debt (maybe the failed business or another investment). No one really explained things to me. The rest went to buy appliances for our shared two-bedroom apartment.
Now, back to my uncle. It was his first time in the big city, and he went wild. He started drinking, partying, skipping work, and embarrassing my mom at her workplace. After some time, he got fired and then went on a drinking binge.
He became a home alcoholic, hanging out in a bar near the house, taking goods on credit in local stores, borrowing from friends — and my mom had to pay all of it.
But that wasn’t all. He began blaming my mom for everything — saying she put her loans on him and didn’t pay them (but my mom simply didn’t earn enough because she was supporting all of us).
He started almost nightly drunken scandals — swearing at my mom, punching walls, telling her to kill herself, wishing her dead. He even took a loan of about $2,000 in my grandmother’s name to pay off his bar and store debts.
We were exhausted. My mom began leaving home, renting rooms with strangers just to avoid seeing him. We stayed with the grandmothers and my uncle in one house — he in a separate room, the rest of us in the big kitchen-hotel room together.
Sometimes my mom would come for a month, but after another fight, she’d leave again.
The grandmothers were almost always with us in the city, but once they went to the village for a month to prepare the house for winter. During that time, my mom came home, and somehow we lived with my uncle… until one day he got drunk and caused another fight.
Sometimes we called the police pretending to be neighbors so he wouldn’t harm us — they’d take him for 3 hours and let him go, and then we still had to pay a fine for “noise” as if the neighbors called.
One night we had to leave and spent the night at the train station — it was awful. There was a blizzard, it was freezing, and at 4 AM we waited an hour for a taxi in the cold.
Last summer, my grandmother Alice passed away. She was the link between my mom and uncle — the kindest person, our happiness. She raised me from childhood and we had a very warm relationship.
We went to the village for her funeral, and even there he caused scandals — but let’s skip that.
When we lived without my mom, he stole our things to pawn for alcohol: my headphones (a gift from a friend), my sister’s phone, grandmother Jessica’s phone, even Alice’s laptop.
Eventually, we moved into the half-renovated apartment. Uncle Carl helped with the renovation almost for free — we only bought materials from my mom’s vacation pay.
But every night my uncle wouldn’t leave me alone. Now I became the “messenger” between him and my mom. At first, she sent him $1 a day for cigarettes, then it grew to $2 every other day.
You might think it’s not much, but my mom doesn’t earn a lot, and she has two kids. I rarely ask her for money because I see how hard it is for her.
Ever since my uncle pawned my grandmother’s phone, she’s been without one — just lying in bed, staring at the wall.
Finally, she persuaded him to go to the village for a while, because it’s calmer there, and he has a best friend with a business who could give him a job.
They left, and now we want to rent out that apartment.
Today was my grandmother’s pension day — she gets a decent pension for a teacher in our country. But remember that loan she took for my uncle? Half of her pension goes to that loan, leaving about $150 for the month.
Recently, my uncle started taking her pension. He changed her phone number in the bank system to his own by tricking her into passing biometric verification. Now he can transfer any amount using the code sent to his number.
Before, I could quickly transfer her small sums (limit $37 without a code) and then send them to her friend, who would withdraw and give them to her. But now he can just take everything at once.
I’m in my last year of school, starting exam prep in September, but every two days I have anxiety because they both pressure me from different sides.
Once, I snapped at my mom because she harshly told me to turn off my phone when my uncle kept calling me late at night. I yelled that I hated them all, that I was enduring them as much as I could, doing everything I could. My mom started crying, apologizing, saying it was all her fault and that she dragged me into all this.
It hurts so much other kids have new phones but I’ve been using the same android for three years
because I don’t want to pressure my mom. Outwardly, we look like a little-below-middle-class family because I keep up appearances — always dressed neatly.
I’m not saying we starve, but we certainly don’t live in luxury. Most of my friends are middle class, and it’s painful knowing I have to deal with problems like this while others my age don’t even think about such things.
Sorry this is all a bit messy — I’m feeling unwell right now. I don’t like thinking about the past; my brain erases bad memories. But if you need details, I can share.
What should my mom and I do? It seems like things get better, but then suddenly he drinks again…
I’m а girl guys