I found a binder and a notebook describing my abuse as a young child

So it’s no secret that my family is dysfunctional. Over the years I have learned a lot of things that are pretty messed up, such as how my mother was not allowed to attend events on my father’s side of the family while she was pregnant (it happened out of wedlock, I was an accident and my father made sure to tell me that me and one of my half brothers being born ruined his life plans fairly often), or how both of my parents stole money from my piggy bank and bank account that was set up for me as a child, but those are nothing compared to this.

Ever since I was little I used to stay at my grandparents’ place a lot. My father would often go out partying or would date around and spend his time playing “dad” to whatever kids his current girlfriend had while completely ignoring his own two kids. My parents divorced when I was very young and they each had had a child from somebody else before having me, so I have two half brothers. S is the older one from my mom and L is the one from my dad, he’s closer to my age and is only a couple months older than I am.

Anyway, a few years ago while looking for something of mine at my grandma’s I found an old notebook hidden under the couch that my grandma had written in. In it she described how her and my grandfather would secretly follow my mom around to various bars, to various men’s homes (she was cheating on my father), and how my father had a private investigator following her too. It also would go over the fact that they had me in therapy as a very young child, I guess due to the custody battle in court, and that I basically never wanted to be around my mother when I was small. That’s just some of it. I always knew I had had a not so great childhood and this kinda helped confirm that.

Then a few months ago it happened again, only this time it was worse. I found an entire binder filled with my father’s handwriting detailing basically everything that happened involving me, my siblings S and L, and my mother for awhile when I was three years old. I learned that not only was my mother going across the state to see strange men, but that she was bringing ME along with her and leaving me alone with them and that my father and grandparents knew but never did anything to try and help me. Not only that, but my eldest half brother S, the one from my mother, was violent and abusive towards me as well. Basically every single day I was being yelled at and beaten up by him. At one point he began beating me with his skateboard because I jumped in a pile of leaves he had raked up. I was three years old at the time when all of this was happening. Three. He was also regularly threatening to kill me and my other half brother L with a knife and told L that if he told his mom what was said that he’d kill her too. My mother was just as abusive, and the binder documents how she once went to slap S for talking back, but then he fell down while trying to get away from her and she began to kick him while he was down. He would have been around 7-9 years old at the time.

My father didn’t seem to do a whole lot to prevent or stop most of this and it only mentions him intervening a couple of times. Later on when I got older and he had sole custody of me he ended up not being a whole lot better and was abusive and neglectful to me as well.

When my mother wasn’t being abusive she was passed out drunk. After a while my mother got a small apartment and her and S moved there, and would regularly try to have me stay over too with the goal of sharing custody of me. It’s written down that three year old me REFUSED to go, that I would cry and beg and scream not to go there. That may seem like normal behavior for a toddler but it went further than that. One time my mother and father had me out somewhere and my mother threatened that if I didn’t listen, that I’d have to go home with her. Evidently I cried and hid behind another relative’s leg and asked to be put in their car, away from my mother.
I have and have always had a pretty decent memory and did remember a few things that were written, such as being taken to specific movies, the way my room at my father’s house looked, what color the carpets and couches were etc, but I have very little memory of what my mother’s apartment looks like. Due to the fact that S was terrorizing me every single day at the other house I have no doubts that he continued to do it there too and that it was likely worse because I didn’t have a sober parent around to step in.

The only memories I have of the apartment my mom had are of being in my room when 9/11 happened and of S intentionally putting a few of those flat thumb tacks in front of my door and then laughing when I got one stuck in my big toe. A part of me feels like whatever else I experienced there was bad enough that my brain just blocked it out entirely, and my therapist thinks that that’s likely what happened too.

These are just the things I remember offhand. There’s an entire binder and notebook FULL of stuff like that. When I was reading the binder for the first time I couldn’t stop, every page I turned revealed something worse and I definitely didn’t get any sleep that night. Some of the things mentioned made me feel sick.

Ever since finding that binder, things have been especially rough for me. I used to be close to my grandparents but after learning that they not only knew what was going on but never did anything to help or put a stop to anything I’ve been struggling a lot. My father spent so many years lying to me saying that there was nothing wrong with my childhood and telling me that I’m the crazy one for having so many mental health struggles and for being neurodivergent (recently diagnosed with CPTSD and AuDHD as an adult, and have struggled with depression and anxiety for as long as I can remember) and now I have solid proof that it’s not me, it was them. I feel like I never had a solid chance at being a functional normal human being.

What’s worse is feeling so alone in all of this. How many people do you know that have something like this that they’ve found? It’s such a difficult thing to talk about, and really the only people that I’ve been able to bring it up to until now are my partner and my therapist. I just wish I could go back in time and scoop little me up into a big hug because he definitely needed it bad. I don’t understand how so many people could treat a THREE YEAR OLD so poorly or turn a blind eye to what was obviously a bad situation and it honestly hurts. My partner’s sister has young kids around that age and just seeing how little they are really made it sink in for me just how small and vulnerable I was when this was all going on and that I had NOBODY to protect me.