L
lovedance4ever
Guest
I am in great need of help dealing with a very painful situation. To give you a little background…
I’m a 21 year old female, and since I was 12, I have been babysitting for three children (two girls who are now 17 and 15, and a boy, now 12). As they grew, I became very close with their family, their parents even referring to me as an adopted daughter. I especially bonded with the oldest (who I will refer to in this thread as Beth), who was like the little sister I never had. We did everything together; one summer we even took a road trip to Pennsylvania, her parents saying that I was the only young adult they would trust with their children like that. When they got too old for babysitting, I’d still come over, chaperone for parties, assist with housework, schoolwork, and drive them to their extracurricular activities. Being that they are also a very devout Catholic family, we understood each others families better than a lot of people understood us.
However, over the past year, things began to steadily decline. Beth was always a very responsible child, even into her early teen years. I was impressed by how un teen-like she was. Then she started mingling with this bad group of kids at dance, and at her music school and things turned very sour. She became boy crazy, ALWAYS attracted to the bad boys in the group. When we would go out, to the mall for example, she would flirt with men twice, even three times her age. Sometimes I think she didn’t quite realize how serious her actions could be if she gave an older guy the wrong idea. But I know she did these things because she wanted her friends to think she was cool. And then she slowly started to turn on me.
We would make plans, and she’d cancel if a better offer came along. She referred to me as a chauffeur, and said it was easy to take advantage of me. I knew Beth still considered me to be like her big sister, but I was also becoming very disappointed in the path she chose to start following. So I decided to distance myself a bit, only for a little while. I needed to cool off, and I also realized she needed to grow up. I still loved her and her siblings dearly, but I wanted a little time away. I did not expect what happened next.
I got an instagram message from her idiot boyfriend, saying something like “how could you ignore Beth like this? No wonder you have no friends and nobody likes you.” That really struck a nerve; Beth and I confided everything in each other, and she knew that I didn’t have many friends at all. I then decided I would send her a private message on facebook, not wanting to make it any more public than it had become. Instead of responding to me like an adult, she forwarded the message to her boyfriend, who again answered me publicly on instagram, spewing lies and vulgarities. And then in a final message, Beth said she had no problem walking away from me.
That was it. She and her sister deleted me from all of their social networking accounts. I made an attempt to contact their parents, writing them a letter explaining why I haven’t been around (they relied on me for A LOT). But I never got a response. Additionally, all of our mutual friends began to take me off of their facebook and instagram.
I’ll never be able to put into words how much I loved those kids. For over eight years, they made my life so worth living. And now? Nothing. I guess what bothers me the most is why their parents didn’t even choose to know what was going on. I mean…I babysat and ran errands for them every single week for years. This all happened in one fell swoop…it still feels like I’ve had the wind knocked out of me. I NEVER expected it to get this bad.
This happened in early February. In May, a family friend of theirs passed away, and Beth called my home crying one evening. I was out so my dad took the phone call. She said “we are calling all of the families who are close to us.” That was perplexing to me, since I hadn’t heard from any of them for months, and it seemed as though they wanted nothing to do with me.
I never called back. She didn’t ask for me specifically…maybe I was wrong to not call, but I was scared and didn’t know what to expect. I figured she just wanted to deliver the message and nothing more.
It feels like a piece of my heart is gone. When I was reorganizing my room the other day, I found all of these old drawings they used to do for me when they were little. And I lost it. The park we used to go to every weekend during the summer will never feel the same again to me. I’ll never forget how the youngest used to jump on my lap when he was 3 years old, and beg me to tell him stories. It will never be the same for me again.
I don’t know how to handle this. I do not have any friends as it is, though I try many things to distract myself. I play a lot of basketball, read, write, do housework, run errands with my family, and my dad also spends a lot of time with me, going to summer festivals and such. But it’s not the same. Some days I feel like I’m finally feeling better, and then it hits me again and again.
How do I pick up the pieces and move on when sometimes it hurts so much that my breath is taken away from me? Please pray for this awful situation I seem to have gotten myself into. Advice is also welcome.
I’m a 21 year old female, and since I was 12, I have been babysitting for three children (two girls who are now 17 and 15, and a boy, now 12). As they grew, I became very close with their family, their parents even referring to me as an adopted daughter. I especially bonded with the oldest (who I will refer to in this thread as Beth), who was like the little sister I never had. We did everything together; one summer we even took a road trip to Pennsylvania, her parents saying that I was the only young adult they would trust with their children like that. When they got too old for babysitting, I’d still come over, chaperone for parties, assist with housework, schoolwork, and drive them to their extracurricular activities. Being that they are also a very devout Catholic family, we understood each others families better than a lot of people understood us.
However, over the past year, things began to steadily decline. Beth was always a very responsible child, even into her early teen years. I was impressed by how un teen-like she was. Then she started mingling with this bad group of kids at dance, and at her music school and things turned very sour. She became boy crazy, ALWAYS attracted to the bad boys in the group. When we would go out, to the mall for example, she would flirt with men twice, even three times her age. Sometimes I think she didn’t quite realize how serious her actions could be if she gave an older guy the wrong idea. But I know she did these things because she wanted her friends to think she was cool. And then she slowly started to turn on me.
We would make plans, and she’d cancel if a better offer came along. She referred to me as a chauffeur, and said it was easy to take advantage of me. I knew Beth still considered me to be like her big sister, but I was also becoming very disappointed in the path she chose to start following. So I decided to distance myself a bit, only for a little while. I needed to cool off, and I also realized she needed to grow up. I still loved her and her siblings dearly, but I wanted a little time away. I did not expect what happened next.
I got an instagram message from her idiot boyfriend, saying something like “how could you ignore Beth like this? No wonder you have no friends and nobody likes you.” That really struck a nerve; Beth and I confided everything in each other, and she knew that I didn’t have many friends at all. I then decided I would send her a private message on facebook, not wanting to make it any more public than it had become. Instead of responding to me like an adult, she forwarded the message to her boyfriend, who again answered me publicly on instagram, spewing lies and vulgarities. And then in a final message, Beth said she had no problem walking away from me.
That was it. She and her sister deleted me from all of their social networking accounts. I made an attempt to contact their parents, writing them a letter explaining why I haven’t been around (they relied on me for A LOT). But I never got a response. Additionally, all of our mutual friends began to take me off of their facebook and instagram.
I’ll never be able to put into words how much I loved those kids. For over eight years, they made my life so worth living. And now? Nothing. I guess what bothers me the most is why their parents didn’t even choose to know what was going on. I mean…I babysat and ran errands for them every single week for years. This all happened in one fell swoop…it still feels like I’ve had the wind knocked out of me. I NEVER expected it to get this bad.
This happened in early February. In May, a family friend of theirs passed away, and Beth called my home crying one evening. I was out so my dad took the phone call. She said “we are calling all of the families who are close to us.” That was perplexing to me, since I hadn’t heard from any of them for months, and it seemed as though they wanted nothing to do with me.
I never called back. She didn’t ask for me specifically…maybe I was wrong to not call, but I was scared and didn’t know what to expect. I figured she just wanted to deliver the message and nothing more.
It feels like a piece of my heart is gone. When I was reorganizing my room the other day, I found all of these old drawings they used to do for me when they were little. And I lost it. The park we used to go to every weekend during the summer will never feel the same again to me. I’ll never forget how the youngest used to jump on my lap when he was 3 years old, and beg me to tell him stories. It will never be the same for me again.
I don’t know how to handle this. I do not have any friends as it is, though I try many things to distract myself. I play a lot of basketball, read, write, do housework, run errands with my family, and my dad also spends a lot of time with me, going to summer festivals and such. But it’s not the same. Some days I feel like I’m finally feeling better, and then it hits me again and again.
How do I pick up the pieces and move on when sometimes it hurts so much that my breath is taken away from me? Please pray for this awful situation I seem to have gotten myself into. Advice is also welcome.
