Step Bro Was Stealing My Stuff to Give to His GF & My Mom Took His Side. So I Ran Away to My...

step bro was stealing my stuff to give to his GF and my mom took his side so I ran away to my dad's house and found out she's been using his child support money to buy luxury items hey so I 16f recently moved out of my mom's house and have been staying with my dad she's begging me to come back home and give her a second chance but I really don't feel like doing that the reason for that is her family my stepdad Rick and Stepbrother Liam 16m my parents got divorced 7 years ago and

she started dating Rick about 3 years back after being together for one year Rick and Liam moved in with us and my mom got married to Rick about 8 months ago living with these people has been a challenge because Rick and Liam don't really care about me and they try to avoid me as much as they can and the same goes for me but ever since they moved in my mother has also become quite distant and spends most of her time with them and doesn't seem to care about me it used to bother me a

lot because even though she and my father have shared custody of me I spend most of my time staying with her in the initial years after after their divorce I used to divide my time equally between the two of them and go back and forth but then four years ago my dad struck gold at his company and received a huge promotion it meant more responsibilities much higher pay than what he used to receive basically the work but it also meant having to move away from his work he also became a lot busier because of his

responsibilities and I did not feel bad about that but I do have to admit that I did miss seeing him more frequently because after that happened we had to adjust the custody Arrangement accordingly as well I had school and stuff and I couldn't afford to see him as frequently as I used to because I would require a lot more travel so I started staying with my mother throughout the week and for a couple of weekends in the month my dad would arrange for me to come to see him or visit me himself it was tedious

and exhausting for both of us but we had managed to stick to it so far I was planning on moving in with him after I graduated high school because honestly after my mom got remarried I had no interest in living with her anymore since it felt like she didn't care for me and her priorities had changed I had tried to talk about it to her a couple of times but every time she had just reassured me that I was still a priority for her and that her relationship with Rick and Liam was not going to

change anything between us since I was her Flesh and Blood after all but then what happened recently really showed me that also reassurances that she had been feeding me were just words and she didn't actually mean any of that recently I found out that Liam had been stealing my very expensive makeup and a couple of my shoes so that he could give them to his girlfriend as presents he and I used to go to the same middle school together and now we are in the same High School together as well that's actually how my mom

met his dad since they're both single parents and happened to run into each other at some school event I know for a fact that Liam has been dating one of the girls from our year since middle school and because we are in the same year I follow her on social media as well a couple of weeks ago I had this pair of really expensive sneakers go missing and I had no idea where they were until I saw his girlfriend wearing it in one of her posts this is not even the first time that something of

mine has gone missing because as I had mentioned earlier even a couple of my makeup items and other pairs of shoes were also nowhere to be found they were expensive as well because they were my dad's gifts to me and I really cherished them and kept them carefully so I knew that somebody in the house was doing this I had even complained to my mother about it and she had fired the housekeeper over this but even after that things continued to go missing and eventually she just told me that it must have been me who

had misplaced these things but when I saw that girl wearing those sneakers in her post I decided to ask her if she had been receiving more gifts than usual from Liam this girl and I are not friends we are not even close and we don't really speak to each other but this seemed like an emergency so I decided to reach out to her without caring about how weird it would seem surprisingly she did reply to me and told me that she had ended up receiving a lot more gifts from Liam than usual in the past

couple of weeks they were mostly just makeup items and shoes and they were really expensive ones too so she was really happy I don't know why that girl hadn't thought to question how exactly he was able to afford any of this but when I found out from her that it had indeed been stealing my stuff and giving it to his girlfriend I lost and I ended up telling her that all these things were originally mine and he had basically been stealing my stuff so he could impress her with these gifts she did see that message

but she did not reply after that and I don't really care if she replies or not because that's literally the last thing on my mind because after that conversation with her I decided to take it up with Liam and showed him the screenshots of our chats and asked him why would he start stealing my things especially personal items like makeup at first he tried to deny everything and told me that he had been saving up his pocket money to buy her these things but I was not a fool both of us get the same amount

of pocket money from our respective parents and it's not enough to even cover half of the price of the shoes however when I brought it up with our parents that day they had a very weird reaction that I did not understand instead of reprimanding him his dad actually started to come out in support of him his father actually defended him and turned the entire thing on me by saying that it was my fault for constantly showing off how expense of the presents that my dad got for me were it was natural for Liam to feel

weird about it and since he couldn't exactly use the makeup and choose for himself he decided to try and impress his girlfriend with it it might have been an immature decision on his part but Rick claimed that he could totally understand where it was coming from it was just a really stupid defense because honestly I don't show off the presence that my dad gets for me because I didn't think that they would even care and the way Rick tried to defend Liam I honestly thought that was a projection of what he felt because I guess

he was insecure that he couldn't afford the same kind of expensive gifts for his son and felt bad that my father his wife's ex-husband was in a position where he could afford to buy me such expensive things on a regular basis and I guess that's why he tried to turn the entire thing on me but I was not going to let him make me feel like I was the one at fault and this was totally normal because I knew for a fact that it wasn't my mom was in the room as well throughout but she

refused to comment on anything and it was just me fighting against Rick and Liam on my own I even turned to her and asked her to help me out here because it felt like Rick was just refusing to see my point on purpose because that would require him to acknowledge the fact that his son had messed up but my mom refused to weigh in and instead she just told me that she could understand that I was having problems with Liam but there was no need for me to come and act like a tattletail to get

him into trouble she then told me that this was between me and my brother and that I needed to deal with it without getting them involved that put an end to the entire argument and Liam went to his room and our parents went to theirs while I kept freaking out at all of them but there was nobody there to even hear me out because that's how little they cared it was incredibly frustrating because even though Liam had admitted to the fact that he had been taking my things there was literally no punishment for him in

in fact Rick had come to his rescue and my mother had refused to even say a word against that I felt so hopeless and let down after that incident I decided that I was going to stay with my father even if it required me to drop out of high school I packed my things that night to the best of my abilities and sneaked out of the house really late at night when I knew that everyone would be sleeping lucky for me I had a friend whose older sister had a car and the two of them

drove me to my dad's house we arrived about 4 hours after we had left at around 6:00 in the morning and my dad was really surprised to see us there so early but he invited us all in and then I explained everything that had happened which had led me to come stay with him so abruptly he already knew for a fact that I had been feeling neglected while staying with my mom but had been motivating me to just fight it out for a couple of years more because after that I would have graduated high school

and I wouldn't have to worry about where I stayed but after hearing me out he told me that he would arrange something for me because it was clear that I just couldn't live with him anymore and honestly I felt the same way I just couldn't live with these people so I was glad to have him on my side my friend and her sister drove back home the next day and my friend has told everybody in school that I have mono which is why I wouldn't be attending school for the next couple of weeks until I

recover and it'll be easy enough to get a medical certificate to have my absence excused so I'm not worried about that what I'm actually worried about is my mother because the day after I left home when she discovered that I was not there she called me up and started texting me about where I was and she hasn't stopped apologizing to me since then I really hate the fact that I'm having to break her heart because it's been one week since I left home and she just keeps begging me to come back home but I really

don't feel like I want to it's become a moral dilemma for me because I also just found out about a couple of more things from my father that I did not know earlier and that has made things significantly more complicated for me for instance my dad was really upset that my mom had been treating me like this and had been talking about a lot of things and that's how I found out that he had been paying a massive amount of Child Support ever since he received his promotion and had to move away after he received

his promotion my mother demanded 20% of his income as child support because she thought it was only fair since I would be spending most of my time with her and would only be seeing him on the weekends before his promotion since they had similar income and shared custody my dad didn't have to pay any child support but after that he agreed to my Mom's demand because he thought that it was fair as well since now he had a significantly higher income and it was true that she would be taking care of me for most of

the time after that he had his suspicions that maybe the money wasn't going into taking care of me and he had even spoken to my mother about it several times but she had always always reassured him that she was putting aside the money for my future and eventually that money would make its way back to me he had just taken her word for it because he did not want to create drama but after hearing what I had to say about the time that I spent at my mom's place he wasn't so sure that she was

being truthful with him in fact he had his fair reasons to doubt her because he did follow her on social media and he had seen that she had made a couple of expensive purchases in the past and I could vouch for it in the past couple of years my mom had been very clever about her splurges making sure to space them out so that no nobody could suspect her of misusing the child support in the past couple of years she had bought quite a lot of expensive jewelry clothes and accessories for herself she had also

bought really expensive gifts for Rick and Liam in the past and occasionally for me as well but most of the time she would just skip buying stuff for me because my dad was already getting me expensive gifts and she didn't want to spoil me more Rick and my mom are both middle management at best so I did find it a tad bit weird that she had suddenly started to be able to afford to splurge on herself but I just figured that it must had been coming from her savings and never did I ever even imagine

that she had been taking child support from my dad so now I guess you guys can understand why it's such a dilemma for me because even if I had any intention of forgiving her eventually and accepting her apologies I can't take it seriously now because I honestly don't know if she really wants me back or if she wants the child support because according to the arrangement my dad had agreed to pay child support until I turned 18 and most importantly in the past couple of years every time I had brought up how she had been

neglecting me she had always always maintained that she was taking care of me while my dad was too busy with work and she had a lot of responsibilities like working hard to be able to afford raising me and even responsibilities towards her new husband and son which is why I might have felt neglected but the truth was that she was just trying to be there for everyone and as her daughter I needed to be more understanding now that I know that she had been taking child support for my dad all of that just feels like

gaslighting because she did not want me to feel like I was actually being neglected since then I would complain about it to my dad or Worse leave her and then she would lose my custody as well as the child support checks she obviously did not need to work very hard to be able to afford raising me all the kind of Lifestyles that she wanted at all because 20% of my dad's income is a lot and I feel cheated that she had been feeding me so much BS for the past couple of years and at the

same time I also feel kind of bad for her because regardless of everything she is still my mom and I feel like I'm getting really confused about what to do I wanted to do the right thing for myself but I also don't want to hurt my mother in a way that I cannot take back I just don't know what to think anymore and on top of that my mom just keeps apologizing and telling me to come back she's pretty much just begging me at this point even though I haven't been responding to her I also

have to think about how I want to finish high school because if I start living with my dad I won't be able to go to the same school since the commute will be too much for me so there are a lot of things to factor in here but mostly I just genuinely want to know if I'll be doing the right thing by moving in with my dad and letting my mom go for my life Ida for wanting to leave my mom and her new family behind and move in with my Dad instead update one hey

so I would just like to say to everyone who had been saying that my dad is an absentee father and stuff that's really not true he's always been there for me emotionally he just has to work really hard as well to give me the kind of future that I want and I really don't mind to be honest in fact he had even offered for me to come along with him when he initially had to move but at the time I was way too attached to my life here to consider moving with him I did not

want to leave my mom my school and my friends behind and I chose to stay here so he had to make the best of the situation as well even recently when I had been complaining to him about being neglected by my mom he had offered for me to come stay with him but when he realized that I didn't want to leave my school and my friends that's when he started motivating me to stay with my mom instead because he just wanted to be there for me at no point have I ever felt neglected by him

or that he doesn't want me around so I just wanted to get that out of the way since I didn't want anybody thinking badly of him and honestly one of the biggest reasons why I had continued to stay with my mom was because before the divorce we had had a fairly normal relationship like any mother and daughter do it was only after she started dating Rick that she started to change and her priorities became different for the past couple of years I've been torn between choosing what is comfortable for me which is staying with my

mom and living the life that I've always known or doing what's right for me moving in with my dad and starting over but now that it's been a couple of days since I made my post here and I've gone through the comments spoken to a couple of people I feel like I have some clarity on what I really want to do and what I should do in fact this is something that I should have done a long time back but yeah I'm going to move in with my dad on a permanent basis I had to

think about it for a really long time and I spoke about it with my closest friends at length and they all agreed that this is the best way for me to go right now all of them are going to miss me and I'm going to miss them but that's no reason for me to keep compromising and putting up with life at my mom's place since it's become very clear to me that her priorities are Rick and Liam and not me it was honestly a tough call because I've known these people my entire life my friend

friends and I have been together since kindergarten and that's why I was so attached to them but at some point I was going to have to leave anyway because we can't all stay together forever and honestly at this point wanting to stay in a place where I'm not clearly not wanted just so that I can be close to my friend seems childish and stupid I needed to choose what was best for me and so that's what I did luckily I have very understanding and supportive friends and they pushed me to do the right thing I

should have known that they were always going to want this for me even if it came at the cost of having me move away from them because I can't imagine anybody else helping me sneak out of my house and make a run for it and then even drive me to my destination for 4 hours in the middle of the night I'm truly grateful that I have such wonderful friends but now I'm going to have to start again I have spoken to my dad about it and he's already in the talks with his lawyer it's bound

to be a relatively straightforward process because since I am 16 now I can decide who I want to live with and if I don't even stay with my mom there's no child support to be paid she's already not going to be getting any alimony since she is married again so basically her funds are getting cut off after she finds out about that then I'm going to get to know if she really just wants me back or if it's the money that was the motivating factor behind her constantly texting me and apologizing to me begging me

to come back she doesn't know any of it yet since my dad is still speaking to his lawyer and the arrangements are being made and stuff but she's going to find out in a couple of days and well let's just see how she reacts to that on the basis of her reaction I'm going to decide if I want to stay in touch with her or if I want her out of my life completely until then I'm going to continue ignoring all her messages and phone calls because I really don't have anything to say to her

right now especially after the incident after which I had to leave because now that I think about it she should have supported me given the fact that I was not even wrong in that situation to be upset with Liam since he literally had been stealing from me I don't understand why it was such a moral and ethical dilemma for her I mean Rick decided to defend his kid even when he was wrong and everyone knew it but my mom couldn't even stand up for myself knowing I was right the more I think about it the

more upset I feel that Liam and Rick's feelings were more of a priority for her than me anyway what's done is done update 2 hey so a couple of days ago my Mom finally found out for my dad and his lawyer that I had decided that I was going to stay with my dad and she was not going to be receiving child support anymore my dad and his lawyer had filed a petition to get primary custody of me but my mom will still retain her visitation rights she could contest it but it would be kind

of pointless because now that I'm 16 who I decide to live with car cares more weight so it was not surprising that she did not protest any of this she only decided to stop texting or calling me I had kind of seen this coming because now that she knew that she was not going to be getting any money from my dad anymore there was no point in trying to get me back no child support no me that's how it was I guess I won't lie it was really upsetting for me to realize that the only

reason she had wanted me around for the past couple of years after she met Rick was because she wanted the money but anyway at least I found out where I stood with her and now I can make my decision about whether I want her in my life and the answer is I don't I don't think I'll be reaching out to her ever again and I'm glad that I'm moving away I'm still going to try and go back occasionally so that I can meet my friends but apart from that I have nothing left there anymore my

maternal grandparents live in Greece and I mostly just speak to them on the Internet or on phone calls and they recently found out about whatever had been going on we are not particularly close but even then they had a lot of sympathy for me and acknowledged the fact that what my mom was doing was really wrong but well I don't think she cares anyway it's really depressing to talk about that so I'll move on to something funnier I recently found out from a couple of friends that a couple of days ago Liam had a very

public fight with his girlfriend or rather ex-girlfriend in the cafeteria and it was humiliating for him apparently she had been ignoring him and had blocked him everywhere after I revealed to her that he had basically been stealing my thing so he could give it to her as gifts and he had been trying to get her to talk to him because they had been together for quite some time everyone one had found it very weird that they were not on speaking terms anymore and he kept trying to get her to talk to him especially when they

used to be so close but nobody knew the reason why because I had left and my friends were not the kind of people who would gossip about stuff like this but things came out in the funniest way because a couple of days back while he was trying to get her to talk to him in the cafeteria she had an outburst and started screaming about what he had done she totally humiliated him in front of everyone by revealing how disgusting it was of him to be stealing stuff from me and pretending that he had purchased it

all for her with his own money and since then he has pretty much become the laughing stock of the school I guess it's just Karma because Rick totally defended him but however I know that our school is not going to be so gentle and forgive him anyway he had it coming and I'm glad that this happened I'm a bit sad that I wasn't there to witness all this in person but well you can't have everything I guess update three hey so it's been a little over 2 months since I left home and everything is slowly

falling into place I've been very busy for the past couple of weeks because I had to start at a new school here and most of my credits were transferred but I'm still going to have to work really hard to catch up because I joined in the middle of the term I know I'm going to be able to make it though so I'm not very stressed I've already started making new friends though so that's nice people are not that bad here and honestly it's pretty much just like my old high school I do miss my old

friends quite a lot actually I've been back home with my dad a couple of times now because there was a lot of paperwork to be done since I'm moving schools and also because we need to collect everything that I hadn't been able to pack when I was leaving I met my mother when I went back home and she was very cold to me she pretended like she wasn't even interested in looking at me but I didn't let that bother me too much Liam and Rick were much funnier to deal with because they just kept glaring

at me and my dad and it almost felt like they were going to start yelling at us but had to control themselves somehow I'm sure Liam is not very happy about the fact that he was publicly humiliated because I told his girlfriend the truth about all the gifts that she had been receiving but well he probably shouldn't have been a thief if he didn't want to get exposed as a thief anyway I'm settling in well in my new life and I'm much happier here with my dad he's quite busy with work most of the time

but when he is sitting down with me all his time is completely for me and I never feel neglected here it's a nice change of pace from what I was used to for the last couple of years looking back I think I made the right choice [Music]