'My Mother Wanted A Western Man'

"My mother was a mail order bride from Russia.

When my mother was in her late-20s, the Soviet Union collapsed, and it meant there were more foreigners in the country than before. All of my mother's friends ended up finding foreign husbands from places like Germany and South Africa. At the time, my mother was married to my father and because of the piece of crap person that she is, decided she needed a slice of that pie for herself and found a wealthy Western man like her friends. She left my father who she had been married to for several years and started prowling Embassy Row in Moscow. This street had all of the consulates for the wealthy Western countries and she would loiter around there looking for men to pick up. This is how she met my stepfather, an Australian. He was your typical terrible Western man looking for a desperate woman to be his slave, and my mother was more than happy to oblige! He was physically and mentally abusive to her from day one, but she was determined to get that Hollywood lifestyle and would not be talked out of it. I met him for the first time when I was 5, and my blood ran cold the moment I set eyes on him. I got such a bad vibe right away. My mother tried to push me to be friendly with him and to 'bond' and that sort of stuff. The first time she left me alone with him, he played a series of cruel pranks on me (like taking my toys off me and putting them where I couldn't reach them) and was physically abusive. This became a regular thing, and not a single care was given by my mother. They got married and then the time came for them to go home to his country, Australia. My grandparents fought my mother to leave me behind in Russia, and I begged to stay. But yeah, that didn't go so well.

I ended up in Australia, met my step-grandparents who were even bigger sadists than my stepfather and my half-brother was born. The next decade was a whirlwind of abuse, and I was turned into more or less a domestic servant for my stepfather who was a substance abuser and a gambler that worked two days a week on average. My brother didn't get off easy either, even though he was the biological child. In fact, he got double the beatings, and he was quite young too since we have a seven-year age gap. When I was 16, my mother FINALLY decided to leave him. A year later she found a new man who she has been with for 10 years now; he is a perfect person and the exact opposite of my stepfather. Last year when I visited Russia, my grandfather told me about my biological father. I was 2 when my mother kicked him out, so I don't even know what his face looks like or anything about him. I found out that he fought hard to have me in his life but my mother went out of her way to prevent this. He became depressed and spent a lot of time in a mental hospital. Just before I came to Australia, my mother and stepfather went to his house and intimidated him into signing my release papers. When I was growing up, my mother told me that my father left her because he didn't like me and that I was a bad child. I also found out that my father would meet my grandfather at a central train station in Moscow twice a year and my grandfather would pass on my latest photographs to him and give him updates. One day he didn't come to the meeting they had planned, and my grandfather didn't know what happened and couldn't find anything out or reach him. I like to think that he got a new family and moved on, but also likely that he took his own life because he was still struggling with depression.

I still live in Australia, am happily married and my half-brother and I have a great relationship. I see my mother now and then and we act like none of the things that took place during that decade happened. But she knows what she did, I mean what can I say?

My stepfather ended up alone and living in a hovel. A few years ago he was crossing the road and got hit by a car and lost both his legs. We ended up reconnecting for a short time. There was a period where I felt bad for him and would go to his house to clean and help with groceries, but he was his usual abusive self, and my husband managed to talk some sense into me, so I stopped helping him. The last thing I heard was that he saved up his welfare money and goes on a big trip to America every year where he tells the strangers he meets that he's a veteran and lost his legs in combat."