When I was 5, we moved to Colorado, and this was immediately where things took a sharp decline. I don’t think my dad wanted any kids at all and my mom was pregnant with second child.
My brother was born with liver failure and all sorts of problems and my dad immediately disliked him. And with my brother’s medical issues, both of our whole extended family often came by to offer support. Or to just stir the pot or whatever I guess lol. When in California, I had hardly ever seen either side of the family and didn’t know their history together or anything. They all despised each other and despised my father unanimously, like his own mom hates him and would degrade him in front of our other relatives, and my father was molested as a child and she didn’t give much of a fuck or believe in mental illness or trauma or anything, I mean whatever. Highlight is: all 10-20 or however many of these people were all deeply mentally unwell, and they were all in my house fighting over my newly born retarded brother in his syndromey UV light crib, and IV tubes retard equipment.
I think this combination of events made my dad become more of an unashamed alcoholic and he started hitting his copes harder. My mom would show me bank statements showing he’s spent $5,000 at a casino in a single night. My mom’s retaliatory actions to this would be to go spend $5,000 herself, which was fine with me cause she usually bought me cool shit, too. She got addicted to shopping. I remember one big purchase being after my dad had blown this whole bonus on a casino and booze, she bought herself a Land Rover from the dealership and it was a pretty sick dealership with a kid’s room. The car had problems, which meant I got to spend dozens of hours at that dealership playing their consoles and watching stuff on VHS, and drinking stuff from their complimentary snack room.