My parents got divorced when my older sister died 8 years ago. I (16m) struggled with it because one day my sister was gone and then so was my family. Mom moved out and she and my dad fought. Mom wanted me with her. Dad felt I should spend time with both. When they went to court my parents were given the same custody time with me and I’ve always had a week with each of them at a time.

5 years ago my mom remarried. Tom’s the guy she married and Tom had two kids under 4 when they met. Him and my mom had two more kids together. It was pretty chaotic and my mom and Tom pushed for me to be a helper with the kids and to choose to be their big brother.

Mom told me to take care of them like my sister took care of me. And she was always correcting me for saying half sibling or stepsibling. We had lots of fights about it. I love my mom a lot. But I think we had different ways of coping with my sister’s death. She wanted to move forward with Tom and the kids being our family the same as dad and my sister were.

She hated that I didn’t call Tom dad. And she hated when I’d go for dad’s parenting time. She tried to get sole custody a few times. I couldn’t ever see my stepfamily the same. They could never take that same place for me. I was never going to call someone else dad either or stop being dad’s kids because she wanted me to pretend with Tom.

I think I never got beyond accepting that they were there and tolerating the fact that mom’s family had moved on and that I had half and stepsiblings. I never really bonded with them. But I was kind and I didn’t take my issues out on them.

Tom’s ex died in February and my mom and Tom decided to take in her other kids, who are similar ages to my half siblings. Because of all the changes it meant I was supposed to share with three other kids. My mom wanted me to really step up and help and be a good older brother and role model. She said the new boy would need me the most and I’d need to take him under my wing. My mom and Tom told me I’d need to help out with the kids more too. Like walk some to school, help with homework, walk them to after school clubs and stuff like that. I was also supposed to babysit because a babysitter would be out of their budget.

It was all way more than I wanted to do so I asked dad if I could live with him and he said yes. My dad’s lawyer said it was fine because the court order already covered me getting to choose once I was 16 and how calls would be all that would be needed to not risk custody going to mom if she fought it through the courts.

So I call my mom and accept calls from mom twice a week. She’s always so angry when we talk. She told me she was disappointed in me repeatedly and wanted to have a good reason why I was refusing to spend any time at her house. I told her I didn’t want to help with all those kids. Mom corrected me and said my siblings and I told her no. Not my siblings. I told her we’d argued before about that and I didn’t want to. She told me we argue because I won’t let go and accept that my family has changed and she told me now I was being extra selfish and hurting the four siblings I always had and refusing to even try and be there for the three new ones. She told me family comes together at times like these and I ran away. She told me if she could love them all and move on from my sister’s death then so could I. It pissed me off and I ended the call and I redirect any conversation now to talk about other stuff. But my mom still makes it clear she doesn’t like that I went from living with dad two weeks a month to four weeks a month and she only gets calls and no visits and the kids will grow up hardly knowing me.