My Parents Wanted Me And My Siblings To All Look Identical.

Jordan was quiet. “She’s counting down the days until she turns 18 in March. She’s already been accepted to state and she’s planning to live in the dorms. 6 months and she’s out. She just has to survive until then.”

Survive. The word hit hard.

My baby sister, the 2-year-old I’d helped raise, now having to survive in her own parents’ house until she could legally escape. “Is she safe?” I asked.

Jordan sighed. “Physically, yeah. But emotionally, mom and dad barely talk to her. They’re like roommates who ignore her. She eats dinner alone in her room most nights. When CPS came to check on things last month, she told them everything was fine because she’s so close to aging out that she doesn’t want to risk getting put in foster care. She’d rather be lonely than in the system.”

It made sense, but it broke my heart. In February, I got a call from Aninsley herself.

We hadn’t talked much since I’d been back—a few short texts, nothing substantial. But now she called, her voice small and uncertain.

“Hey,” she said.

“I wanted to tell you something before you heard it from someone else. I got into state. Full-ride academic scholarship. I’m moving into the dorms in August.” Pride flooded through me, mixed with relief.

“Aninsley, that’s incredible. I’m so proud of you. A full ride is amazing.” She laughed, but it sounded sad.

“I basically raised myself this year. Did all my college apps alone, wrote my essays alone, figured out financial aid alone. Mom and dad didn’t help with any of it. They didn’t even ask.” We talked for over an hour, my sister and I, about her plans and her fears and her hope for a future where she didn’t have to parent herself.

She told me she’d been in therapy through her school counselor, working through the realization that our parents’ neglect wasn’t normal or acceptable. She said she understood why I’d left, why I’d set boundaries, why I couldn’t keep sacrificing my life for their dysfunction.

“I don’t blame you,” she said quietly.

“I’m going to do the same thing once I’m out. I’m going to build my own life and they can figure out how to function without using their kids as unpaid labor.” The CPS case closed in March, right before Aninsley’s 18th birthday.

Troy called to let me know. “We’re closing the case since all the children are now adults,” he said.

“For what it’s worth, I want you to know that you didn’t cause this situation. Your parents did. You just stopped enabling them to hide their inadequacy. Your siblings are all going to be okay. They’re smart, resilient, and getting out. That’s the best outcome we could have hoped for.” He paused.

“And Mr. Brennan, what you did—setting boundaries, protecting your marriage, refusing to sacrifice yourself—that took real courage. Your siblings learned from watching you that it’s possible to choose yourself. That’s a gift.” My parents still haven’t spoken to me.

It’s been 18 months since the honeymoon, since the boundary that broke our family. I’ve seen them three times in that period.

Twice at a distance at family events where we stayed on opposite sides of the room. Once at the grocery store where my mother literally turned her cart around and left when she saw me.

They look older, smaller, diminished somehow. My mother’s hair has gone almost completely gray.

My father has developed a stoop. They look like ordinary aging people who made catastrophic choices and paid devastating prices.

Sometimes I feel sorry for them. Mostly I feel nothing.

Mackenzie is thriving in Seattle. Jordan and Riley share an apartment and are doing well at state.

Aninsley moved into the dorms in August and calls me regularly with updates about classes, friends, her newfound independence. She told me recently that she barely talks to our parents.

“They call occasionally, but the conversations are stilted and brief. They don’t know how to relate to me as a person,” she said.

“They only knew how to relate to me as someone they could use. Now that I’m not available for that, we have nothing.” It’s sad, but it’s also reality.

Lily and I just celebrated our second anniversary. We took a long weekend to Cannon Beach, stayed at a small inn, walked on the shore, ate fresh seafood, and actually relaxed.

No emergencies, no guilt trips, no manufactured crises. It was quiet and simple and exactly what our honeymoon should have been.

On our anniversary night, watching the sunset over the Pacific, Lily asked if I regretted how everything had played out. “You lost your parents essentially,” she said softly.

“That’s not nothing. Do you wish you’d handled it differently?” I thought about it, really thought about it.

About Jordan’s exhausted voice talking about surviving our parents’ house. About Aninsley doing her college applications alone.

About 18 years of my life spent parenting children who weren’t mine. About the honeymoon my mother tried to steal.

“No,” I finally said.

“I don’t regret it. I regret that it was necessary. I regret that my parents chose control and pride over relationship. I regret that my siblings got hurt. But I don’t regret protecting our marriage and choosing our life together. Because if I’d given in, if I’d flown home from Scotland and resumed my role, it never would have stopped. They would have owned me forever.” Lily squeezed my hand.

“I’m proud of you,” she said.

“I know that might sound condescending, but I mean it. You chose yourself. You chose us. And you gave your siblings permission to do the same.” We sat in silence watching the sun sink into the ocean and I felt something I hadn’t felt since before the honeymoon.

Peace. Real, deep, uncomplicated peace.

Not the absence of conflict, but the presence of freedom. Freedom from obligation, from exploitation, from the crushing weight of other people’s refusal to grow up.

Last week, Aninsley sent me a letter. Not a text or email, but an actual handwritten letter in the mail.

“Dear Alex,” it began.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about what happened with mom and dad and the honeymoon. I was so confused and angry at first but now I understand. You weren’t abandoning us. You were showing us it’s possible to have boundaries. Watching you stand up to them, watching you choose your own life even when everyone was calling you selfish—that taught me something I needed to learn. That my worth isn’t determined by how useful I am to other people. That I’m allowed to want things for myself. Thank you for that. I hope you and Lily are happy. You deserve happiness after everything you gave up for us. Love, Aninsley.” I called her that evening.

We talked about school, her psychology major, her plans to eventually work with kids from dysfunctional families. She sounded light, unburdened, free in ways she never did growing up.

At the end of the call she said, “Hey Alex, I’m really glad you went to Scotland. I’m glad you didn’t let them ruin your honeymoon. You deserved that trip. You deserve to choose yourself.” My throat tightened.

“Thanks, Aninsley. That means a lot.” We hung up.

I sat in our living room in the house Lily and I bought last year and I realized that this quiet evening with my wife, this freedom to build our own life, this absence of constant crisis and manipulation—this was worth every painful consequence. My parents expected me to cancel my honeymoon to babysit my siblings.

When I refused, they tried to destroy me: manufactured emergencies, weaponized my siblings, recruited flying monkeys, threatened legal action, sicked CPS on themselves by accident. They lost custody of their kids’ emotional well-being, lost relationships with all their children except through formal politeness, lost their reputation in our extended family, lost their oldest son permanently.

And according to relatives I still talk to, they still blame me for everything, still tell anyone who will listen that I’m a vindictive monster who destroyed our family out of selfishness. Maybe some people believe them.

I don’t care anymore because I know what really happened. Documented in therapy notes and CPS reports and legal files and my siblings’ own testimonies.

The truth is devastatingly simple. I was never supposed to be their parent.

I was supposed to be their son, their brother, their family member with appropriate boundaries and mutual respect. When I finally stopped being their unpaid servant, the dysfunction they’d built on my exploitation collapsed.

That’s not my failure. That’s theirs.