AITA for taking my daughter and cutting off my parents without telling them?
I, an 18F, decided to bring my almost 5-year-old daughter with me, 5 hours away from my parents. I need to know if I went too far. When I was 12, I was SA’d by a family member who was 17, and I became pregnant. My parents were Prolife and forced me to keep the baby, even when I begged them not to. I gave birth at 13 and bled a lot; I had a hemorrhage and they performed a C-section and hysterectomy on me. I had a daughter, and when I was told I would never have kids again, I hated my parents so much for it.
They made me suffer over something that was preventable. They decided to lie to neighbors and friends about how the baby was conceived, saying that I was sleeping around. I got bullied in my neighborhood and at school, with kids calling me “mommy” and making fun of my C-section scar. I lost a lot of friends because of it; there were rumors that I had STDs from sleeping around, and I probably didn’t even know who the father was. The father of my daughter, he faced no trouble for the assault. When his family heard about him impregnating me at 12, they moved to a different place and changed everything.
I don’t care to ever see them again, and I’m glad they left me alone. My parents decided to take care of my daughter and ignored me. The only good thing they gave me was therapy. At one point, I used to hate my daughter for causing me this pain, but in therapy, my hatred shifted more towards my parents. They knew that for my height, age, and weight, I could have died giving birth, and they didn’t care at all. She was innocent in this, and I didn’t want my daughter to be raised by abusive, narcissistic parents. I didn’t want them to take away my motherhood; I didn’t want her to have generational trauma.
So, when I turned 18, I found my aunt on social media, who is estranged from my parents, and she offered for my daughter and me to live with her. I have legal rights over my daughter; my parents didn’t have any rights; they were more like caregivers. One night, while my parents were asleep, I was already packed up, along with my daughter. My aunt came and drove us to her place, and she’s paying for my college fund too! And I decided to take a gap year to adjust to this new place. My daughter is adjusting well; she said that she misses my parents. I think we’ll be fine. She loves my aunt’s dogs so much and would cuddle with them.
She’s going to kindergarten, and pickups are only for me and my aunt. I told one of my friends who was with me through it all, and she told me that it’s kind of heartless that I disappeared without even giving my parents a note or something. She told me I could probably cause them an aneurysm because I disappeared like that.
Maybe I should’ve told them. I thought I was doing the right thing by leaving, but my own friend, who was with me through thick and thin, is telling me that I should’ve given them some type of note. I kind of feel bad. I have always had empathy for people who were horrible to me, except for my abuser, but now I’m scared they might try to find me and take my daughter or try to turn everyone against me again. I’ve never parented, so I could be bad at it, but my aunt is helping me. I’m also scared my parents might pass out or something bad if my and my daughter’s leaving caused that. Thinking about it is making me more paranoid. So, AITA?
