Ever since I've been young I've felt very different to everyone else. Like I've never had a voice and never been heard. My dad died from a heroin when I was a very young age (when I was about 1 year old) and I'm 18 now. Growing up with this lack of a dad definitely would have contributed to this feeling of not being heard and feeling different, on top of my two brothers having their dads aswell. None of my brother's dads are with my mum as they were both abusers, we live with my stepdad.

Living with my stepdad has been one of the most difficult experiences of my life and has been in it for probably 7+ years. Before my stepdad I used to live with my little brothers dad. However we finally moved out to a different house after my mom got threatened with a knife by him when he came home drunk one day. At the moment me and my current stepdad aren't talking at all, only ever so slightly when he shouts me for tea or etc, and my mum definitely struggles with us both as she just wants us to get along. Its been a constant battle between us for years and I don't think we'll ever fully get along till I move out.

Recently I've got an apprenticeship which is engineering related where I will be manufacturing lasers and quality testing them. This is something I'm excited about doing but definitely scared because of my underlying issues.

Ever since I've been very young I've been very self conscious about how I look, I'm a small build and in particular have big sticking out ears. This problem has got worse and worse as I've got older and now, I can't even bare to face people seeing my ears and have grown my hair out to cover them. Some of my friends don't even know I have big ears which I find crazy, how has it got this bad. On top of this, I've always been very stressed and anxious like my mum and get upset at the smallest rejections and things not going how I want them too, this has got better as I've got older though. I get very depressed about the past especially when we lived with my little brothers stepdad as him and my mum would constantly argue and I'd hear it as a child every night when very young. I feel very bad for my younger brother as he has such a shitty dad and is gonna have to deal with my stepdads ways aswell, like I did.

I've tried therapy in the past and I'm trying to get some more now, at a place called mind. All the therapy before has been kind of unsuccessful.

I still have an ongoing drug problem, taking drugs such as cocaine, mdma and drinking alcohol. All of these drugs make me feel worse usually and are just used as an escape. However, alot of my friends are doing these drugs and it's hard to resist participating. I also smoke and vape which I'm very addicted to. 

Some more on my family and past. Recently my grandad died which was upsetting for the family, especially my uncle. He was very attached to his mum and dad and still sees his mum (my grandma) regularly to eat breakfast with her. He really needs to move away from her, he's got his own house but lives really close to his mum which he definitely did on purpose. He doesn't have a girlfriend and lives on his own eventhough he's almost 40. My older brother lives in York with his girlfriend and takes drugs also. My little brother vapes and he's 12, I've caught him before. 

In the past I used to take weed off my stepdad and smoke it, when I was 13, before bed. Eventually he realised it was me after I'd been taking it every other night for a couple of months or so. He's always brought it up and used it against me for years. However he left it out and I was quite young, is it my fault? As I've grown up I've definitely stole more and more things however and this has become a bit of a bad habit. I would take vapes to support my nicotine addiction and take money of my grandma to buy nicotine and alcohol. I think alot of this stealing nature comes from my little brothers dad who I was with most my childhood, who was a thief and a lier and a manipulator. I think I picked up some of these traits aswell. 

I really aren't trying to be a bad person and I'm always there for my friends and I think everyone knows that. But I have underlying issues that I just can't talk about and be open about which is just making me feel more and more different from everyone else. I sometimes just feel really detached from reality and feel extremely alone. Its extremely hard to get everything out on a Reddit post but I just want an outside perspective. I feel like my family is just a fucked family and I'm stuck in this cycle unable to get out of it (my therapist used to tell me that it seems like I'm stuck in a cycle). I really just need some advice.