I hate myself for not reporting my mom for child abuse when I had the chance.

I don’t know why I didn’t. I mix myself up in all sorts of reasons. I just remember feeling embarrassed, I was 19, I hadn’t figured out how to drive yet because my mom took my permit away from me as punishment as much as she could (I still can’t drive to this day due to medical excuses), and things just got in the way of it all. It was around 2015 and I was in college. In 2011, I was sexually abused by an uncle of mine and I was too scared to tell police. But in 2015, I was going to tell them. I was going to tell them everything. The abuse I suffered. The abuse my siblings suffered. Why my sister was kicked out at 18 and not allowed back. Why my mom wouldn’t let me visit my older brother in the hospital when he had an aneurysm. It all just made sense.<br><br>I sat in the police car, with a tablet filled with handwritten notes of everything from what I overheard to the day I was born. I was shaking like a leaf, my eyes were brimming with tears, I was ready to do it – I finally wasn’t scared. The officer asked me, “so what’s the reason you’re filing this report?”<br><br>And that was it. Something about that question made me second guess myself and I just didn’t do it. I made up some vague excuse that I just wanted advice and left. The cop probably chalked it up to a paranoid child but it just eats at me to this day. I feel guilty, I feel pathetic, I feel like I let my siblings down.<br><br>We all don’t talk anymore. I live across the country from my mom, I haven’t spoken to her since 2016. I hear from my brother once every decade or so, my siblings too. I have no clue where my sister is. We were so close as kids and I just feel so fucked up when I think about all the times my mom just dragged us away from one another. I hate myself that I didn’t take the opportunity to just say “my mom starved and beat us. I just want to tell you everything.”<br><br>I know logically that my mom still probably could’ve found ways to mess with me. She was smart, she knew how to manipulate the system, but it eats at me anyway. And the fact that she’s still out there, with two more children, just makes me sick to my stomach. I don’t know if she still abuses them but I know she still treats them fucked up. <br><br>I just want the best for my siblings, I don’t want my mom to touch another kid ever again.