Ask an Alim

Why bother?

Q:

What exactly is the point of being a Muslim and bothering to worship God if no matter what you do, your life will always be determined by abusive parents? My mother verbally and physically abused me as a child, and my father verbally, psychologically, and covertly abused me as a teenager. He also sexualized me as a teen and tried everything he could to lower my self-esteem so that I could be as unhappy as him. I believe he also went out of his way to convince my mother that I was a bad person/to turn her against me. Not that it took much, as she’s very emotionally immature and seems to lack any foresight. My mother was a bystander and to this day takes her spouse’s side. I want nothing to do with the father Allah chose for whatever reason to give me and want a lot less to do with the female. I also spent all of my adolescence babysitting their younger kids on the weekends, 8am to 11 pm, while other teens were probably enjoying themselves.
I deal with many psychological and emotional side effects of the abuse, such as C-PTSD, social anxiety disorder, adrenal issues, psychosomatic insomnia, unnatural hypersensitivity, and generalized anxiety. To worsen matters, my abuse is denied my ever in-denial mother, and I have to live with my father who I almost hate. Ever since the father entered my life, he began brainwashing my mother. He told her about parents’ rights and how they’re entitled to them no matter what, how my life can be destroyed if I don’t have their blessings, and a bunch of other islamic-y things I don’t care about. My father has qualities of a narcissist, so I always suspected that the whole parents rights islam thing was to maintain power over me, and not anything else. Because if Islam was so important to him, then why would he sexualize and covertly abuse me?
As you can probably guess and see why now, their garbage parenting and my resent towards them lead to a dip in my man, and I can’t really say I care. I don’t pray but only want to now because after a decade of abuse and intrusive PTSD thoughts about the abuse, my health is declining and I don’t want to be tortured in the grave if I do die. Islam was used as nothing but a weapon to keep me down, so there are many times where I don’t think highly of it. There are times when I hate Islam and God.
I feel resent towards God Himself and wonder why is it that with all the religious dreams He gives my mother, He never sent her a dream about the crap that I’ve been through? Or why He chose such a terrible man to be my father? Or WHY my life has to be determined by their duas? It’s reached to the point where, if anything doesn’t go the way I want it do, I get paranoid and think maybe it’s their parent curse that’s interfering? Especially since I barely talk to my father, I only greet him when I see him. And my avoidance of him is due a LOT to anxiety, also, not just arrogance.

I also snapped out of anger a year ago and physically attacked my father. Please remember that this was after nearly ten years of abuse and I just exploded from keeping my hatred in. He said something vile to me with the intention of hurting me, then sucked his teeth and walked past me. And that’s when I went into overdrive and began hitting him.

So tell me, is this quasi, half-interested muslim cursed forever? I admit that was a terrible thing for me to do. If my father makes dua against me, will it be answered?

And which duas take precedence, the oppressed (child’s) duas or the parent’s duas, in general??

What’s the point of even wasting time trying to be a Muslim or wasting time trying to pray to a God that would have my life determined by tyrannical people like that?

A: