TW: childhood abuse, csa, suicidal ideation, + I'm trying to tag it as best I can. But I'm not confident I'm catching everything. Please don't read if it'll be bad for you.
This is just a general rant, just to get it out. But I don't mind if you want to leave a comment or give advice. Also, I'm safe right now. Just hurt and upset.
The short version:
I went through way too much as a kid. Abuse, sexual assault, abandonment, grooming. Just way too much. I don't understand how I've survived, let alone haven't completely lost it.
I'm almost 20 now, and have been out of that home for a few years. The family member who takes care of me didn't have a great childhood either, but can't seem to understand just how deep mine has effected me. It doesn't matter how I try to word it, how I try to explain or show. They just don't understand, and I think they think I'm faking it, or exaggerating.
It's so infuriating. And it makes it so much harder to even want to talk to them at all. Like, yes, I'd rather be a social outcast than take a shower- because I get flashbacks. Like, yes, I'm disabled and can't work a job right now, I promise I would if I could. I'm trying! But they think I'm just trying to play the system.
Long version, more specific TW mentions:
I am the eldest of two parents who desperately wanted to see a long lost lover in me, rather than a unique individual. That led to a long string of strange and abusive behaviors that only got worse with time. Including, but not limited to, being named after the first woman my mother had sex with, and who she still desperately wants to be with. And letting her later wife make sexual comments about me and bardge into my room unannounced, often as I was changing. Also including my father who, along with his brother, were grooming me and my middle sister. (My father who only bothered to even try to have a "relationship" with us once I hit puberty.)
So yeah, not great in the slightest. I can't remember most of my life. But I could write a 1,000+ page book of what I do remember. And I've suffered intense suicidal ideation for as long as I can remember.
I now have severe trama responses to stupid, mundane things because of how I was treated. Like finishing or starting a gallon of milk. Or taking a single oreo from the package. Or KFC. Plus the more reasonable stuff, like showers and swimming in public in regular bathing suits, and men in general.
And because I was undergoing all of this constantly, I never could make friends in school and was a complete outcast. And I can't manage to make new friends now, which is awful.
And that's just the trama, not the neurodivergence, the intense sensory issues, or the physical issues and disorders.
The best I can do most days, is just make sure I'm fed and watered enough. But I push to make sure I socialize with the person who takes care of me and the others who live in our house. But I push myself to be vulnerable and drive to doctors and get what help I can manage. But I push myself to take showers, eventhough they're fucking terrifying.
I've tried to hold jobs. My health prevents me from managing it, keeping attendance. Or I get suicidal and bail so I don't kill myself. I just can't right now. It's not a safe, or remotely sustainable option. And, as far as I can tell, there's no job that doesn't or won't cause this. I nearly didn't graduate high-school because of this too. I hate it, and it makes me feel awful about myself.
I've been slowly healing. Slowly. And, I don't know why, but everyone has always had huge expectations of me. And I've never met a single one. They think I'm smart enough to do fucking anything, but refuse to see that I'm not as capable as they want to believe. A gallon of milk causes my heart rate to spike to 140, I'm not going to be winning any wars here. That preasure and expectation does not help.
And now I'm getting pressure to pay rent. Even just a fee hundred. But I can't work! I try to tell them that I want to, but can't, and that I'm trying to fix that. Go to doctors so they can help my body not hurt so bad. Find a competent therapist to talk to these things about. Work with the psychologist(?) to find a medicine that helps me, at least, stop having cripling depressive episodes without causing some other significant problem.
And all of it with little more help than a roof and food. Which, don't get me wrong, I'm very grateful for that, I really am. It's just that I'm a 19 yo trying my hardest to learn how to function and stick up for myself in this terrible world, and I'm doing that alone. And I'm having to learn all of this from scratch, I wasn't prepared for this at all.
I'm terribly exhausted and sad all the time. Sometimes the very few things that make me happy feel like a fucking chore. I genuinely don't understand how I'm alive or haven't completely lost it.
But I'm being preasured to do more and more and more, when I'm doing so much that just can't really be seen. And I try to say this, and I'm being told I'm just taking advantage of the person who takes care of me, and that I'm just trying to play the system.
And that really hurts! I want to have money, but myself a nice computer and games, live on my own, go on dates, and be self sufficient and not rely on the system. But I can't right now, and them not believing me really hurts. It makes me feel like my only value is my productivity, and I'm not good enough as just a human being.
And they just tell me that being an adult, a proper adult, is even worse and you never get to do anything for yourself. Essentially, it seems like they're saying I'll never be happy so I just gotta suck it up and get to work.
And I don't know about you, but I do not want that to be my life. And I'm wondering what the point of all this even is. Why bother trying if I'll be miserable anyways?
Rant over. You can ask questions if you want, or rant about similar stuff too.
I'll never not say I raised my sister. I wasn't much older and had no clue what I was doing. But I really tried to step in where our parents refused or were downright harmful. Kept her out of trouble as best I could, shielded her from as much abuse as I could.
Was I a good parent? Fuck no. No 3rd grader, or 14 year old, or 16 year old falling apart would make a good parent. I was sometimes (often) that asshole no one wanted to be around, go figure.
My biggest bittersweet hope is that I did such a good job protecting her and bringing her up (as best as someone hardly older than her and being constanly abused could) that she never realizes how much it all hurt me, or the true extent of what I shielded her from. And that she can go on an heal where she wouldn't have been able to without me. If I'm the villan in the end, I did my job right, I think. Even if I didn't do it good.
Doesn't excuse the ways I wronged her, of course. But hopefully I made up for it, even if she never realizes.
meirl
CPTSDmemes