Edit: This is now a suicide note. And this. And this, too. Couldn't even make it 3 months. Confirmed today that, in fact, no one who I need to care, cares. Not everyone wins. I'm one of them. Goodbye.
I had a good mom, a single parent who sacrificed much for me to give me a childhood full of positive memories. Even though I was raised as an only child in a single-parent household, outside of what I guess is a normal amount of frustration that comes from homework and school bullies...it was fine. My childhood was fine. I felt loved. My home was safe.
My mother died 16 years ago, almost to the day. In a twist of sardonic fate, it was on mother's day, that year that she passed. And it was there that my CPTSD began, at fifteen years old, with the series of family members and family "friends" that I ran away from home from or escaped to. Emotionally abusive, manipulative, truly unempathetic wastes of flesh that opened my eyes to nothing besides that the world is a vast, venomous pit full of snakes and liars.
I posted two years ago about wanting to die, and the comments here encouraged me to keep going. I pressed on, spent even more money, but finally found myself in a situation that was better than I could have dreamed, and started to heal. A whole year I got, having peace, feeling creative again, making small progress on my health, having hope.
A month and a half ago it all went to shit in a way so specific to me and my struggles that it feels as though some unseen entity is stalking me, ensuring that I suffer just enough to continuously generate it despair to feed off of. I guess hope just exists only to make the pain that much harder when it vanishes. At this point I no longer believe it is possible for me to keep trying to find what I need, and I'm done. I'm sick of trying, sick of being ill. I can't keep pushing myself, I can't keep allowing myself to hope just to get disappointed, to put faith in a universe that clearly has it out for me to only torture me, to prevent me from stabilizing my life and moving forward on all of the hopes and dreams I've carried and sat on in the hopes I could survive long enough to bring them to fruition one day.
I'm so, so tired. I have given life almost everything I can think of. There are still technically options, but I don't have the inner resources to access them. I simply cannot. I don't want to do this anymore. Even a cancer diagnosis would have been easier. Sadly, I'm being evaluated for that, too.
I'm writing a fanfiction with a friend, promised her I'd finished it, but I'm hanging on by a thread. A human can only go for so long, can only try so much before they just throw up their hands and give up.
I see so many people on here convinced that they won't pass their trauma on to their children. That they will do the work, that they won't abuse them, that they will make sure they are loved. And that's a laudable goal. My mother was raped, emotionally abused my her own mom as a child, beaten by previous partners, and despite all this, I know she loved me, and I appreciate her. It did not negatively effect her parenting me.
But she wasn't the only human in my world. And even if I had no other caregiver, even if my environment had been supportive despite her death, anything can cause CPTSD. Not just a parent's lack of love. Siblings. Abusive partners. Cruel bosses at work. School bullies. Displacement. Being perpetually poor. Spending decades lost in chronic illness.
This might be controversial, but I have to say my truth.
Being a good parent is not enough to stop your child's suffering. And when you bring them here, in the this world of endless madness and unequally distributed trauma, remember that that's what you risk. Their pain, their misery, their anguish, their desire to die, and even, eventually, their very death, caused by factors entirely out of your control. Do not bring a child here unless you are sure you can live with this reality. Do not bring a child here if you are not prepared to feel guilty.
This isn't a suicide note. But in three months when my friend and I finish this fic, I can't say with confidence that that will any longer be true. I read u/final-ex1t's post. And then I took a break, waited a few days, and read the comments. And it became clear to me then, that the people who care can't help me, and the people who could help me don't care.
My mother birthing me was the cruelest mistake of her life. I wonder how she would feel now, knowing the daughter she birthed no longer has desire for little more than to die.
Thank you for your compassion. For what it's worth I don't think you are being too much. I'm pretty exhausted from crying today, so please don't take the shortness of this post the wrong way. I hear you. I feel that suggestion. I WANT to heal. But I also adamantly feel like I can't do that when I still feel like I'm in a place that is "unsafe." You need to get to safety to heal first, you know?
And after 16 years of this same shit, of emotional and verbal abuse and moving and moving and moving, and even with people trashing me in reddit comments because I was a little snippy with a misophonia complaint (in the post even, not even to the person causing the problem), I'm so exhausted. No one is really going to understand. No one is going to help. No one ever has, not anyone with any power to actually help. I just want a little peace. It feels like I will never get it, not long enough to make a difference. I'm bone tired. I do not have the belief there is anything worth pushing for.
It is unfair to be asked to keep pushing. I know there are people like you out there who care. But what do I get if I keep pushing? Who is there guaranteeing me there is a life I will enjoy at the end of the tunnel when so many have pushed and pushed and never received? I love myself too much to live "just because" and allow myself to keep getting tortured.
I am the product of my mother's confidence birthing me would end the cycle of trauma. 31 years later, and I want to die. Don't make the mistake of thinking being a good parent is enough.
CPTSD