Days of anger and sadness endlessly and abruptly bursting into tears. No suicidal thoughts; just a horrible mood. I think the lack of sleep and money are the biggest contributors. I don’t care about my body right now because my head is so fucked. It’s like impossible to drag myself through each day without having mental breakdowns. I cry over the past. I relive things I shouldn’t. I feel like raw nerves on fire.
I don’t know what to even do about it.
My parents robbed me. They robbed me of friends, parties, boyfriends, independence, confidence, abilities. They robbed me of normalcy.
They made me feel like an outsider. Yeah, I never got any of the bad things from my peers. But I never got any of the good things either. And I got the bad things from my own fucking family. They weren’t a safe place, and I never got to leave, so I just never had a safe place.
Even the environments they let me enter were not safe. All I had for years and years were frenemies and half-ass time wasters - I can name so many, starting in 1st grade and going all through high school. They ripped me away from the “bad kids,” who were legitimately good friends to me, and kept me with kids who treated me like I was their last choice. Who treated me like shit. Even the good ones hid me when it came down to moments of pressure. I was taboo. I get it. I just wish I had had other options.
I was never anyone’s first choice until Niki. She was the first real best friend I ever had. She loved me, and she saved my life.
They put me in shitty situations with shitty kids over and over, seeing how unsafe these girls were. Telling themselves that I was safe, when I wasn’t. And I was so desperate to be away from them, that I accepted any chance, regardless of how shitty I knew it would be. What must the other parents have thought? That I would be a good influence? Did they pity me?
They forced me into society ill-prepared and wearing the uniform of an outcast. And not a cool outcast; just a poor one with crazy parents. You could take one look at me and see that I didn’t know what I was doing, and that my parents forced me to do what they wanted me to do. That I didn’t have any choice, because no one would choose what I did or had. I was forced to wear things and act like I didn’t want to. What the fuck is wrong with letting me cut my hair and put magazine pages on my bedroom walls? Why couldn’t I show my legs? Why did I have to be so different from everyone else? Why wasn’t I allowed to just blend in? Or be myself? Why couldn’t I listen to music? Wear makeup? Watch MTV? Why wasn’t I allowed to be a part of my own generation, except for in secret or from afar? Why was being pretty something I was discouraged from doing?
I never got to grow up, until I already was an adult. But emotionally, I had to grow up way too fast.
Trapped. I was always trapped.
No wonder I became a black widow. I had years of making up to do. I didn’t get to do it like a normal person. Instead I did it fast and hard with reckless abandonment way too late in life. I did it like I’d done it all my life. I fooled them all. I got pretty and then I got smart and then I stomped on hearts. Suddenly, I wasn’t picked last at sports at camp. I wasn’t praying for Jimmy to kiss me and being socially awkward anymore. I had figured it all out. I was picked first for all the drunk dialing a woman could want. I left, and they cared. I needed them to love me to make up for all rejection I was pushed into.
I wish I had my journal from back then. I wish I would have told D to fuck off. I wish I hadn’t been so desperate for a boy that I let in THAT boy. I wish I had done so many things differently. I just had no idea what I was doing.
I dream of them often lately. Nightly. And the themes are all the same. I’m trapped, in conflict, justifying myself, annoyed. A prisoner. They made me feel like a prisoner all the time.
There are such huge chunks of my childhood that I don’t recall. Endless years of sitting in that trailer with day after day ticking by, and nothing but endless boredom. I did my chores, watched tv, read books, felt soul-crushingly lonely, and fantasized about a different life. She felt safe there; he got to leave every day; I had to be captive. They raised me to be non-functional. To be sedentary and depressed and emotionally unregulated. They raised me to be a loser just like them. They raise me to struggle with all of the things I struggle with - depression, anxiety, unchecked adhd, hating myself, eating disorders, and codependency. They raised me to be poor and miserable and fat. I’m trying so hard not to be those things, but I feel haunted by all of it. I feel haunted by them.
I feel like sometimes I miss my dad, though. I miss the moments when he treated me like I was just the most amazing thing he’d ever seen. I miss our heart to hearts. I miss when I truly let him in for a glimpse of who I was and he made me feel like what he saw was perfect. I truly wonder if he knows how shitty of a mom his wife really was. I wonder if I’ll ever get to have a relationship with him again.
But he’s a fucking mess, and he was controlling and critical as well… he was so hard on me all the time, and would get so angry. And he always broke all his promises...
There are a few good memories that stand out, because he actually acted like a good dad and person - when he caught me reading by the light of the door, the speeding ticket, the ipecac moment... He hid things for me and defended me once or twice in my life. But he should have yelled at the top of a mountain for me instead. He should have taken us and left the hell we were in. He was miserable; didn’t he realize we were miserable too? Maybe I just think I miss him because he was the lesser of two evils. Maybe I just want a dad. Maybe it’s just because I know I can win his approval sometimes, but I can never win my mom’s.
It’s ironic that I wasn’t allowed to cut my hair - I literally was Rapunzel.
