It gets better.
I promise. That is all, that is the post.
I grew up in central Texas in the 1990s. My mother has serious mental health problems—perhaps borderline personality disorder, severe depression, and/or unresolved trauma—and was abusive and neglectful. My father has similar issues and was especially abusive and neglectful. They are antisocial and hoard.
They withdrew me from public school in 3rd grade, put me in a small Southern Baptist private school for 4th grade. Was not conservative enough for my mother's increasingly quiverfull-ish leanings. Then they withdrew me from private school in 4th grade, started homeschooling. You know the drill: they did not do a fucking thing. I became depressed, anxious, eating-disorded, self-harming, and suicidal.
I experienced educational, medical, and psychosocial neglect. I experienced severe emotional and serious physical abuse.
I am 42 years old now and it got much, much better. I do not want to describe exactly how it got better, because that can look different in so many ways—and describing one path forward can seem exclusionary to others.
Just want to make space for an "it gets better" discussion.