sorry if something is written incorrectly, i am not a native speaker.
i am 18 and i feel like i'm 100. because i've been so fucking tired, like i've lived several lives.
my parents were functional alcoholics. they lived more or less normally, but every holiday ended with their binges. i remember when i was about 5, my dad throws a chair at my mom. luckily, he misses, and that chair hits the wall and breaks. from my grandmother i know that in first grade i often missed school because there was simply no one to take me between the little shots of vodka. i don't remember that myself, just like almost all of my life, because it was a shitshow with only small patches of something good. at 12, my parents separate, and i was the one persuading my mom to leave my dad. mom told me how good our life would be now, because it's my father who is so bad (for mom, the last straw was only that dad got fired), that all the problems were because of him, and now her and i would be happy.
mom drank more and more, but at least she worked. i often acted as an adult for her because she would throw tantrums that i was controlling her, that i was butting into things that weren't my business. and i really did butt in because i saw that none of this was normal. i remember when i had my appendix removed at 13, mom got drunk on the evening of the day i was discharged. and that was one day after the surgery. so i was still in a lot of pain and couldn't even fall asleep because of it. when i told mom that i didn't like her being drunk, she threw another tantrum that i was fucking nagging for no reason. at 14, apathy started to show itself little by little. i constantly felt like i didn't have enough energy. i became forgetful, studying became harder, and my desires became less noticeable. the world was slowly losing its colors and brightness. there was a lot of stress back then, of course. dad paid pennies in child support, and with mom's salary pennies, we didn't have much. worse, of course, was mom's addiction. i don't know how much money went to her cigarettes and alcohol during that time. when i turned 15, my dad died. yes, he was a soldier. it was interesting to hear at the funeral what a hero he was, when in your head you have memories of him beating your mother while you, an 8-year-old child, beg her hysterically not to kill her.
15 was the worst period of my life. i remember little, of course, but i know for sure that for a while i had nothing to eat. before the pension and the payments came through, life became hard. food didn't appear at home often. mom drank more and more. when i was 15, i witnessed alcohol delirium twice in action. the so-called "white squirrels" didn't make mom aggressive, thankfully. but i remember well the fear with which i fell asleep those nights.
i can't imagine how a person can survive in this constant stress. but i lived to 16, to 17, and even to today. but i am tired. i always controlled everything and tried to support mom. i never blamed her. i was always on her side. i hoped and always believed her when she said this time was the last, even when i knew it wasn't. i wasn't allowed to be a child, and now adulthood is starting. what kind of adulthood can a child have?
only when i moved away for university did i realize what kind of hell i had been living in. how scary it all was. you don't understand it in the moment. although even back then i often felt like i was exaggerating and that it wasn't that bad and horrible. honestly, i was scared to discuss this with friends. until last year, i had never told anyone about this. it turned out i felt shame for the conditions i survived in (well, i definitely didn't live). i felt uncomfortable talking about my childhood to someone who had a more standard one. i felt like i would just ruin their mood with my pessimistic stories. except those weren't just pessimistic stories — that was my life.
and now, from all of this, i'm filled not with shame but with anger. i had little things in childhood, and even now i can't easily allow myself to have anything more because i'm used to not counting on more. but more exists. unfortunately, the money paid for the death of a soldier — my mom successfully squandered almost all of it. not much is left. and of course, i could just save it, invest it somewhere, or something. but i don't want to think about finances (which, frankly, even now with my experience of poverty, i don't give a shit about), i want to think about myself for the first time in my life. i've had apathy for a long time, and i can't even get pleasure from tasty food. what the fuck do i owe worrying about what will happen in a couple of years?
while my grandmother tells me how important it is to save up money and buy an apartment. and i think every day about whether i'll stink too much if i just wipe myself with tissues because i don't have the strength not only to shower, but even to force myself to go to the toilet. i don't want to think, but of course i can't let it go completely. i always try to control everything, but now, in my opinion, my decisions are finally honest. if before it was what someone else considered right, now i am at least looking for the answer about what is right for me. i, fuck, have the right to take that money and go get a massage because i want to relax. or buy a cool bike because i've been interested in it for a long time. or travel to another country for a vacation because i haven't been anywhere since 2019. because why go on vacation if it won't bring me pleasure? but of course, fuck, there won't be any pleasure, because when would there be time for it if you're always just surviving. i want to live, and i'm going to use this money for that. in my opinion, that's the best investment i could ever make. i am confident in my abilities. i survived those assholes and came out as a sane person. so what else do i have to be afraid of?
thank you for reading to the end. sorry if it's messy. i need to hear from someone who knows my story, because i can't keep carrying this alone anymore. i am open to any of your responses.