u/Puzzleheaded_Tea5670

Edit: Thank you everybody so much for the kind responses. I just woke up to find that this post has gotten so much bigger than I've ever imagined, and I'm really grateful for all your support. I've never talked to anyone about this before, so this is a first for me lol. I really did think this was just gonna get like 20 upvotes and 3 comments, but this really blew up.

It's just a lot for me to suddenly go from nobody knowing about my life to potentially thousands of people knowing, and—since this is currently the #1 post on r/confession—I'm also a little worried about someone in my parents' circle of friends or family seeing this and sending it to them. So for now, I have decided to delete the text of this post. But I am so grateful for everyone's kind comments and insight. If you can relate to my story, I'm so sorry, and I hope that we can both continue to heal.

Long ass post don’t read it if you don’t want to just don’t comment about the length I get it  😭 btw I’m 20 now

I want to preface this by clarifying that it wasn’t all bad. I lived an objectively comfortable life, and I am very lucky in that regard. I always had food on the table, and my parents went out of their way to buy me various toys, Pokémon cards, and electronics going up. Every now and then we’d vacation to Florida or California too. Obviously, they did not have to do any of this. 

With that being said, ever since I was age 2 (almost 3) I’ve had a screen thrown in my face. It started out being the PS3, and I was introduced to my first ever taste of the internet: LittleBigPlanet. For a little while my dad and I would play it together (I’m an only child). By age 3, almost 4, I was playing it online with people on the internet, often while my parents would be upstairs doing whatever. Doesn’t seem that bad on its own, right? It’s a kid’s game. Now, pair in family computer access. I was hopping on that shit at 4 years old lmfao. And my parents didn’t know how to check search history—and clearly had no inclination to find out—so I was basically free-roaming random ass websites, some of which showed gore or nudity, at age 4. Anyone who was on the internet back in 2009 knows that shit was no where near as sanitized and moderated as it is today lol. So, not great. But I also had a Nintendo DSi at the time. Which was actually fairly safe all things considered, but it also officially established a pattern for me: When I would get bored after playing PS3, I’d go draw or play with toys. When I’d get bored of that, I’d hop on the computer. When I’d get bored of that, I’d hop on the DS. Not great either, right? That’s a lot of exposure to technology for a four-year-old. But I still had playdates and friends at that time, so it wasn’t too bad.

Enter age 5. This was the year I officially “graduated” from preschool, and also my father’s PS3 account. I could now have My Own™. And man did I play the absolute hell out of that account. Not only was I playing LittleBigPlanet (and starting to date on there with people older than me) but I also now had the newfound ability to get called slurs on Call of Duty Black Ops and GTA 4 lmfaoo. Surprisingly enough COD and GTA weren’t actually detrimental to my development in any way, I had some fun times on there despite them being “M”-rated games. The bigger issue for me was LittleBigPlanet, the kid’s game. Age 5 was also the year that I entered a majority-white private school, which wasn’t great for me as a little black girl. Public school was out of the equation for my parents, simply because private schools allowed parents to look inside classrooms while public schools didn’t (yes, that was their only reason). Despite having a small grade size of around 18, I was one of two black kids, and the darkest kid in the class (despite being mixed)—and the kids made sure I knew it. Not only would they compare me to slaves, monkeys, and compare my skin to shit on more occasions than I can count, but there was one boy who would also kick me and hit me literally because I was black—his words—when I was 7 (I was at that school for 4 years). He would leave bruises on my body too—but the teachers said he did it because he “liked me” LMAO. these were the same teachers that would get an easy laugh out of the class by comparing (to be fair, the color brown in general) to poop on several different occasions, so maybe they weren’t necessarily the benefactors of empathy. But anyways school sucked so obviously I was gonna go on the internet lol. So from age 5-9 I would play LittleBigPlanet after I got home from school for hours everyday, talking to pedophiles on the internet. I can count on one hand the amount of play-dates I had at that school (5) and I can’t possibly count the number of hours that I spent playing that video game, voice chatting with 40 year-old pedophiles (that would sometimes use the built-in PS3 voice changer to act like children) about my body and seeing pictures of their dick that they took with the grainy Playstation Eye camera. On top of that, at age 7 I inherited my mom’s iPhone 3G as she moved to the iPhone 4, and when that stopped working at age 8 my parents got me an iPad. So I literally was an iPad kid lol. But I would argue that I’m a PS3 kid at heart. 

I’m not going to get into all the grooming shit but it happened for 4 years obviously from Kindergarten-the end of 3rd grade. At one point I was also considering meeting up with someone I met on the game (just because I thought he was “funny”) at age 8, and I was strongly considering at age 7 getting rare Pokémon cards sent to my house—by another grown man I met on the game—who told me that he loved me, and offered to buy me “anything I wanted” and have it shipped to me. Thankfully common sense kicked in and I eventually decided not to have either happen. Then sometime when I was 8 a news story came out about a kid who got kidnapped after meeting somebody online, and my parents told me not to play LittleBigPlanet online unless they were there. Obviously since that was my only lifeline to a social life that wasn’t happening lol but what I did do—just to be safe—was unadd the vast majority of my 170-something friends on the console, the vast majority of which were above age 20. I actually still kind of feel bad for doing it lol but that’s besides the point. After purging my friend’s list I left around 12 people. But that didn’t matter anyway, because absolutely nothing changed. For about 2-3 weeks after that article came out my parents would come downstairs for maybe 5 minutes to glance at the TV, then go right back upstairs once they saw that I was playing alone. After those 2-3 weeks were up, the status quo returned and I could safely play online for hours on voice chat without my parents ever touching the first stair that led downstairs to where I was. 

In hindsight, they should have done better. Not only should my lack of a social life have been a red flag to them, but the fact that I came home from school crying for hours because the color my skin looked like shit also should have raised suspicions. Nothing that my parents said to try to change my mind would help. There was also one day when I was 6 that I showed my father how to be “popular” on LittleBigPlanet, and I made him a white guy. When he asked why he couldn’t make his skin brown since he’s black in real life, I said something along the lines of “why would you do that? Just because you’re brown in real life you don’t need to be brown online. It just makes things easier.” 

When I was 8, I actually managed to make a neighborhood friend. Our parents met while out on a walk and they decided to have us meet up. She was pretty cool, we had opposite lifestyles. Her parents didn’t allow any technology at all, I was allowed a lot of it. She was homeschooled, I wasn’t. And we got along just fine. We had about 5 play dates, then one time when I was at her house her mother let us go out on a 15 minute walk in the afternoon in our safe suburban neighborhood. We had walkie-talkies to be able to talk to her mother. It was the first time I had ever been somewhere (outside of my own home) without parental supervision. It was fun. I told my mother about this, and she barred me from seeing her ever again that same day. Meanwhile I was allowed to do whatever the fuck I wanted on the internet.

While I could free-roam on the internet, I wasn’t allowed to be in my own backyard alone until age 15. We’d go through cycles every few months where there’d be cameras in our house starting around age 8 (there were none in my room or in the basement where the computer and Playstation were, but that’s beside the point). There would be times where I would be obliviously playing on my iPad after school on the couch when suddenly I would hear my dad’s voice through the camera ring “I see you! I’ll be home soon.” I would tell my parents that having cameras in the house was weird, and they’d flip-flop between “you’re right, let’s get rid of them” and “no, actually they’re staying.” When I turned 15 we moved into a house that had cameras pre-installed, and not only did we keep those but my dad installed 3 additional cameras on top of that (and 2 more outside the house, even though there was already two out there). Whenever I had people over as a teenager and we’d go to the basement, my father would conveniently be doing something down there for the hours that we would be down there talking or watching a movie. If we’d go upstairs, he’d conveniently be doing something up there too. 

And in my household, you don’t even think about being depressed for a damn minute because I’m spoiled rotten, and we’re financially stable, and I’m ungrateful for even saying I’m depressed. My parents had it so much worse than me, they don’t even whoop me or hit me, so how the fuck am I depressed? That’s what I heard pretty much every day after telling my parents I was depressed at age 11. Aside from the fact that I had dealt with racist bullshit and somewhat severe social isolation from the kids at school during formative years from age 5-9, I was also improperly being given enemas from my parents from age 3-10 whenever I had stomach pain or would go two days without shitting LMAOO. I was given adult size fleet enemas regularly while my parents pinned me down and my dad often improperly inserted the nozzle, so my ass would bleed sometimes and at least twice he put it up the wrong hole. When home alone with him when staying home from school due to stomach pain he would often say I was faking, and on one occasion—while giving me the enema—he said that I wouldn’t have to get it done if I didn’t skip school. My mom would also put her fingers up my ass to get shit out. So aside from the online grooming I would argue that I had stuff to be depressed about 💀.  I had very brief therapy stints at 2 therapists when I was a kid. After 2 sessions the therapist said I was depressed and suicidal and my parents took me out of that shit immediately. The second therapist said the same thing after one meetup and my parents never took me there again. 

I’ve come to realize that the dominant feature of my childhood was control. My parents provide me with toys and food, and in return they pick the type of school I go to, whether or not I get an enema, whether or not I get to go outside (or if they’re just happier with me inside), or whether or not there’s cameras in the house. If you are currently raising your child like this, stop. You may think you are protecting your child, but you are not. In fact, I actually had a sexual assault experience at 4 years old with my babysitter’s 5 year old daughter and two 6 year old boys we met while under parental supervision at a waterpark (behind a tunnel). Bad situations happen to everybody—and while you should absolutely try to minimize the harm done to your children, over-policing them only leads to future resentment and ill-prepares them for life. Harmful situations will also happen right in front of you, and you’ll gloss right over them. Do the best you can, but let your child live.

Trigger warning. Long ass post—don’t read it if you don’t want to—just don’t comment about the length I get it  😭 btw I’m 20 now. Sharing this so that another only child might not go through what I went through lol.

I want to preface this by clarifying that it wasn’t all bad. I lived an objectively comfortable life, and I am very lucky in that regard. I always had food on the table, and my parents went out of their way to buy me various toys, Pokémon cards, and electronics going up. Every now and then we’d vacation to Florida or California too. Obviously, they did not have to do any of this. 

With that being said, ever since I was age 2 (almost 3) I’ve had a screen thrown in my face. It started out being the PS3, and I was introduced to my first ever taste of the internet: LittleBigPlanet. For a little while my dad and I would play it together. By age 3, almost 4, I was playing it online with people on the internet, often while my parents would be upstairs doing whatever. Doesn’t seem that bad on its own, right? It’s a kid’s game. Now, pair in family computer access. I was hopping on that shit at 4 years old lmfao. And my parents didn’t know how to check search history—and clearly had no inclination to find out—so I was basically free-roaming random ass websites, some of which showed gore or nudity, at age 4. Anyone who was on the internet back in 2009 knows that shit was no where near as sanitized and moderated as it is today lol. So, not great. But I also had a Nintendo DSi at the time. Which was actually fairly safe all things considered, but it also officially established a pattern for me: When I would get bored after playing PS3, I’d go draw or play with toys. When I’d get bored of that, I’d hop on the computer. When I’d get bored of that, I’d hop on the DS. Not great either, right? That’s a lot of exposure to technology for a four-year-old. But I still had playdates and friends at that time, so it wasn’t too bad.

Enter age 5. This was the year I officially “graduated” from preschool, and also my father’s PS3 account. I could now have My Own™. And man did I play the absolute hell out of that account. Not only was I playing LittleBigPlanet (and starting to date on there with people older than me) but I also now had the newfound ability to get called slurs on Call of Duty Black Ops and GTA 4 lmfaoo. Surprisingly enough COD and GTA weren’t actually detrimental to my development in any way, I had some fun times on there despite them being “M”-rated games. The bigger issue for me was LittleBigPlanet, the kid’s game. Age 5 was also the year that I entered a majority-white private school, which wasn’t great for me as a little black girl. Public school was out of the equation for my parents, simply because private schools allowed parents to look inside classrooms while public schools didn’t (yes, that was their only reason). Despite having a small grade size of around 18, I was one of two black kids, and the darkest kid in the class (despite being mixed)—and the kids made sure I knew it. Not only would they compare me to slaves, monkeys, and compare my skin to shit on more occasions than I can count, but there was one boy who would also kick me and hit me literally because I was black—his words—when I was 7 (I was at that school for 4 years). He would leave bruises on my body too—but the teachers said he did it because he “liked me” LMAO. these were the same teachers that would get an easy laugh out of the class by comparing (to be fair, the color brown in general) to poop on several different occasions, so maybe they weren’t necessarily the benefactors of empathy. But anyways school sucked so obviously I was gonna go on the internet lol. So from age 5-9 I would play LittleBigPlanet after I got home from school for hours everyday, talking to pedophiles on the internet. I can count on one hand the amount of play-dates I had at that school (5) and I can’t possibly count the number of hours that I spent playing that video game, voice chatting with 40 year-old pedophiles (that would sometimes use the built-in PS3 voice changer to act like children) about my body and seeing pictures of their dick that they took with the grainy Playstation Eye camera. On top of that, at age 7 I inherited my mom’s iPhone 3G as she moved to the iPhone 4, and when that stopped working at age 8 my parents got me an iPad. So I literally was an iPad kid lol. But I would argue that I’m a PS3 kid at heart. 

I’m not going to get into all the grooming shit but it happened for 4 years obviously from Kindergarten-the end of 3rd grade. At one point I was also considering meeting up with someone I met on the game (just because I thought he was “funny”) at age 8, and I was strongly considering at age 7 getting rare Pokémon cards sent to my house—by another grown man I met on the game—who told me that he loved me, and offered to buy me “anything I wanted” and have it shipped to me. Thankfully common sense kicked in and I eventually decided not to have either happen. Then sometime when I was 8 a news story came out about a kid who got kidnapped after meeting somebody online, and my parents told me not to play LittleBigPlanet online unless they were there. Obviously since that was my only lifeline to a social life that wasn’t happening lol but what I did do—just to be safe—was unadd the vast majority of my 170-something friends on the console, the vast majority of which were above age 20. I actually still kind of feel bad for doing it lol but that’s besides the point. After purging my friend’s list I left around 12 people. But that didn’t matter anyway, because absolutely nothing changed. For about 2-3 weeks after that article came out my parents would come downstairs for maybe 5 minutes to glance at the TV, then go right back upstairs once they saw that I was playing alone. After those 2-3 weeks were up, the status quo returned and I could safely play online for hours on voice chat without my parents ever touching the first stair that led downstairs to where I was. 

In hindsight, they should have done better. Not only should my lack of a social life have been a red flag to them, but the fact that I came home from school crying for hours because the color my skin looked like shit also should have raised suspicions. Nothing that my parents said to try to change my mind would help. There was also one day when I was 6 that I showed my father how to be “popular” on LittleBigPlanet, and I made him a white guy. When he asked why he couldn’t make his skin brown since he’s black in real life, I said something along the lines of “why would you do that? Just because you’re brown in real life you don’t need to be brown online. It just makes things easier.” 

When I was 8, I actually managed to make a neighborhood friend. Our parents met while out on a walk and they decided to have us meet up. She was pretty cool, we had opposite lifestyles. Her parents didn’t allow any technology at all, I was allowed a lot of it. She was homeschooled, I wasn’t. And we got along just fine. We had about 5 play dates, then one time when I was at her house her mother let us go out on a 15 minute walk in the afternoon in our safe suburban neighborhood. We had walkie-talkies to be able to talk to her mother. It was the first time I had ever been somewhere (outside of my own home) without parental supervision. It was fun. I told my mother about this, and she barred me from seeing her ever again that same day. Meanwhile I was allowed to do whatever the fuck I wanted on the internet.

While I could free-roam on the internet, I wasn’t allowed to be in my own backyard alone until age 15. We’d go through cycles every few months where there’d be cameras in our house starting around age 8 (there were none in my room or in the basement where the computer and Playstation were, but that’s beside the point). There would be times where I would be obliviously playing on my iPad after school on the couch when suddenly I would hear my dad’s voice through the camera ring “I see you! I’ll be home soon.” I would tell my parents that having cameras in the house was weird, and they’d flip-flop between “you’re right, let’s get rid of them” and “no, actually they’re staying.” When I turned 15 we moved into a house that had cameras pre-installed, and not only did we keep those but my dad installed 3 additional cameras on top of that (and 2 more outside the house, even though there was already two out there). Whenever I had people over as a teenager and we’d go to the basement, my father would conveniently be doing something down there for the hours that we would be down there talking or watching a movie. If we’d go upstairs, he’d conveniently be doing something up there too. 

And in my household, you don’t even think about being depressed for a damn minute because I’m spoiled rotten, and we’re financially stable, and I’m ungrateful for even saying I’m depressed. My parents had it so much worse than me, they don’t even whoop me or hit me, so how the fuck am I depressed? That’s what I heard pretty much every day after telling my parents I was depressed at age 11. Aside from the fact that I had dealt with racist bullshit and somewhat severe social isolation from the kids at school during formative years from age 5-9, I was also improperly being given enemas from my parents from age 3-10 whenever I had stomach pain or would go two days without shitting LMAOO. I was given adult size fleet enemas regularly while my parents pinned me down and my dad often improperly inserted the nozzle, so my ass would bleed sometimes and at least twice he put it up the wrong hole. When home alone with him when staying home from school due to stomach pain he would often say I was faking, and on one occasion—while giving me the enema—he said that I wouldn’t have to get it done if I didn’t skip school. My mom would also put her fingers up my ass to get shit out. So aside from the online grooming I would argue that I had stuff to be depressed about 💀.  I had very brief therapy stints at 2 therapists when I was a kid. After 2 sessions the therapist said I was depressed and suicidal and my parents took me out of that shit immediately. The second therapist said the same thing after one meetup and my parents never took me there again. 

I’ve come to realize that the dominant feature of my childhood was control. My parents provide me with toys and food, and in return they pick the type of school I go to, whether or not I get an enema, whether or not I get to go outside (or if they’re just happier with me inside), or whether or not there’s cameras in the house. If you are currently raising your child like this, stop. You may think you are protecting your child, but you are not. In fact, I actually had a sexual abuse experience at 4 years old with my babysitter’s 5 year old daughter and two 6 year old boys we met while under parental supervision at a waterpark (behind a tunnel). Bad situations happen to everybody—and while you should absolutely try to minimize the harm done to your children, over-policing them only leads to future resentment and ill-prepares them for life. Harmful situations will also happen right in front of you, and you’ll gloss right over them. Do the best you can, but let your child live. 

Long ass post don’t read it if you don’t want to just don’t comment about the length I get it  😭 btw I’m 20 now

I want to preface this by clarifying that it wasn’t all bad. I lived an objectively comfortable life, and I am very lucky in that regard. I always had food on the table, and my parents went out of their way to buy me various toys, Pokémon cards, and electronics going up. Every now and then we’d vacation to Florida or California too. Obviously, they did not have to do any of this. 

With that being said, ever since I was age 2 (almost 3) I’ve had a screen thrown in my face. It started out being the PS3, and I was introduced to my first ever taste of the internet: LittleBigPlanet. For a little while my dad and I would play it together (I’m an only child). By age 3, almost 4, I was playing it online with people on the internet, often while my parents would be upstairs doing whatever. Doesn’t seem that bad on its own, right? It’s a kid’s game. Now, pair in family computer access. I was hopping on that shit at 4 years old lmfao. And my parents didn’t know how to check search history—and clearly had no inclination to find out—so I was basically free-roaming random ass websites, some of which showed gore or nudity, at age 4. Anyone who was on the internet back in 2009 knows that shit was no where near as sanitized and moderated as it is today lol. So, not great. But I also had a Nintendo DSi at the time. Which was actually fairly safe all things considered, but it also officially established a pattern for me: When I would get bored after playing PS3, I’d go draw or play with toys. When I’d get bored of that, I’d hop on the computer. When I’d get bored of that, I’d hop on the DS. Not great either, right? That’s a lot of exposure to technology for a four-year-old. But I still had playdates and friends at that time, so it wasn’t too bad.

Enter age 5. This was the year I officially “graduated” from preschool, and also my father’s PS3 account. I could now have My Own™. And man did I play the absolute hell out of that account. Not only was I playing LittleBigPlanet (and starting to date on there with people older than me) but I also now had the newfound ability to get called slurs on Call of Duty Black Ops and GTA 4 lmfaoo. Surprisingly enough COD and GTA weren’t actually detrimental to my development in any way, I had some fun times on there despite them being “M”-rated games. The bigger issue for me was LittleBigPlanet, the kid’s game. Age 5 was also the year that I entered a majority-white private school, which wasn’t great for me as a little black girl. Public school was out of the equation for my parents, simply because private schools allowed parents to look inside classrooms while public schools didn’t (yes, that was their only reason). Despite having a small grade size of around 18, I was one of two black kids, and the darkest kid in the class (despite being mixed)—and the kids made sure I knew it. Not only would they compare me to slaves, monkeys, and compare my skin to shit on more occasions than I can count, but there was one boy who would also kick me and hit me literally because I was black—his words—when I was 7 (I was at that school for 4 years). He would leave bruises on my body too—but the teachers said he did it because he “liked me” LMAO. these were the same teachers that would get an easy laugh out of the class by comparing (to be fair, the color brown in general) to poop on several different occasions, so maybe they weren’t necessarily the benefactors of empathy. But anyways school sucked so obviously I was gonna go on the internet lol. So from age 5-9 I would play LittleBigPlanet after I got home from school for hours everyday, talking to pedophiles on the internet. I can count on one hand the amount of play-dates I had at that school (5) and I can’t possibly count the number of hours that I spent playing that video game, voice chatting with 40 year-old pedophiles (that would sometimes use the built-in PS3 voice changer to act like children) about my body and seeing pictures of their dick that they took with the grainy Playstation Eye camera. On top of that, at age 7 I inherited my mom’s iPhone 3G as she moved to the iPhone 4, and when that stopped working at age 8 my parents got me an iPad. So I literally was an iPad kid lol. But I would argue that I’m a PS3 kid at heart. 

I’m not going to get into all the grooming shit but it happened for 4 years obviously from Kindergarten-the end of 3rd grade. At one point I was also considering meeting up with someone I met on the game (just because I thought he was “funny”) at age 8, and I was strongly considering at age 7 getting rare Pokémon cards sent to my house—by another grown man I met on the game—who told me that he loved me, and offered to buy me “anything I wanted” and have it shipped to me. Thankfully common sense kicked in and I eventually decided not to have either happen. Then sometime when I was 8 a news story came out about a kid who got kidnapped after meeting somebody online, and my parents told me not to play LittleBigPlanet online unless they were there. Obviously since that was my only lifeline to a social life that wasn’t happening lol but what I did do—just to be safe—was unadd the vast majority of my 170-something friends on the console, the vast majority of which were above age 20. I actually still kind of feel bad for doing it lol but that’s besides the point. After purging my friend’s list I left around 12 people. But that didn’t matter anyway, because absolutely nothing changed. For about 2-3 weeks after that article came out my parents would come downstairs for maybe 5 minutes to glance at the TV, then go right back upstairs once they saw that I was playing alone. After those 2-3 weeks were up, the status quo returned and I could safely play online for hours on voice chat without my parents ever touching the first stair that led downstairs to where I was. 

In hindsight, they should have done better. Not only should my lack of a social life have been a red flag to them, but the fact that I came home from school crying for hours because the color my skin looked like shit also should have raised suspicions. Nothing that my parents said to try to change my mind would help. There was also one day when I was 6 that I showed my father how to be “popular” on LittleBigPlanet, and I made him a white guy. When he asked why he couldn’t make his skin brown since he’s black in real life, I said something along the lines of “why would you do that? Just because you’re brown in real life you don’t need to be brown online. It just makes things easier.” 

When I was 8, I actually managed to make a neighborhood friend. Our parents met while out on a walk and they decided to have us meet up. She was pretty cool, we had opposite lifestyles. Her parents didn’t allow any technology at all, I was allowed a lot of it. She was homeschooled, I wasn’t. And we got along just fine. We had about 5 play dates, then one time when I was at her house her mother let us go out on a 15 minute walk in the afternoon in our safe suburban neighborhood. We had walkie-talkies to be able to talk to her mother. It was the first time I had ever been somewhere (outside of my own home) without parental supervision. It was fun. I told my mother about this, and she barred me from seeing her ever again that same day. Meanwhile I was allowed to do whatever the fuck I wanted on the internet.

While I could free-roam on the internet, I wasn’t allowed to be in my own backyard alone until age 15. We’d go through cycles every few months where there’d be cameras in our house starting around age 8 (there were none in my room or in the basement where the computer and Playstation were, but that’s beside the point). There would be times where I would be obliviously playing on my iPad after school on the couch when suddenly I would hear my dad’s voice through the camera ring “I see you! I’ll be home soon.” I would tell my parents that having cameras in the house was weird, and they’d flip-flop between “you’re right, let’s get rid of them” and “no, actually they’re staying.” When I turned 15 we moved into a house that had cameras pre-installed, and not only did we keep those but my dad installed 3 additional cameras on top of that (and 2 more outside the house, even though there was already two out there). Whenever I had people over as a teenager and we’d go to the basement, my father would conveniently be doing something down there for the hours that we would be down there talking or watching a movie. If we’d go upstairs, he’d conveniently be doing something up there too. 

And in my household, you don’t even think about being depressed for a damn minute because I’m spoiled rotten, and we’re financially stable, and I’m ungrateful for even saying I’m depressed. My parents had it so much worse than me, they don’t even whoop me or hit me, so how the fuck am I depressed? That’s what I heard pretty much every day after telling my parents I was depressed at age 11. Aside from the fact that I had dealt with racist bullshit and somewhat severe social isolation from the kids at school during formative years from age 5-9, I was also improperly being given enemas from my parents from age 3-10 whenever I had stomach pain or would go two days without shitting LMAOO. I was given adult size fleet enemas regularly while my parents pinned me down and my dad often improperly inserted the nozzle, so my ass would bleed sometimes and at least twice he put it up the wrong hole. When home alone with him when staying home from school due to stomach pain he would often say I was faking, and on one occasion—while giving me the enema—he said that I wouldn’t have to get it done if I didn’t skip school. My mom would also put her fingers up my ass to get shit out. So aside from the online grooming I would argue that I had stuff to be depressed about 💀.  I had very brief therapy stints at 2 therapists when I was a kid. After 2 sessions the therapist said I was depressed and suicidal and my parents took me out of that shit immediately. The second therapist said the same thing after one meetup and my parents never took me there again. 

I’ve come to realize that the dominant feature of my childhood was control. My parents provide me with toys and food, and in return they pick the type of school I go to, whether or not I get an enema, whether or not I get to go outside (or if they’re just happier with me inside), or whether or not there’s cameras in the house. If you are currently raising your child like this, stop. You may think you are protecting your child, but you are not. In fact, I actually had a sexual assault experience at 4 years old with my babysitter’s 5 year old daughter and two 6 year old boys we met while under parental supervision at a waterpark (behind a tunnel). Bad situations happen to everybody—and while you should absolutely try to minimize the harm done to your children, over-policing them only leads to future resentment and ill-prepares them for life. Harmful situations will also happen right in front of you, and you’ll gloss right over them. Do the best you can, but let your child live. 

cried today in the car because period hormones and my mother was significantly nicer than she would have been even 5 years ago (I'm 20). Feeling super embarrassed, the last time I cried in front of her was when I was 16 or 17 and she was also pretty nice then. It felt odd, like she did something right emotionally which I typically did not get from her. I remember thinking about how good it would have been to have that when I was 11