u/fluttershy_rainboom

Hey guys, I just wanted to say I finally got officially diagnosed with DID today!!!

The appointment went pretty well and the provider was amazing. I was super anxious (He’s a guy and that’s like, always a huge issue for me lmao) but he turned out to be great.

I’m just super relieved to finally have my answer. He literally looked me in the eyes and went “You have DID”. You have no idea how much I’ve been wishing someone would just tell me for sure. No question marks, no ambiguity, just a diagnosis. And he did exactly that.

He asked me what my parts’ names were, asked how long I’ve suspected it, told me about the stuff we have in common, told me about how he’s also diagnosed with autism, and was just overall a really good guy. So as far as men go, this one didn’t make me have a panic attack, so, that’s a win.

I have DID!! I was diagnosed! I just wanted a place to type out the words, because I’ve never been able to say anything other than “I think I might have DID”.

Anyways, that’s it that’s the post lol

My mom is abusive. Toxic, mean, spiteful, and isolates me severely. She gaslights me and she makes me feel awful every single time I talk to her. She doesn’t talk to me like I’m her kid, she talks to me with venom in her voice and fury in her eyes. She’s manipulative and two faced and puts me down. She tells everyone how worried she is for me, calls me crazy. She is a horrible fucking human, and shes made me miserable all of my life. Shes nice but only as long as I don’t say or do anything she doesnt like, then if something is wrong, she immediately is back to that same asshole she always is. I don’t understand how a person can genuinely just be so incredibly awful. She controls everything. She has control over literally everything in my life. Every single thing. Im not being dramatic, either. And I can’t leave the house without her interrogating me, she sends my brother to babysit me and spy on me so she doesn’t have to keep tabs. She needs to know everyone I hang out with, names, photos, etc. If I don’t tell her, she’ll sabotage it. I dont drive yet. She won’t teach me to drive and she won’t help me get my permit. Im gonna have to have my brother take me to take a test for a permit at some point. My brother takes me everywhere. Im almost 19, too. But I have no independence at all. I haven’t seen anyone my age in over a year. And last time I did, she was there, or my brother was there. And that was only a few times, with one friend, and anything before that has been about 2-3 years. I rarely leave the house. Like, maybe once every few weeks, for no more than an hour, with my brother. She doesn’t drive. And I could find workarounds, and I do that as much as I can, but as long as I’m living here, I will always have to come back to face her consequences. So until I move, everything I do faces some kind of backlash. I don’t have a job, I don’t know how to work, she never prepared me in any way. She discourages me when I mention working. I don’t have anyone to drive me to work necessarily, and she would just have a fit once I’m back home, and she would interfere with me getting to work by stirring something up in one way or another, which would make me inconsistent getting to work, and therefore an unreliable employee. Nothing is in walking distance, and walking hurts my back so badly, because I apparently have scoliosis which she never told me until recently. And again, yeah I can do what I want generally speaking, if I’m determined enough, but I’d still have to deal with her when I come back. It’s not freeing, nothing is ever freeing, because it’s just gonna get me retaliated against. Even when I try to do anything, she just makes my life even more miserable.

She’s manipulative and angry. She’s fucking evil. She even grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me and shoved me one time and screamed at me and wouldn’t leave my room for like an hour straight, when I told her I was hurt by how she treats me. After she did that, I sat sobbing on my floor, and suddenly she was all calm and was like “Im still the same mama”, and finally left. Then when I told my therapist about that (who she never used to let me see alone. She came to all my sessions and changed every possible narrative, and managed every email and all the scheduling), she told the therapist I was acting crazy, lashing out, and that she was “shaking sense into me”. She said she “didn’t regret it, she’d do it again”.

When I say she controls everything, I mean everything. Finances, social life, she follows my social media, literally everything. I tried to block her on instagram. She noticed and she guilt tripped me and made me feel like I had to let her follow me, or else, basically. Basically any time I try to do anything to stop myself from being abused, she starts telling me I can’t live on my own, telling me how she has control over my bills and my bank and everything to my name, and sabotages my every effort. I tried to stay with her best friend, and I successfully did for a while, but my mom retaliated and talked to her friend behind my back. Her friend still let me stay. She was the only one who ever even got close to understanding me. She eventually finally asked me if everything was okay at home, if anyone was abusing me, and if I needed to come live with her. And guess what happened, weeks later? She unexpectedly died from her health issues. Me and my brother were the last ones to see her, with my brother being the very last. My only support system. She was just about to be able to understand, and just like that, she was gone. You don’t know how much I miss her. Even if she didn’t offer that, even if she never asked about being abused. I miss staying over there. I miss talking to her. She was actually enjoyable to talk to. I loved learning about her and being with her. It was safer and calmer and nicer there. I miss her. So much. She was an amazing person. It’s like the universe just doesn’t want me to make it out alive, I swear to god.

And she makes sure to make people think shes a good mom. She’s so nice around other people. She hears everything I do at home, she’s always home and our rooms are across from each other. Which means I never make calls to people, or else she questions me about it and manipulates me to get me to tell her who it is, so I can’t even keep a social life as much digitally, at least not without feeling like I have to be careful about it. She has to know all of my doctors, she questioned me when I tried to book my own appointment last week, she manipulated me and tried to get me to tell her who I was seeing and why, and of course used her insurance against me as a reason to tell her. She said she has to know what the appt was for, to know if her insurance covers it. Again, a fucking liar. And she of course threatened to just not pay the copay, which was $25. I doubt that she couldn’t figure that out. She definitely has $25 to spare. She claimed that she can’t afford multiple appointments in one week. If she really can’t afford that, she should change her priorities. Opt out of buying something else, so you can afford it, then. You can.

She has to know where I am at all times, even in the house.

She doesn’t meet enough of my needs and she makes me feel like it’s my fault for being extra. Oh you want a different brand of body wash? No, we get this brand. Stop asking for extra brands. Oh you want face wash? Pay with your own chore money, which you also have to spend on other self care things, and you don’t have enough to get everything you need, which means you won’t even actually be able to buy the face wash. Oh you want a razor? Well why do you need a razor, huh? Don’t you struggle with self harm? Gotta keep you safe, right? Because clearly, that’s ever actually worked. Clearly she’s ever once actually successfully kept me safe a day in her life.

She never consoles me. Never reassures me. Sabotages me, deflects, blames, fails to protect me from things, like getting harassed at my bus stop recently and then she laughed at me, joked, gossiped to someone else, and didnt care when I said it was harassment. When I was sa’d (Coercion, Child on Child SA), when I was 14/15, IN HER HOUSE, she defended them and guilt tripped me. Explained that we were both minors, and didn’t even flinch when I said our relationship was abusive. Didnt even acknowledge it. Never once said anything to help me. Didn’t hug me or tell me anything reassuring, didn’t say she believed me. I don’t think she ever really even believed me. She just looked pissed off at me and amused. Like she was patronizing me for calling it assault.

Whenever I open up about something, she always makes this dumb fucking face, like a weird half smile, like the kind that you do when someone is telling you a joke, and you’re waiting for the punch line. That face, yknow? Like, “Okay,,, so what’s your point exactly? You’re joking right,,, are you actually being serious right now?”.

You know whats also funny? I peed blood after the SA happened, I was emotionally confused and also physically in pain. But I didn’t know what was happening, so I just carried on. And of course, she didn’t think to ask if I was okay, right? How would she have known if she didn’t ask? And how would I know to tell her? She then, gossiped about all of the details of that abusive relationship, the details of the SA, including what the person said and she gave explicit details about everything I ever said to her about the guy. She gossiped about it to her new shitty fucking husband. She told him my deepest fucking secret, and did it for entertainment. I don’t even make small talk with this guy, or look him in the fucking eyes. But yeah no, tell him about my trauma, because I definitely would’ve been cool with that. When I overheard her talking about it, she ignored my text telling her to stop, told her husband what the text said, and closed her door to continue talking.

Maybe she should’ve taught me about consent instead of never ever talking to me about sex. Maybe I wouldn’t be such a people pleaser, maybe I wouldn’t have been scared to say no, if she didn’t always tell me that I’m “not allowed to say no” to her. That’s literally exactly why you educate your kids, to make sure they know they can say no. That’s why you don’t pretend it doesn’t exist. Refusing to teach me didnt ever stop me from discovering sex, it just means I never learned how to do it safely. You set me up for failure. You failed me. And guess who ended up not knowing they were assaulted? Me. She still hasn’t ever given me sex education, by the way. Im fucking 19. She still makes it a point to not talk about it. She even skips sex scenes in shows. If sex ever does come up, she raves about how bad of an idea it is, and how she doesn’t understand why people do it, and she always used to put a huge emphasis on minors not having sex, when I was still a minor. She keeps it from me in hopes that I won’t ever develop autonomy. She has literally never mentioned or acknowledged the concept, never even said the word, never taught me about body parts and she prides herself on the fact that she “Kept penises from me and made sure I never saw one”. So fucking strange. She’s controlled my entire world for 19 years and counting.

And, I had PTSD episodes every day for over a year, from that relationship, by the way. All she ever did was get annoyed, roll her eyes, and tell me “I don’t feel like hearing you talk about your attachment to him all day every day”, she sided with him every time I opened up. She looked away when I would sob, she would ignore me and scroll on her phone, just silently brooding, while I sat there having flashbacks, sobbing, shaking, and hyperventilating for hours and hours. Every night. For months. She sat and ignored me.

She kept important medical details from me until recently, about having scoliosis, when it’s been causing problems all my life and I just never knew it had a reason, despite me complaining to her. She listened to me talk about how badly it hurt when I would do horseback riding, and she was so defensive and frantically insisted that, “It’s just what happens when people have a big chest”. She listened to me talk about how I felt like I wasn’t a good rider, she watched me quit the sport I loved because I had too much back pain. Never said a word about my scoliosis. She told me she “Didnt want to tell me because it doesn’t affect” me, and she “Didnt keep it a secret, she just didn’t want to tell me and add it to my plate”. I was also having trouble walking because I’m always in horrible pain, so I finally gave up and asked for a wheelchair or a rollator. She said “No. I want you to walk”, and “No, you need to just move your body. You have to find a way, people have pain sometimes. It happens. You have to just keep walking”. As if she doesn’t have a fucking rollator her fucking self, for literal back pain. She got me a prescription for weed and watched me smoke for a few months, but I recently discovered that since I was born 2 months early, I’m really really not supposed to smoke. It’s a very dangerous, critical risk, and it’s very advised to avoid any kind of smoking because of lung development and higher risks of complications, regardless of my current health status. But of course I never knew that, because she’s always said, “You were born premature, but you were born fully developed and perfectly healthy”. That’s always been the exact quote from her. You can’t be born 2 months early and be fully developed. Literally just a fucking liar. Those things cant coexist, she just doesn’t want to think something was wrong with her baby, so she made up a narrative that isnt even logical. I literally stayed in the NICU because I needed additional help to physically function. But nope, perfectly normal labor. So I never thought to question how it could affect me.

She gets revenge and uses my vulnerability against me. Every time I open up. And then she guilt trips me when I stop talking to her. She lies to me to get me to tell her what she wants. She humiliates me in front of people, she makes fun of me in private too. She’s mean, she insults me, she uses my insecurities against me, she insults and comments on my appearance, she is a cruel human.

She is a fucking human torture device, and I can’t express how calculated and precise she is. She goes out of her way to make me feel bad. She’s sinister and every single thing she does has horrible intentions, she literally has never once done anything for an actually good reason. And she does the bare minimum and acts like that’s more than sufficient, and it isn’t. It’s just not. It’s not enough, and she doesn’t even fully take care of me, she just does enough to keep me physically alive.

She makes me get up and grab stuff for her constantly because she has a disability and only stays on her bed or goes to her bathroom. Thats it. She goes downstairs maybe like, once every 2 weeks. Leaves the house maybe once every 2 months. But if I complain about my struggles and I complain about not being able to do something for her, shes angry and says Im not respecting her disability. Says I need to “Get up and do it for her, right now, without complaining”, and “What do you mean no??”, and “You need to find accommodations so you can do things anyways”, and “No, I’m not gonna ‘hold on’, get off your phone and go do it”.

She uses “because Im your mom” as a punishment 24/7, for everything, and she says it with so much passion and fury, that it becomes clear that it’s more than just guilt tripping- she genuinely thinks I owe her the world because she’s my mom. Like, do you even want to be a fucking mom? Do you want to be my mom? Are you resentful towards me because you’re my mom? You know you are. I know she is. She resents me because she’s my mother, and she’s spent all of her time punishing me for it. She’s so mad at me about it, and it just isn’t my fucking fault. And even if she didn’t want to have me, which maybe she didn’t, because I know she didn’t even know she was pregnant with me. So I don’t know, lately Ive been wondering if something went on, like maybe my abusive dad (not her new husband) had something to do with it, I don’t know. I know she thought she couldn’t get pregnant and was surprised when she was. So. Idk. Also, she definitely has a type, she went from one abusive husband to another. Got to watch my mom get violently abused by my dad, and now emotionally abused by her shitlord husband.

She thinks that parenting isn’t worth it, if I’m not gonna do what she wants. It’s not about love or affection, it’s about it being a trade off. If I’m not what she wants me to be, then she feels betrayed because she “bends over backwards to keep me happy”. You’re supposed to want to keep me happy. Either way. You’re not supposed to waver. Whether I’m mean or awful or unappreciative, you’re not supposed to feel tortured by my happiness. You’re supposed to want to do it anyways, not for the benefits. You’re meant to want to take care of me. But you don’t. If you did, you wouldnt constantly need to be repaid for it. It’s not a mutual aid thing.

The second I do something she doesn’t like, it’s screaming, and insults, and “You’re lucky I don’t beat the shit out of you right now. Most parents would beat the shit out of you and kick you out immediately”. Like, wow, good thing I’m not dealing with those guys, right? Glad I got lucky, glad I have one of the good ones. All of which happened when I had the audacity to pierce my face when I was in middle school.

If I tell her she treats me worse than anyone else does, she tells me how much other people “Dont have to deal with me”, and that she gets to treat me that way because nobody else knows how I really am. She says “You respect everyone else but me”, when the reason I don’t respect her is because she’s a fucking abuser. I’m nice to everyone else because they dont deliberately torture me.

I was homeschooled since 5th grade. So no peers. No outside life. Just my house. Rarely was allowed to go anywhere. Just whatever she wanted me to see and know, just who she wants me to hang out with (which was nobody),no more no less. Just in the house all the time, no friends, except my one best friend who moved the same year I got homeschooled. It’s genuinely like a cult in this house. Nobody comes in, nobody gets out, and everything is controlled. Everything I do is monitored and influenced and tainted, and there’s no outside world interaction, and if there is, it’s supervised and interrogated. And I want to have a partner so bad. But it’s humiliating to have to involve them in my life, and it’s not worth the careful planning and coordination, and I’m so incredibly inferior and underdeveloped. Zero freedom, and whoever I date would have to navigate my cultish household with me. I refuse, and it wouldn’t even be enjoyable if I constantly have to deal with my household. I would love to date someone, but logistically it isn’t realistic, even if someone’s great. I’m too drained and unsure/ashamed of myself to actually be anyones partner anyways. Dating at 18 is different than dating as a teen. My peers are adults and living young adult lives. I’m living the life of someone with the freedom equivalent to a 12 year old.

Her husband moved in and hes toxic to her, got drunk and combative but she just blamed me after, she let him stay. He gaslights her and yells and makes her feel stupid, but she is infatuated. He has zero concept of boundaries, asks me “You’re not leaving because of me are you?”, if I try to leave the room when we’re alone. If my mom asks him to respect a boundary, he won’t, and he’ll just come ask me about it when I’m alone, and continue to not respect it. He moves my stuff because it’s “in the way”, and he shares my bathroom when they have their own. He doesn’t use his shower because mine has more space. He uses mine. And he moves my shower basket every time he’s in there, and keeps his bullshit on my counter, and moves my towels. He yells, and is hostile with his 18 year old dog when she barks or has an accident, but refuses to put a diaper on her because he “thinks she won’t like it”. She pees and poops on our carpet multiple times a week. She can’t help it, she’s a sweet girl and she’s 18, so go put her in a diaper or stop getting angry. Our carpets have been stained for years and theres constantly pee soaked in the carpets somewhere before he cleans it. Which he doesn’t clean very well, and maybe I don’t fucking want pee stained carpets. It’s also funny because he fancies himself a “dog whisperer” and gives unsolicited advice and criticism about my service dog in training, who has received professional classes, and who has nothing to do with him or his generic ass advice, that I couldve found with a google search. And he gets annoyed if I don’t praise him for his non applicable, unwanted comments. He’s not exactly Einstein, his advice is genuinely not at all remarkable. He never leaves the house and I can never leave my room without him coming and starting up some useless prolonged boring small talk. He makes “jokes” about me that are just insulting or just dumb. He’s oblivious about what he should and shouldn’t say to people. He criticizes everyone and he can never be wrong or corrected, even politely, or else he’ll throw a fit. He knocks on the door if I use my mom’s bathroom for more than 10 minutes and asks if I’ll take a long time, and I hate using my bathroom because it’s next to the basement, where he camps out in for hours, and I just don’t always want to run into him. I never go in my basement anymore. I used to stay there for hours. My drum set is in there, which he uses now. He rearranged the basement and moved all my stuff, and my mom just said it looks better. The basement used to be my second safe space, noa I never go in there at all.

My mom deflects and blames me and gets angry and defensive when I tell her how I feel about her husband. I don’t even tell her anymore. Just makes it worse. She’s an abuser, he’s an abuser, her first husband was an abuser. She can’t cope with leaving her shitty relationship because they’re in too deep, because they lovebombed each other and got married a few months after meeting each other in a facebook group. They decided they weren’t gonna listen to what anyone said, and she moved him in even though I said from the beginning I had a bad feeling about him. She told me “Don’t hate him, it’s much easier on me if you just don’t”, and “You just don’t wanna share me”, amongst all the other usual bullshit.

Now I just go out of my way and stay in my room all day. All day. Every day. For years now. It’s lonely.

Everyone around me fucking sucks and I’ve never felt more trapped and hopeless. It’s driving me crazy. Im so fucking trapped all the time. I never realized it was even an issue before, but I realized recently, and now I feel even more trapped.

I even hate sleeping, because i always stay up until morning with anxiety and restlessness, I need a new weighted blanket but my dog chewed my last one and my mom I guess can’t afford a new one. So it’s even harder to lay still. I need my weighted blanket to sleep. My bed isn’t comfortable either but I already asked for a new frame and a new mattress and I replaced my broken fabric dresser with an actual dresser with a mirror a little while ago- so I can’t complain about anything else, or she’ll be annoyed and refuse and say it’s too expensive, so my back always hurts even more. She complained when I got the new dresser, and blamed me by saying I didn’t put the broken one together properly. The sun always shines because I can’t sleep until morning, but she won’t get me another set of black out curtains after the last ones turned out to be too short, because she “Just can’t afford everything” and she has other stuff to buy for me first. It’s 7:41am as I type, and it sucks, I have to be up at 9:00am for an appt. I understand it’s expensive to raise a family. But my needs are my needs, and she is not meeting them. I don’t want to ask for too much, I just want to sleep.

My mom doesn’t care what happens to me, she watches me struggle or she watches something bad happen, and she is literally never helpful, she makes it worse. It doesn’t matter how bad it is, all she has ever done is get annoyed, blame me, ignore it, whatever else. Sometimes it truly feels like she has no intention of protecting me whatsoever. That’s what’s so evil to me. Is that when things have been urgent, when it’s been life or death, when I’ve been in acutely dangerous situations, all she does is roll her eyes and ignore it. She knows when something is dangerous. She knows when my life has been on the line. She knows when I’ve reached crisis, and she’s done nothing but be evil and malicious and instigate. The fact that this woman is willing to risk my safety all the time, is purely evil to me. She can help. She always could’ve helped, and she never has. I feel like she just doesn’t care what happens to me. Sometimes I wonder if she really just wants me to die, because she isn’t fucking clueless, and she knows she’s made no effort to ever actually keep me safe. She has no regards for me or my wellbeing at all. Why does she always turn her back on me when I’m in danger? That woman wants me fucking dead.

She should’ve just fucking aborted me, because now I’m here, and I don’t know what to fucking do. I’ve already wasted so much time, I’ve already been robbed of my youth and I’ve never hit any of the same milestones as my peers. I don’t have the experiences that others teens have and had, and I don’t know how to get out of this house. Even if I do, it’s hard. Hard if I stay, hard if I leave. And I’m sick of things being hard. I just want something to be easy.

My friends get tired of me canceling plans because I can’t always have my brother take me, or Im just too emotionally exhausted to hang out. I haven’t seen most of my friends in like 3 years. Except maybe 5 total hangouts, amongst only 2 of my friends.

I hate it here. I’m trying my best to cope and to figure everything out. But in the meantime, it’s almost too much. And I have to just handle it all on my own. Nobody listens and nobody’s there. I have nowhere to put my emotions. Nowhere. Just journals and music or whatever the fuck I can manage to do without being sabotaged or monitored. I’m tired and I’m miserable. I want someone to see that I’m trying, and it’s hard to even do that

My mom is abusive. Toxic, mean, spiteful, and isolates me severely. She gaslights me and she makes me feel awful every single time I talk to her. She doesn’t talk to me like I’m her kid, she talks to me with venom in her voice and fury in her eyes. She’s manipulative and two faced and puts me down. She tells everyone how worried she is for me, calls me crazy. She is a horrible fucking human, and shes made me miserable all of my life. Shes nice but only as long as I don’t say or do anything she doesnt like, then if something is wrong, she immediately is back to that same asshole she always is. I don’t understand how a person can genuinely just be so incredibly awful. She controls everything. She has control over literally everything in my life. Every single thing. Im not being dramatic, either. And I can’t leave the house without her interrogating me, she sends my brother to babysit me and spy on me so she doesn’t have to keep tabs. She needs to know everyone I hang out with, names, photos, etc. If I don’t tell her, she’ll sabotage it. I dont drive yet. She won’t teach me to drive and she won’t help me get my permit. Im gonna have to have my brother take me to take a test for a permit at some point. My brother takes me everywhere. Im almost 19, too. But I have no independence at all. I haven’t seen anyone my age in over a year. And last time I did, she was there, or my brother was there. And that was only a few times, with one friend, and anything before that has been about 2-3 years. I rarely leave the house. Like, maybe once every few weeks, for no more than an hour, with my brother. She doesn’t drive. And I could find workarounds, and I do that as much as I can, but as long as I’m living here, I will always have to come back to face her consequences. So until I move, everything I do faces some kind of backlash. I don’t have a job, I don’t know how to work, she never prepared me in any way. She discourages me when I mention working. I don’t have anyone to drive me to work necessarily, and she would just have a fit once I’m back home, and she would interfere with me getting to work by stirring something up in one way or another, which would make me inconsistent getting to work, and therefore an unreliable employee. Nothing is in walking distance, and walking hurts my back so badly, because I apparently have scoliosis which she never told me until recently. And again, yeah I can do what I want generally speaking, if I’m determined enough, but I’d still have to deal with her when I come back. It’s not freeing, nothing is ever freeing, because it’s just gonna get me retaliated against. Even when I try to do anything, she just makes my life even more miserable.

She’s manipulative and angry. She’s fucking evil. She even grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me and shoved me one time and screamed at me and wouldn’t leave my room for like an hour straight, when I told her I was hurt by how she treats me. After she did that, I sat sobbing on my floor, and suddenly she was all calm and was like “Im still the same mama”, and finally left. Then when I told my therapist about that (who she never used to let me see alone. She came to all my sessions and changed every possible narrative, and managed every email and all the scheduling), she told the therapist I was acting crazy, lashing out, and that she was “shaking sense into me”. She said she “didn’t regret it, she’d do it again”.

When I say she controls everything, I mean everything. Finances, social life, she follows my social media, literally everything. I tried to block her on instagram. She noticed and she guilt tripped me and made me feel like I had to let her follow me, or else, basically. Basically any time I try to do anything to stop myself from being abused, she starts telling me I can’t live on my own, telling me how she has control over my bills and my bank and everything to my name, and sabotages my every effort. I tried to stay with her best friend, and I successfully did for a while, but my mom retaliated and talked to her friend behind my back. Her friend still let me stay. She was the only one who ever even got close to understanding me. She eventually finally asked me if everything was okay at home, if anyone was abusing me, and if I needed to come live with her. And guess what happened, weeks later? She unexpectedly died from her health issues. Me and my brother were the last ones to see her, with my brother being the very last. My only support system. She was just about to be able to understand, and just like that, she was gone. You don’t know how much I miss her. Even if she didn’t offer that, even if she never asked about being abused. I miss staying over there. I miss talking to her. She was actually enjoyable to talk to. I loved learning about her and being with her. It was safer and calmer and nicer there. I miss her. So much. She was an amazing person. It’s like the universe just doesn’t want me to make it out alive, I swear to god.

And she makes sure to make people think shes a good mom. She’s so nice around other people. She hears everything I do at home, she’s always home and our rooms are across from each other. Which means I never make calls to people, or else she questions me about it and manipulates me to get me to tell her who it is, so I can’t even keep a social life as much digitally, at least not without feeling like I have to be careful about it. She has to know all of my doctors, she questioned me when I tried to book my own appointment last week, she manipulated me and tried to get me to tell her who I was seeing and why, and of course used her insurance against me as a reason to tell her. She said she has to know what the appt was for, to know if her insurance covers it. Again, a fucking liar. And she of course threatened to just not pay the copay, which was $25. I doubt that she couldn’t figure that out. She definitely has $25 to spare. She claimed that she can’t afford multiple appointments in one week. If she really can’t afford that, she should change her priorities. Opt out of buying something else, so you can afford it, then. You can.

She has to know where I am at all times, even in the house.

She doesn’t meet enough of my needs and she makes me feel like it’s my fault for being extra. Oh you want a different brand of body wash? No, we get this brand. Stop asking for extra brands. Oh you want face wash? Pay with your own chore money, which you also have to spend on other self care things, and you don’t have enough to get everything you need, which means you won’t even actually be able to buy the face wash. Oh you want a razor? Well why do you need a razor, huh? Don’t you struggle with self harm? Gotta keep you safe, right? Because clearly, that’s ever actually worked. Clearly she’s ever once actually successfully kept me safe a day in her life.

She never consoles me. Never reassures me. Sabotages me, deflects, blames, fails to protect me from things, like getting harassed at my bus stop recently and then she laughed at me, joked, gossiped to someone else, and didnt care when I said it was harassment. When I was sa’d (Coercion, Child on Child SA), when I was 14/15, IN HER HOUSE, she defended them and guilt tripped me. Explained that we were both minors, and didn’t even flinch when I said our relationship was abusive. Didnt even acknowledge it. Never once said anything to help me. Didn’t hug me or tell me anything reassuring, didn’t say she believed me. I don’t think she ever really even believed me. She just looked pissed off at me and amused. Like she was patronizing me for calling it assault.

Whenever I open up about something, she always makes this dumb fucking face, like a weird half smile, like the kind that you do when someone is telling you a joke, and you’re waiting for the punch line. That face, yknow? Like, “Okay,,, so what’s your point exactly? You’re joking right,,, are you actually being serious right now?”.

You know whats also funny? I peed blood after the SA happened, I was emotionally confused and also physically in pain. But I didn’t know what was happening, so I just carried on. And of course, she didn’t think to ask if I was okay, right? How would she have known if she didn’t ask? And how would I know to tell her? She then, gossiped about all of the details of that abusive relationship, the details of the SA, including what the person said and she gave explicit details about everything I ever said to her about the guy. She gossiped about it to her new shitty fucking husband. She told him my deepest fucking secret, and did it for entertainment. I don’t even make small talk with this guy, or look him in the fucking eyes. But yeah no, tell him about my trauma, because I definitely would’ve been cool with that. When I overheard her talking about it, she ignored my text telling her to stop, told her husband what the text said, and closed her door to continue talking.

Maybe she should’ve taught me about consent instead of never ever talking to me about sex. Maybe I wouldn’t be such a people pleaser, maybe I wouldn’t have been scared to say no, if she didn’t always tell me that I’m “not allowed to say no” to her. That’s literally exactly why you educate your kids, to make sure they know they can say no. That’s why you don’t pretend it doesn’t exist. Refusing to teach me didnt ever stop me from discovering sex, it just means I never learned how to do it safely. You set me up for failure. You failed me. And guess who ended up not knowing they were assaulted? Me. She still hasn’t ever given me sex education, by the way. Im fucking 19. She still makes it a point to not talk about it. She even skips sex scenes in shows. If sex ever does come up, she raves about how bad of an idea it is, and how she doesn’t understand why people do it, and she always used to put a huge emphasis on minors not having sex, when I was still a minor. She keeps it from me in hopes that I won’t ever develop autonomy. She has literally never mentioned or acknowledged the concept, never even said the word, never taught me about body parts and she prides herself on the fact that she “Kept penises from me and made sure I never saw one”. So fucking strange. She’s controlled my entire world for 19 years and counting.

And, I had PTSD episodes every day for over a year, from that relationship, by the way. All she ever did was get annoyed, roll her eyes, and tell me “I don’t feel like hearing you talk about your attachment to him all day every day”, she sided with him every time I opened up. She looked away when I would sob, she would ignore me and scroll on her phone, just silently brooding, while I sat there having flashbacks, sobbing, shaking, and hyperventilating for hours and hours. Every night. For months. She sat and ignored me.

She kept important medical details from me until recently, about having scoliosis, when it’s been causing problems all my life and I just never knew it had a reason, despite me complaining to her. She listened to me talk about how badly it hurt when I would do horseback riding, and she was so defensive and frantically insisted that, “It’s just what happens when people have a big chest”. She listened to me talk about how I felt like I wasn’t a good rider, she watched me quit the sport I loved because I had too much back pain. Never said a word about my scoliosis. She told me she “Didnt want to tell me because it doesn’t affect” me, and she “Didnt keep it a secret, she just didn’t want to tell me and add it to my plate”. I was also having trouble walking because I’m always in horrible pain, so I finally gave up and asked for a wheelchair or a rollator. She said “No. I want you to walk”, and “No, you need to just move your body. You have to find a way, people have pain sometimes. It happens. You have to just keep walking”. As if she doesn’t have a fucking rollator her fucking self, for literal back pain. She got me a prescription for weed and watched me smoke for a few months, but I recently discovered that since I was born 2 months early, I’m really really not supposed to smoke. It’s a very dangerous, critical risk, and it’s very advised to avoid any kind of smoking because of lung development and higher risks of complications, regardless of my current health status. But of course I never knew that, because she’s always said, “You were born premature, but you were born fully developed and perfectly healthy”. That’s always been the exact quote from her. You can’t be born 2 months early and be fully developed. Literally just a fucking liar. Those things cant coexist, she just doesn’t want to think something was wrong with her baby, so she made up a narrative that isnt even logical. I literally stayed in the NICU because I needed additional help to physically function. But nope, perfectly normal labor. So I never thought to question how it could affect me.

She gets revenge and uses my vulnerability against me. Every time I open up. And then she guilt trips me when I stop talking to her. She lies to me to get me to tell her what she wants. She humiliates me in front of people, she makes fun of me in private too. She’s mean, she insults me, she uses my insecurities against me, she insults and comments on my appearance, she is a cruel human.

She is a fucking human torture device, and I can’t express how calculated and precise she is. She goes out of her way to make me feel bad. She’s sinister and every single thing she does has horrible intentions, she literally has never once done anything for an actually good reason. And she does the bare minimum and acts like that’s more than sufficient, and it isn’t. It’s just not. It’s not enough, and she doesn’t even fully take care of me, she just does enough to keep me physically alive.

She makes me get up and grab stuff for her constantly because she has a disability and only stays on her bed or goes to her bathroom. Thats it. She goes downstairs maybe like, once every 2 weeks. Leaves the house maybe once every 2 months. But if I complain about my struggles and I complain about not being able to do something for her, shes angry and says Im not respecting her disability. Says I need to “Get up and do it for her, right now, without complaining”, and “What do you mean no??”, and “You need to find accommodations so you can do things anyways”, and “No, I’m not gonna ‘hold on’, get off your phone and go do it”.

She uses “because Im your mom” as a punishment 24/7, for everything, and she says it with so much passion and fury, that it becomes clear that it’s more than just guilt tripping- she genuinely thinks I owe her the world because she’s my mom. Like, do you even want to be a fucking mom? Do you want to be my mom? Are you resentful towards me because you’re my mom? You know you are. I know she is. She resents me because she’s my mother, and she’s spent all of her time punishing me for it. She’s so mad at me about it, and it just isn’t my fucking fault. And even if she didn’t want to have me, which maybe she didn’t, because I know she didn’t even know she was pregnant with me. So I don’t know, lately Ive been wondering if something went on, like maybe my abusive dad (not her new husband) had something to do with it, I don’t know. I know she thought she couldn’t get pregnant and was surprised when she was. So. Idk. Also, she definitely has a type, she went from one abusive husband to another. Got to watch my mom get violently abused by my dad, and now emotionally abused by her shitlord husband.

She thinks that parenting isn’t worth it, if I’m not gonna do what she wants. It’s not about love or affection, it’s about it being a trade off. If I’m not what she wants me to be, then she feels betrayed because she “bends over backwards to keep me happy”. You’re supposed to want to keep me happy. Either way. You’re not supposed to waver. Whether I’m mean or awful or unappreciative, you’re not supposed to feel tortured by my happiness. You’re supposed to want to do it anyways, not for the benefits. You’re meant to want to take care of me. But you don’t. If you did, you wouldnt constantly need to be repaid for it. It’s not a mutual aid thing.

The second I do something she doesn’t like, it’s screaming, and insults, and “You’re lucky I don’t beat the shit out of you right now. Most parents would beat the shit out of you and kick you out immediately”. Like, wow, good thing I’m not dealing with those guys, right? Glad I got lucky, glad I have one of the good ones. All of which happened when I had the audacity to pierce my face when I was in middle school.

If I tell her she treats me worse than anyone else does, she tells me how much other people “Dont have to deal with me”, and that she gets to treat me that way because nobody else knows how I really am. She says “You respect everyone else but me”, when the reason I don’t respect her is because she’s a fucking abuser. I’m nice to everyone else because they dont deliberately torture me.

I was homeschooled since 5th grade. So no peers. No outside life. Just my house. Rarely was allowed to go anywhere. Just whatever she wanted me to see and know, just who she wants me to hang out with (which was nobody),no more no less. Just in the house all the time, no friends, except my one best friend who moved the same year I got homeschooled. It’s genuinely like a cult in this house. Nobody comes in, nobody gets out, and everything is controlled. Everything I do is monitored and influenced and tainted, and there’s no outside world interaction, and if there is, it’s supervised and interrogated. And I want to have a partner so bad. But it’s humiliating to have to involve them in my life, and it’s not worth the careful planning and coordination, and I’m so incredibly inferior and underdeveloped. Zero freedom, and whoever I date would have to navigate my cultish household with me. I refuse, and it wouldn’t even be enjoyable if I constantly have to deal with my household. I would love to date someone, but logistically it isn’t realistic, even if someone’s great. I’m too drained and unsure/ashamed of myself to actually be anyones partner anyways. Dating at 18 is different than dating as a teen. My peers are adults and living young adult lives. I’m living the life of someone with the freedom equivalent to a 12 year old.

Her husband moved in and hes toxic to her, got drunk and combative but she just blamed me after, she let him stay. He gaslights her and yells and makes her feel stupid, but she is infatuated. He has zero concept of boundaries, asks me “You’re not leaving because of me are you?”, if I try to leave the room when we’re alone. If my mom asks him to respect a boundary, he won’t, and he’ll just come ask me about it when I’m alone, and continue to not respect it. He moves my stuff because it’s “in the way”, and he shares my bathroom when they have their own. He doesn’t use his shower because mine has more space. He uses mine. And he moves my shower basket every time he’s in there, and keeps his bullshit on my counter, and moves my towels. He yells, and is hostile with his 18 year old dog when she barks or has an accident, but refuses to put a diaper on her because he “thinks she won’t like it”. She pees and poops on our carpet multiple times a week. She can’t help it, she’s a sweet girl and she’s 18, so go put her in a diaper or stop getting angry. Our carpets have been stained for years and theres constantly pee soaked in the carpets somewhere before he cleans it. Which he doesn’t clean very well, and maybe I don’t fucking want pee stained carpets. It’s also funny because he fancies himself a “dog whisperer” and gives unsolicited advice and criticism about my service dog in training, who has received professional classes, and who has nothing to do with him or his generic ass advice, that I couldve found with a google search. And he gets annoyed if I don’t praise him for his non applicable, unwanted comments. He’s not exactly Einstein, his advice is genuinely not at all remarkable. He never leaves the house and I can never leave my room without him coming and starting up some useless prolonged boring small talk. He makes “jokes” about me that are just insulting or just dumb. He’s oblivious about what he should and shouldn’t say to people. He criticizes everyone and he can never be wrong or corrected, even politely, or else he’ll throw a fit. He knocks on the door if I use my mom’s bathroom for more than 10 minutes and asks if I’ll take a long time, and I hate using my bathroom because it’s next to the basement, where he camps out in for hours, and I just don’t always want to run into him. I never go in my basement anymore. I used to stay there for hours. My drum set is in there, which he uses now. He rearranged the basement and moved all my stuff, and my mom just said it looks better. The basement used to be my second safe space, noa I never go in there at all.

My mom deflects and blames me and gets angry and defensive when I tell her how I feel about her husband. I don’t even tell her anymore. Just makes it worse. She’s an abuser, he’s an abuser, her first husband was an abuser. She can’t cope with leaving her shitty relationship because they’re in too deep, because they lovebombed each other and got married a few months after meeting each other in a facebook group. They decided they weren’t gonna listen to what anyone said, and she moved him in even though I said from the beginning I had a bad feeling about him. She told me “Don’t hate him, it’s much easier on me if you just don’t”, and “You just don’t wanna share me”, amongst all the other usual bullshit.

Now I just go out of my way and stay in my room all day. All day. Every day. For years now. It’s lonely.

Everyone around me fucking sucks and I’ve never felt more trapped and hopeless. It’s driving me crazy. Im so fucking trapped all the time. I never realized it was even an issue before, but I realized recently, and now I feel even more trapped.

I even hate sleeping, because i always stay up until morning with anxiety and restlessness, I need a new weighted blanket but my dog chewed my last one and my mom I guess can’t afford a new one. So it’s even harder to lay still. I need my weighted blanket to sleep. My bed isn’t comfortable either but I already asked for a new frame and a new mattress and I replaced my broken fabric dresser with an actual dresser with a mirror a little while ago- so I can’t complain about anything else, or she’ll be annoyed and refuse and say it’s too expensive, so my back always hurts even more. She complained when I got the new dresser, and blamed me by saying I didn’t put the broken one together properly. The sun always shines because I can’t sleep until morning, but she won’t get me another set of black out curtains after the last ones turned out to be too short, because she “Just can’t afford everything” and she has other stuff to buy for me first. It’s 7:41am as I type, and it sucks, I have to be up at 9:00am for an appt. I understand it’s expensive to raise a family. But my needs are my needs, and she is not meeting them. I don’t want to ask for too much, I just want to sleep.

My mom doesn’t care what happens to me, she watches me struggle or she watches something bad happen, and she is literally never helpful, she makes it worse. It doesn’t matter how bad it is, all she has ever done is get annoyed, blame me, ignore it, whatever else. Sometimes it truly feels like she has no intention of protecting me whatsoever. That’s what’s so evil to me. Is that when things have been urgent, when it’s been life or death, when I’ve been in acutely dangerous situations, all she does is roll her eyes and ignore it. She knows when something is dangerous. She knows when my life has been on the line. She knows when I’ve reached crisis, and she’s done nothing but be evil and malicious and instigate. The fact that this woman is willing to risk my safety all the time, is purely evil to me. She can help. She always could’ve helped, and she never has. I feel like she just doesn’t care what happens to me. Sometimes I wonder if she really just wants me to die, because she isn’t fucking clueless, and she knows she’s made no effort to ever actually keep me safe. She has no regards for me or my wellbeing at all. Why does she always turn her back on me when I’m in danger? That woman wants me fucking dead.

She should’ve just fucking aborted me, because now I’m here, and I don’t know what to fucking do. I’ve already wasted so much time, I’ve already been robbed of my youth and I’ve never hit any of the same milestones as my peers. I don’t have the experiences that others teens have and had, and I don’t know how to get out of this house. Even if I do, it’s hard. Hard if I stay, hard if I leave. And I’m sick of things being hard. I just want something to be easy.

My friends get tired of me canceling plans because I can’t always have my brother take me, or Im just too emotionally exhausted to hang out. I haven’t seen most of my friends in like 3 years. Except maybe 5 total hangouts, amongst only 2 of my friends.

I hate it here. I’m trying my best to cope and to figure everything out. But in the meantime, it’s almost too much. And I have to just handle it all on my own. Nobody listens and nobody’s there. I have nowhere to put my emotions. Nowhere. Just journals and music or whatever the fuck I can manage to do without being sabotaged or monitored. I’m tired and I’m miserable. I want someone to see that I’m trying, and it’s hard to even do that

My mom is abusive. Toxic, mean, spiteful, and isolates me severely. She gaslights me and she makes me feel awful every single time I talk to her. She doesn’t talk to me like I’m her kid, she talks to me with venom in her voice and fury in her eyes. She’s manipulative and two faced and puts me down. She tells everyone how worried she is for me, calls me crazy. She is a horrible fucking human, and shes made me miserable all of my life. Shes nice but only as long as I don’t say or do anything she doesnt like, then if something is wrong, she immediately is back to that same asshole she always is. She controls everything. She has control over literally everything in my life. Every single thing. Im not being dramatic, either. And I can’t leave the house without her interrogating me, she sends my brother to babysit me and spy on me so she doesn’t have to keep tabs. She needs to know everyone I hang out with, names, photos, etc. If I don’t tell her, she’ll sabotage it. I dont drive yet. She won’t teach me to drive and she won’t help me get my permit. Im gonna have to have my brother take me to take a test for a permit at some point. My brother takes me everywhere. Im almost 19, too. But I have no independence at all. I haven’t seen anyone my age in over a year. And last time I did, she was there, or my brother was there. And that was only a few times, with one friend, and anything before that has been about 2-3 years. I rarely leave the house. Like, maybe once every few weeks, for no more than an hour, with my brother. She doesn’t drive. And I could find workarounds, and I do that as much as I can, but as long as I’m living here, I will always have to come back to face her consequences. So until I move, everything I do faces some kind of backlash. I don’t have a job, I don’t know how to work, she never prepared me in any way. I don’t have anyone to drive me to work necessarily, and she would just have a fit once I’m home, and she would interfere with me getting to work by stirring something up in one way or another, which would make me inconsistent getting to work. Nothing is walking distance, and walking hurts my back so badly, because I apparently have scoliosis which she never told me until recently. And again, yeah I can do what I want generally speaking, but I’d have to deal with her when I come back. It’s not freeing, it’s just gonna get me retaliated against. She’s manipulative and angry. She’s fucking evil. She even grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me and shoved me one time and screamed at me and wouldn’t leave my room for like an hour straight, when I told her I was hurt by how she treats me. After she did that, I sat sobbing on my floor, and suddenly she was all calm and was like “Im still the same mama”, and left. Then when I told my therapist about that (who she never let me see alone. She came to all my sessions), she told the therapist I was acting crazy, lashing out, and that she was shaking sense into me. She said she didn’t regret it, she’d do it again. When I say she controls everything, I mean everything. Finances, social life, everything. She makes sure to make people think shes a good mom. She hears everything I do, she’s always home and our rooms are across from each other. Which means I never make calls to people, or else she questions me about it and manipulates me to get me to tell her who it is, so I can’t even keep a social life as much digitally. She has to know all my doctors, she questioned me when I tried to book my own appointment, she manipulated me and tried to get me to tell her who I was seeing and why, and of course used her insurance against me as a reason to tell her. She has to know where I am, even in the house. She doesn’t meet enough of my needs and she makes me feel like it’s my fault for being extra. She never consoles me. Never reassures me. Sabotages me, deflects, blames, fails to protect me from things, like getting harassed at my bus stop recently and then she laughed at me, joked, gossiped to someone else, and didnt care when I said it was harassment. When I was sa’d, IN HER HOUSE, she defended them and guilt tripped me. (COCSA) She kept important medical details from me until recently, about having scoliosis, when it’s been causing problems all my life and I just never knew it had a reason, despite complaining to her. She gets revenge and uses my vulnerability against me. She lies to get me to tell her what she wants. She makes me get up and grab stuff for her constantly because she has a disability and only stays on her bed or goes to her bathroom. Thats it. She goes downstairs maybe like, once every 2 weeks. Leaves fhe house maybe once every 2 months. But if I complain, shes angry and says Im not respecting her disability. She uses “because Im your mom” as a punishment 24/7. Her husband moved in and hes toxic to her, got drunk and combative but she just blamed me after, she let him stay. He gaslights her and yells and makes feel stupid, but she is infatuated. He has zero concept of boundaries, asks me “You’re not leaving because of me are you?”, if I try to leave the room when we’re alone. If my mom asks him to respect a boundary, he won’t, and he’ll just come ask me about it when I’m alone, and continue to not do it. He moves my stuff because it’s “in the way”, and he shares my bathroom when they have their own. He yells, he is hostile with his 18 year old dog when she barks or has an accident, but refuses to put a diaper on her because he thinks she won’t like it. She pees and poops on our carpet multiple times a week. Our carpets have been stained for years and theres constantly pee soaked in the carpets somewhere before he cleans it. He never leaves the house either and I can never leave my room without him coming and starting up some useless small talk. He criticizes everyone and can never be wrong, or else he’ll throw a fit. She deflects and blames me and gets angry I tell her how I feel about her husband. Everyone around me fucking sucks and I’ve never felt more trapped and hopeless. It’s driving me crazy. Im so fucking trapped all the time. I hate sleeping, i always stay up until morning with anxiety, I need a new weighted blanket but my dog chewed my last one and she I guess can’t afford a new one. So it’s even harder to lay still. My bed isn’t comfortable but I already asked for a new frame and a new mattress a while ago so I can’t complain about anything else, or she’ll be annoyed, so my back hurts even more. The sun always shines because I can’t sleep, but she won’t get me more black out curtains after the last ones turned out too short. It’s 7:41am as I type, and it sucks, I have to be up early tomorrow for an appt.

I really don’t care if people self diagnose or not. I believe them and I’ll take their word for it. Regardless of what the logistics are.

Self diagnosis is just not the problem people think it is. And if it really is directly causing an issue for you, it’s probably actually a bigger issue that’s causing it, not the self diagnosis itself.

Even if people get their dx wrong- misdiagnoses happen 24/7, misinformation gets spread all the time. Either you self dx and you’re right, or you’re wrong.

Either way, the source of the issues within mental health communities, is not the people who self diagnose (correctly or incorrectly), or even people who are “diagnosing for attention”. Even if any of those things are true, whether they’re harmful or not, correct or not, carefully researched or not. Those people are still not the primary reason why mental health conditions arent taken seriously, and they aren’t the reason why it can be hard to know who has what, and self diagnosis is not the culprit for any of the problems that come with having a mental health condition. Stuff isnt hard to live with because people self diagnose, it’s hard to live with because the world is fucked and so is the healthcare field.

So let people self diagnose. And if they’re wrong, let them be wrong. You’ll still be okay. The results arent any different if a diagnosis is wrong from being self diagnosed or from being medically diagnosed- a misdiagnosis is a misdiagnosis. Getting it wrong is not the end of the world anyways, so just let people diagnose themselves. It happens literally constantly. You can always correct yourself, just like anybody else would. If you’re really worried about the harm it could cause, then worry about the actual idea of communities being harmed in general, not about the idea of whether people are self diagnosing or not. The bigger picture, and the actual problem, is that the community is being harmed. If that’s why we’re worried, then we should focus more on that.

And of course, if they’re right, then yay, crisis averted, right?

So either way, let them self diagnose. I’d rather risk believing a liar than to be skeptical.

Yes it’s always going to be better if someone decides with a lot of time and research and energy put into it, than if they just diagnose themselves on a whim. Obviously diagnosing based on a quick google search is probably not the most efficient, but does that really actually happen nearly as often as we worry that it might? And don’t doctors lack in their research all the time? And even if someone is diagnosing for the “wrong” reasons, let them. Because self diagnosis is not the root of that issue, that’s an issue with or without a professional diagnosis, and people being wrong is just not the place to focus our attention. Doctors diagnose things with zero awareness all the time. They do it without knowing anything about the disorder, they do it and get it wrong, they do it to dismiss the patient, they do it even when they think they’re being right, only to still be wrong. They can study psychology for years and years, and be the most well trained person, and still get it wrong. The reality is, most people arent dying to self diagnose just for the hell of it. If they’re truly just gonna fake it, then yeah it’s annoying, but trying to weed out fakers isnt really stopping anyone.

We’re all having the same conversation, so let’s all be friends. Let them.

I’m so sick of hearing the same things. Doctors are always like “Labels aren’t important. Just treat the symptoms”. That advice isn’t helpful or remarkable to me at all. And it’s not particularly relevant. I’ve already been doing that since I was in middle school. I don’t want to just manage it anymore, I want to also actually know instead of guessing. I’m tired of being like “I think I have DID symptoms, but idk”. It’s not as easy as people think, to get a diagnosis. And I’m not gonna lie, I’m really struggling lately.

I just want to know for sure. The uncertainty gets exhausting. And my speculation doesn’t really feel very valuable. Even if I did self diagnose, I would feel guilty if I didn’t elaborate that I was self diagnosed, but I would also find it exhausting to have to provide an additional explanation every time I speak about my disorder. Being able to say I have DID is different than saying I think I have it, and it gets looked at very differently within the community.

Not to mention, treating the symptoms only goes so far, when nobody knows what’s going on. I was diagnosed with bipolar, only to realize recently that I don’t think that ever applied to me at all. It was a diagnosis I was given by a psych I saw for less than 2 weeks, at an emergency room for a chronic illness. Not a psychiatric visit, and they presumably were trying to write me off and “rule out underlying mental health factors”, which ended up being more just their way of finding a reason to send me back home. So, I was given medication for years, several years, for bipolar disorder, only to realize recently that it never really changed much for me at all. And this is especially annoying, because I complained about the meds from the start. I didn’t like the side effects, but I was told it was “the price you pay for meds”, and several years later, I’m still dealing with having to reverse the side effects. I switched medications now, and now I probably am gonna have to fight to get the bipolar diagnosis corrected, because it’s written in all of my charts. It’s mostly just frustrating, because I tried to talk about DID, only to land on bipolar for no real reason. I talked to my current nurse practitioner about my mood, and she said that it’s in fact not something that can be addressed with a mood stabilizer, and she came to the conclusion that we’d be treating my anxiety and my adhd. So that’s finally what we’re doing. Years later.

I asked my psych about DID when I was 15, she said its not something she’d diagnose before people who are “At least 18, but ideally well into their 30’s”, and that it’s not something that can be treated with meds, so she had no input. She just confirmed that it was trauma related instead of psychosis, and that was that. And she diagnosed me with PTSD. Nobody knows much about dissociative disorders so far, and nobody really wants to investigate beyond being like, “Well yeah you have a PTSD diagnosis and we can see why you’d suspect DID, but, we’re not gonna comment on it and we don’t really think that’s an important diagnosis”. I’ve talked to my therapist and she kind of just acknowledges the part about wanting to find a treatment plan, but she doesn’t say anything about anything else. I’ve mentioned suspecting it about a year ago, and wanting to know if I have it, but we never got anywhere really. I’m only just now seeing her again, and I mentioned dissociating and losing track of time again, but I don’t know if she’s really super invested in an actual answer, as much as treating the dissociation. Which is helpful obviously, but not in every way. Just in that one way. I do have an appointment with a DID specialist this week though, which I’m really hoping will end well, but I don’t know how long the process is or if it’s like, even gonna end in a diagnosis, but we’ll see I guess. I got a referral from another psychiatrist who I spoke to, where I said I suspected DID, so she said he’d be the person to talk to.

And, if nothing else, I think it’s important. It’s important to me to know. It’s my brain, and they’re symptoms that affect me every day, and they’ve affected me for years. It’s important to me to have an answer. Isn’t that enough? Is that not a fair question, to want to know for sure?

And is it really anyone’s place to tell me it doesn’t matter? I care. It matters to me, because I’m the one dealing with it, and I’m the one who gets to sit here and wonder why I am the way I am. It isn’t fair, and it’s not my fault that I “Would face stigma” if I got diagnosed. It’s not stigma that I created, and it’s not fair that I have to deal with the confusion and the caution, all because people can’t handle the concept of someone else having a disorder that doesn’t affect their lives. And, telling me that there’s stigma, is just contributing to the stigma. And obviously it’s still true, but it doesn’t make me feel any better. And you can argue that you think it may or may not be worth it, but you can’t tell me it doesn’t matter at all.

I’m tired of guessing. I’ve tried to settle for a long time, and I just think it’s annoying at this point. Like, I don’t care if you write it in my records, just give me a solid answer on what I do or don’t have, and then I can know. Then I don’t have to go on trial runs with meds, then I don’t have to struggle to know why I am the way I am, then I know what symptoms to look out for and how to categorize them when they come up.

I just want to know. I’m tired of guessing.

TW: grooming

I was groomed a lot, by basically whoever I could find. This has happened maybe 1 or 2 times over my lifespan I think?? But the worst of it was when I was 17.

I fucking hate myself. I am disgusted by it all. I went and deliberately got myself groomed by more men than I can count. So so many different guys, regularly, for like several months. Did stupid fucking stuff. Literally found men with the most objectively gross, dehumanizing possible fetishes (not to kink shame but I’m targeting the fact that it was by pedos), because I knew it was the most awful possible thing to do. Not even gross as in like, immoral, but gross as in, actually literally just fucking disgusting. Like, unclean, dirty, filthy gross. So gross that I can barely fucking cope with the memories.

I was reckless and so fucking stupid. Who knows who I’ve talked to. I’ve literally talked to pages worth of men probably. I signed up on whatever sex chats or sites or apps or fetish sites I could possibly find, in hopes to find the most gross men possible.

I was so so so dangerous about it. So dangerous. I’ve said my name and age and city to heaven fucking knows how many men. I showed my face to some of them. Luckily I don’t think any of the ones who lived near me ever got picture of my face, but who knows. I almost made plans with several men to basically theoretically get used. I talked about my life, my pets, how my day went, just details and everything you aren’t supposed to do with a stranger online. And it haunts me.

So scary. Like, it’s the kind of stuff that gets children fucking kidnapped. The kind of stuff you read about in articles or see in the news. It’s a wonder I’m even fucking alive, because I easily could’ve been in way more acute danger. Sometimes I still get paranoid that one of my groomers will recognize me in public or something, or that they’ll find my social media, or that they leaked my stuff somewhere out there. I get paranoid about the concept of being stalked irl, which probably isn’t even really logical, but still. I hate myself for being so dumb that it literally still makes me feel triggered. This is literally why kids get the “Don’t talk to strangers online” lecture.

I hate myself. I’m so fucking tainted and impure and I will never be the same again. It’s shameful and appalling and nose wrinkle inducing and if anyone ever found out, they’d ask why the hell I did it. And it’s because it’s gross. That’s literally why. And they’d ask why I was willing, and I don’t even know why I was. I just was. I don’t know. I don’t even know. I couldn’t even tell you.

Nobody ever taught me internet safety, nobody ever taught me fucking anything. Shitty home life, shitty environment, shitty survival skills, shitty everything. Nobody taught me anything at all. Nobody ever taught me about sex. Ever. It was quite literally hidden and never brought up, at least not outside of seeing people having sex on tv and then complaining about how “I just don’t understand why people do that. Especially when they’re so young. They’ll regret it”. Im almost 19 and still, nobody gave me sex education in any way at all. I was homeschooled from 5th grade until I graduated high school. I hate how parents do stuff like that and I guess it’s about protecting me, but it’s so selfish and so stupid. Nobody protected me from nothing. They prevented nothing. All because they wanted to try to control the narrative on what I do and dont do with my body, which never even got anyone anywhere.

My upbringing is practically bound to get me fucking killed one day. I won’t have the right skills. I’ll freeze or fawn at the wrong time and the wrong place with the wrong person, or I’ll be unable to say no because the word no has always been treated almost like a swear word all my life. I won’t ever be able to know how things work and I have the social skills and likeness of a small fucking child, because I have been severely under socialized and severely isolated. And that’s why you don’t raise your kids the way I was raised. That’s why I desperately tried to convince my parents to just be parents. But they never changed. I love them but they’ve set me on track to die before I ever turn like, I don’t know, 30 or something

I was sabotaging myself because I didn’t want to get older I think. I never wanted to be an adult and so I guess I started self destructing, because maybe if I got groomed, then that could somehow encapsulate my youth in some way.

I’m never doing any of it again obviously, and I fucking hate men. I’m not doing anything again with any strangers and I know now, but still. Can’t erase the past

I am ashamed

TW: grooming

I was groomed a lot, by basically whoever I could find. This has happened maybe 1 or 2 times over my lifespan I think?? But the worst of it was when I was 17.

I fucking hate myself. I am disgusted by it all. I went and deliberately got myself groomed by more men than I can count. So so many different guys, regularly, for like several months. Did stupid fucking stuff. Literally found men with the most objectively gross, dehumanizing possible fetishes (not to kink shame but I’m targeting the fact that it was by pedos), because I knew it was the most awful possible thing to do. Not even gross as in like, immoral, but gross as in, actually literally just fucking disgusting. Like, unclean, dirty, filthy gross. So gross that I can barely fucking cope with the memories.

I was reckless and so fucking stupid. Who knows who I’ve talked to. I’ve literally talked to pages worth of men probably. I signed up on whatever sex chats or sites or apps or fetish sites I could possibly find, in hopes to find the most gross men possible.

I was so so so dangerous about it. So dangerous. I’ve said my name and age and city to heaven fucking knows how many men. I showed my face to some of them. Luckily I don’t think any of the ones who lived near me ever got picture of my face, but who knows. I almost made plans with several men to basically theoretically get used. I talked about my life, my pets, how my day went, just details and everything you aren’t supposed to do with a stranger online. And it haunts me.

So scary. Like, it’s the kind of stuff that gets children fucking kidnapped. The kind of stuff you read about in articles or see in the news. It’s a wonder I’m even fucking alive, because I easily could’ve been in way more acute danger. Sometimes I still get paranoid that one of my groomers will recognize me in public or something, or that they’ll find my social media, or that they leaked my stuff somewhere out there. I get paranoid about the concept of being stalked irl, which probably isn’t even really logical, but still. I hate myself for being so dumb that it literally still makes me feel triggered. This is literally why kids get the “Don’t talk to strangers online” lecture.

I hate myself. I’m so fucking tainted and impure and I will never be the same again. It’s shameful and appalling and nose wrinkle inducing and if anyone ever found out, they’d ask why the hell I did it. And it’s because it’s gross. That’s literally why. And they’d ask why I was willing, and I don’t even know why I was. I just was. I don’t know. I don’t even know. I couldn’t even tell you.

Nobody ever taught me internet safety, nobody ever taught me fucking anything. Shitty home life, shitty environment, shitty survival skills, shitty everything. Nobody taught me anything at all. Nobody ever taught me about sex. Ever. It was quite literally hidden and never brought up, at least not outside of seeing people having sex on tv and then complaining about how “I just don’t understand why people do that. Especially when they’re so young. They’ll regret it”. Im almost 19 and still, nobody gave me sex education in any way at all. I was homeschooled from 5th grade until I graduated high school. I hate how parents do stuff like that and I guess it’s about protecting me, but it’s so selfish and so stupid. Nobody protected me from nothing. They prevented nothing. All because they wanted to try to control the narrative on what I do and dont do with my body, which never even got anyone anywhere.

My upbringing is practically bound to get me fucking killed one day. I won’t have the right skills. I’ll freeze or fawn at the wrong time and the wrong place with the wrong person, or I’ll be unable to say no because the word no has always been treated almost like a swear word all my life. I won’t ever be able to know how things work and I have the social skills and likeness of a small fucking child, because I have been severely under socialized and severely isolated. And that’s why you don’t raise your kids the way I was raised. That’s why I desperately tried to convince my parents to just be parents. But they never changed. I love them but they’ve set me on track to die before I ever turn like, I don’t know, 30 or something

I was sabotaging myself because I didn’t want to get older I think. I never wanted to be an adult and so I guess I started self destructing, because maybe if I got groomed, then that could somehow encapsulate my youth in some way.

I’m never doing any of it again obviously, and I fucking hate men. I’m not doing anything again with any strangers and I know now, but still. Can’t erase the past

I am ashamed

It’s been about 3 years since it happened. But I feel like I’m processing it all over again.

TW: Sexual assault, emotional abuse (from the SA’er and a family member), detailed explanations of how I felt, what my family member said, things that happened during and after.

This was my partner at the time. We dated from ages 14-16. Sometimes I question whether it was “really” even SA or not. But I know it was. He admitted that it was SA, and he acknowledges that it was in fact “SA via coercion”. My therapist also said it was coercion, and so did my best friend when I told him about it in passing. But still, I can’t seem to take myself seriously.

I remember when I first talked about it with him. He said he was “Under the impression that I was having a good time” and “Felt hurt that I would tell his friend before telling him”, and asked what I was talking about specifically so he could understand. I said I felt a little blamed, so we agreed to revisit it when we’ve had time to think. A while later, we talked about it again. He understood this time, he understood what I was talking about. He said he thought about it, and he realized what he did and when. This was when he admitted it was SA via coercion, and he apologized for initially blaming me. He said he’d never want to victim blame, especially not his victim. He said he knows the SA left me traumatized and he’s sorry. He said he’s working on it with his therapist and he’s trying to be better.

We were long distance and he travelled a long way to see me, during the era of the SA. We had a lot of good memories, and not every interaction was coercive, it was just the one part. He asked to do something, and I declined, and he said that’s okay, so we kept doing other stuff. And then he landed back onto the same question. I hesitated a bit but I said yes that time. It hurt, so about 2 seconds in, I winced, and he asked if it hurt, and I nodded and said yes. Then he asked, “in a good way?”, and I shook my head no, and he went “oh” and rushed to stop. I remember peeing blood the next day, after he’d gone back home.

My mom found out, and it wasn’t because I told her willingly. My mom is toxic and I probably wouldn’t have shared it with her otherwise. But, I had told people about the SA, and then one of his friends told his parents what I said, and then his parents called my mom to ask about it. They got furious at me and my mom. I still feel awful for that. I know how much they disliked me and I know how angry they were. I wasn’t on the call, but I heard about it.

After the phone call, my mom asked me about it, and she was like “So obviously you havent wanted to share this with me yet, but did something happen with ___ that you’re calling r*pe?”, and I remember my heart dropped. I wasn’t on the panicking inside. I didn’t want to tell her, but I didn’t think about the fact that, when I told my partner’s friend about it, they asked if I wanted them to tell people, and I said yeah. When my mom asked, I tried to change the subject, and then she went, “No, really. I need to know”. So I told her.

She kept pressing for details. When did it happen? Where? What were you doing while he was doing it? How were you acting? Did you look uncomfortable? What did he say? What did you say? What were you both doing before it happened? Did he know you didn’t want to? I kept saying I didn’t want to give details yet, but she kept pushing. She proceeded to tell me about how SHE felt. Didn’t say anything useful to me whatsoever. Talked about how betrayed she felt that he would do that in her house. Talked about how kind she was to him and his mom, and how she welcomed them both into our house. Talked about how she “Never trusted him”, and “That boy wouldn’t look me in the eyes”. She was upset about how it affected her, not me. She was angry at him because she felt hurt. Not because I did.

She talked about how she “Told him and his mom that you guys weren’t allowed to kiss, because kissing leads to other things”. Which was annoying regardless of the SA- she’s just controlling and weird about me having autonomy. Not just with him, and she doesn’t want me to know about anything sexual in general, and she has an “Open door policy” for everyone I’ve dated, and she checks on me every 30 minutes. She told me before he visited, that we weren’t allowed to kiss, and we couldn’t cuddle beyond holding hands. She tried to keep me away from kissing in general and she never taught me about sex. Never taught me about consent. Never taught me anything, because she wanted me to not find out about the concept of sex, in hopes that I wouldn’t have it. I’m 18, almost 19 now and she still is the same way. Every time I’ve kissed someone, she’s acted shocked, and went “I didn’t know you guys did that”, or something fucking annoying. I’m just mentioning that, because it also tied into my understanding of what happened and how I felt afterwards.

My mom talked about herself the whole time. Then, she kept trying to ask me stuff like “Was that why he said he was changing, and said not to come downstairs?”, and I lied and said no, because at that point I was sick of how she was taking over the conversation. I just felt bad and I felt guilty and I felt exposed and vulnerable. I wanted her to leave me alone, she wasn’t helping. And when I told her about the SA, by the way, she didn’t really even understand what I was getting at. She kept prying for more information, as if what I told her wasn’t already enough. She does this thing where I’ll tell her something bad, but she keeps trying to hear the next worse thing. Like, she was like, “Okay, did he say ‘if you don’t do this, i’ll do that?’”, and, “Well did he think you wanted to?”, and “Was he mean to you?”. Like she kept trying to see why I was calling it assault, despite me already telling her it was, and already telling her what happened.

She also reprimanded me for talking to people about it. Told me to “Let him keep his friends”, and not to post about it because it’s considered harassment. Which I do regret. I shouldn’t have posted about him, and I shouldn’t have replied to people asking about it, especially if they were his friends. I handled it very poorly and spitefully, and I do regret that. My therapist said she was proud that I did what I did. My mom was the opposite. I deleted it right after my mom told me that his mom called. But it does hurt that that’s the reaction my mom had. She just told me to stop telling people and to let him have his friends. Didn’t console or care about her child who was struggling.

She defended him restlessly. “Obviously he loves you, he traveled to see you”, and “You’re both minors so,,,??”, and “Seriously? I mean, posting about him and saying this is my abuser??”. And hey, like I said, I admit it was unhelpful to be that blatant about it. But I do wish she would have also been supportive too. Not just reprimanding.

When his mom called, she apparently also said “I don’t understand. He asked for consent”. This is basically the only quote I remember, from everything my mom was relaying to me. She told me that she explained to his mom that it was coercive, and that she eventually understood and apologized for what happened. I also remember at one point, his mom asked my mom, “We already apologized. What more do you want from me?”, and when my mom told me she said that, she was like “She’s kind of right, I do understand. I mean… what DO you want?”.

This relationship in general was a pretty hard time for me. I ended up with a PTSD diagnosis. It changed the course of my late teens, because I was so deeply affected by the entirety of our relationship.

With that in mind, I was upset a lot. I cried almost every night. I talked about it a lot. My mom would get annoyed and ignore me. She would sigh and roll her eyes and be very cold and look away. She started avoiding asking me about how I was doing, because she knew I was gonna talk about him. She would get irritated and say stuff like, “I don’t want to talk about this all day and night”, and “Nobody wants to constantly hear about your attachment to *partner’s name*”. If I didn’t want to give details she asked for, then she said she “Didn’t understand I was still protecting him”, but then she’d ask, “Why are you still dating him then?”. Which is funny that she’d ask, considering that she was more preoccupied with telling me not to tell people, than ever telling me she cares about how I felt.

My mom played an awful role, basically. Contributed nothing positive. So I think that’s also what makes it hard now. I feel like I still cant consider it SA. I feel like I can’t consider the relationship abusive. I don’t even call him my abuser when I refer to him in my head anymore, because I feel too bad. Especially since it’s been a few years, and we aren’t teens anymore. I feel like I shouldn’t still get upset. I shouldn’t still have triggers. I shouldn’t still get flashbacks sometimes. None of that should be happening anymore. We were kids.

I found some stuff from him when I cleaned my room a week or 2 ago. I found a letter he sent me and some bracelets he made me. And that’s why I’ve been remembering stuff that I guess I’d otherwise forgotten about.

I feel like some days I’m at peace with it, I might even say I’ve forgiven him. Other days I’m just as angry as I’ve ever been. Some days I can’t even attach the word abuser to his name, other days I can’t even stand thinking about his actual name. Some days I’m like yeah that was awful, other days I’m like… well was it? Some days I have flashbacks, other days I think it’s dumb to still feel bad. Some days I’m upset that I was SA’d, other days I refuse to even call it that.

Anyways, this vent doesn’t really have an end goal or a conclusion. It’s just stuff that’s been on my mind I guess.

I just wanted to vent. I have a lot to say, and none of it’s good, so. Just a heads up. Also, I’m not asking for advice. Just empathy. And yes I have a therapist, and yes I have friends who know about it all. I’m 18 almost 19.

(TW!! Violence, g*ns, abuse, just bad stuff idk)

So, first of all, my mom remarried this guy she met. They’ve been married for a while. He’s really fucking toxic and just really bad. My dad is super abusive, though he’s not in my life, and obviously not in my mom’s either. And he wasn’t abusive towards me I think- (although I don’t really remember much of anything from my childhood, so it’s anyones guess). My mom is very emotionally abusive towards me, and always has been super abusive towards me. There’s all your pre-context.

That being said, one of the many things that my mom’s new husband did, was get drunk and get combative with my mom. He didn’t physically hurt her, but he intimidated her and got in her face.

She said to him, that if he wouldn’t stop, that he could explain it to the cops. She contemplated kicking him out afterwards, and she mumbled, “I’m sorry, I swore I’d never let this happen in this house again”, but she was kind of only just saying it to herself. Not really to me.

I was in the room when it all happened, and I was upset for a lot of reasons. The first thing I did afterwards, was ask my mom if she was okay. Of course, she swore up and down that it was all fine. She refused to listen to anything I said about him, or about how it wasn’t okay.
Later that week, she asked me if she should stop buying him beer, and then she proceeded to talk about how guilty she would feel if she stopped buying it, because she “Doesn’t want to take away something good from him, since it’s all he has”, and kept giving me sob stories about how hard his life is, how much it sucks that he moved to the US from canada, how much it sucks that his dog is getting older. Because Jesus fucking wept, yeah? So anyways, I told her I think her instinct is right, to stop buying it for him. He’s a big boy, if he really wants it, he can go buy it himself. I was annoyed that that’s why we were in the car- to buy her shitty husband another beer. I thought we were hanging out, but of course she was just fueling her husband’s drunk hostility. I told her I understood, and that I think she shouldn’t, but I get why she’s conflicted. I was pissed off, but she didn’t know that. But then she kept seeking reassurance that I wasn’t gonna give her, by asking stuff like, “Is my judgement bad? Am I having poor judgment on this?”, so then I quite literally said “Well yeah, kinda. But whatever. You’re gonna do what you want, so why are you asking me?”.

So first of all, this all already was bothersome. I hated watching it, I hated that my mom normalized it. She said stuff like “He just doesn’t handle beer well” and “He never got physical”, whatever she could manage to say to avoid facing the truth. Yknow how it is.
The next day, she explained to me and my brother, that if he keeps acting harmfully (which he does all the time, and always has, not just with getting drunk and threatening mom), that he would have to live somewhere else. Which, first of all, it kind of annoys me in hindsight, that that’s the last straw, when I told her he makes me uncomfortable for years. I’ve said for a long time that I don’t like living with him because he’s awful in general, and plus he’s manipulative and gaslights my mom constantly. But when my mom felt threatened, somehow that’s when she had a split moment of actualization.

So, anyways, naturally he never moved out, nothing ever was resolved at all really. She did in fact keep buying him beer. And she asks me or my brother to hide it in her closet where he can’t see it, so that she can give him a beer at a time, without him knowing there’s more. When I said I was upset by her buying him packs of beer, she gaslighted me, blamed me, and got angry. She also told me “Everyone can’t just be miserable”, which, in other words: victim. That’s what’s happening. A victim is what that is.
And I usually don’t try too hard to convince her otherwise anymore. If she’s gonna be an ass to me after I briefly point out the issue, then I’m not gonna keep wasting my breath. She doesn’t listen anyways, and she’s already always been emotionally abusive, so her new husband just adds to that.

She takes it all out on me. You know how toxic relationships are. My mom’s a victim of my dad, I’m a victim of my mom, my mom’s a victim of her new husband, I’m a victim of my mom, her husband, and my dad. Basically.

So now, the way that this correlates to me realizing things, and to figuring out some of my triggers, is that first of all, my dad also did shit like that. And I’m sick of watching my mom being threatened or yelled at or manipulated or abused or whatever the hell these guys conjure up. And I’m sick of her ignoring everything I say about it, deflecting back onto me and blaming me, getting angry at me, defending them at all costs, etc. Not to mention, obviously I’m sick of my mom emotionally abusing me. She always has, and I’m tired of it. I’m sick of trying to empathize with all of these abusers.

A few days ago, I had a memory resurface, of my dad threatening my mom when I was pretty young. They were yelling in the living room. This was my childhood home at the time. My dad threatened something like “If you did that, I should shoot you in the face”, and my mom yelled and he yelled and she eventually tried to push him out of the front door, which he wouldn’t allow. It was basically an entire, detailed flashback. I felt like I was reliving the memory. I’m not sure why any of these feelings and memories are only just now coming up- the drunk beer thing didn’t happen recently. But I guess something triggered it, I don’t know.

But after having the flashback, I realized that the reason I’ve always had such gory, violent nightmares, is probably because of my violent dad and how my mom was always being threatened with violence, verbally abused, and literally like, everything else you wouldn’t want your mom to go through. I remember how, the same night, during that time when my dad threatened to shoot my mom, I had a nightmare. I sobbed in my sleep. I woke up stressed and anxious and physically exhausted. I was a kid at the time, and I slept in my mom’s bed. So she asked me why I was crying in my sleep, and I lied about it. I remember specifically what I lied about too, I said, “Oh, I dreamed that a tiger was chasing me”. That wasn’t true. I had a nightmare about my dad shooting my mom. But I lied because I didn’t want to tell her.

This all also made me realize, that I’ve struggled with nightmares on and off, all of my life, ever since then. Even recently. My nightmares have always had the same themes. Violence. They’re graphic and gory. I have nightmares about shootings breaking out randomly, with people I know- or random people I used to know- being hurt and targeted. And I get images of the aftermath, the crime, etc. I get the same feelings of being stressed and panicked while I’m asleep. My nightmares are basically like horror thrasher films. Jump-scares and all. And now that I think of it, that’s probably also why I’m particularly sensitive to guns, especially in horror films. And usually the offender in my nightmares, is someone I know too. Not my dad, but just whoever the dream happens to be about that night. And I still, and have always, cried and flopped around in my sleep, when these nightmares are happening.

And I still don’t tell my mom about them, even now. If she asks how I slept, I still lie about it, because I still don’t want to tell her.

There’s a lot of other stuff that I’ve been thinking about as well, but I guess this is the most cohesive train of thought. Now here’s the emotions! Fun!

So, shocker. I’m really angry, and upset, and just exhausted. I still live with my mom and her shitty husband (Yes I know I need to move out. If you’d like to buy me a car and pay my rent, go ahead. Until then, dont point out the obvious, and don’t pressure me to have it figured out right now, because I’ve heard it before). I’m just annoyed with everyone. I hate that I’ve always had to just watch my mom get abused, while she proceeds to be infatuated with them. I’m sick of her being married to people who not only are shitty to her, but theyre shitty to me too. Nobody is fucking comfortable when there’s an abusive man in the house. But I’m always told to deal with it. I hate that I’ve never been able to have a safe space, a safe environment, in my own house. I hate that anyone is an asshole to my mom. I hate that she’s gone through so much abuse and mistreatment. I hate that my mom doesn’t listen to me. I hate that she gets angry at me. I hate that she defends them. I hate that she blames me. I hate that she feels the need to be with people who are awful fucking people. And I know it was my mom who went through those things, not me. It was my mom who has always gotten abused. But I’ve always had to watch. I’ve had to watch my mom go through that shit. How the fuck is that supposed to make me feel?

It’s always been me and my brother who’s had to be around it all of our lives. It’s been us. I’ve always had to see it when everything happens. I was there when my mom called the cops on my dad. I sat in mom’s car with her and my brother, while the cops went inside and talked to my dad and my mom. I had to be there after the fact, when she’d collect me and my brother and lock us all in her bedroom, and asking us if we remembered what to do in an emergency. Quizzing us on “If you found mom one day and she wasn’t breathing, who would you call and what would you say”. I had to be there when she would sob every day because my dad did or said something bad again. I had to be around her when she was exhausted and overwhelmed, but I just wanted to hang out with my mom. But she was too tired and too distracted and too irritable. I was there when we had to move houses, because my dad wouldn’t leave. I was always told that I was acting out, that I was moping, that I was oversensitive, that I was argumentative, that I was moody. I was a miserable kid. But I will say I was definitely moody. I constantly changed how I felt, how I dressed, my interests, even my name. I went by a different name at school for a while. Changed my whole persona all the time as a kid, to different things and different names. I felt more comfortable being just about anyone but myself. Probably to cope. To be someone different, who wasn’t hurt. I also couldn’t focus in school, I didn’t know how to do anything. I didn’t do my homework and nobody helped me with it. I would fail my classes. I would be anxious after school because I didn’t want to go home, but I also hated going to school because I didn’t learn anything.

Why is everyone fucking abusive?

But anyways, that’s my vent. No wonder I turned out the way I did. Also I sound probably like an angsty 13 year old in this post. I know. I swear I’m not whiny like this normally or irl lol I just needed to vent