All my life I grew up knowing my parents hated me. Nothing I ever did was right. I wasn't allowed over at friends houses, I wasn't allowed to leave school property ever. I grew up isolated and alone for the most part. I dreamed everyday of leaving. Eventually books and my pets became my escape, thru books I eventually had a new dream. A dream of someone saving me. All these books talked about strong caring men or people and that's all I wanted in my life.
When I would read I could be who ever I wanted and be where ever I wanted to be. When I was reading I had friends, people who in my head I imagined actually cared about me. I was happy when I read books the world became a much better place. My parents in the other hand saw it as something different. Instead of me watching tv with them I would read and to them this meant something was wrong with me. As I got older they said I was lazy because I spent so much time reading. Never once did I miss doing my chores, caring for my animals or doing all of the other jobs they deemed to be jobs for me.
Eventually they started letting me have friends over, but once my friends realized that coming to my house meant they had to do chores they stopped coming and I became lonesome again. While all my school friends played soccer and went to camp I spent my summers push mowing the lawn, chopping wood, doing hay and fencing, and more often than not I had to help my dad with his side business cleaning up junk from people's yards and old buildings. All of my parents friends used to say they hoped they never had a boy because they already worked my little sister and I like slaves. Every other kid hated when summer ended but not me, I loved school as it meant I actually got to be a kid again. School wasn't always a safe place either but it was better than being at home. I remember once asking to go to a friends birthday party during the summer months and my mother lost it. She chased me around the property trying to hit me with the broom. She told me over and over again how she never wanted me. How she had friends who knew my birth mother and how I should go back to her as I was an ungrateful piece of shit. I was maybe nine years old at this time.
Even my aunts and uncles hated me. My mother worked at the family business and would always tell them I was a terrible child. That I did and said things I never did. One of my aunts and one of my older cousins were the only ones who didn't believe it. I was a quiet child too scared to say anything in case it was wrong, if I was wrong it often ended in me being hurt. I once innocently told my dad at the tender age of eleven that I had a boyfriend, completely innocent as all relationships are at that age, but my dad called me a whore and locked me outside in minus thirty weather in just a tshirt. All of these are just small examples of the things that happened in my childhood.
Ultimately as an adult this had followed me. I went into loveless and abusive relationships because of all of this. Until the day I realized I needed to save myself. I'm sorry I haven't been posting. The medical issues I spoke of months ago just became too overwhelming. My doctor diagnosed me with anxiety and depression. My life became consumed by my diagnosis I suspected I had both but the official diagnosis floored me. It took me a long time to wrap my head around it all and I was ultimately going to stop writing out my story all together but my therapist suggested it may be a good thing for me to get it all out there, to share the crazy story she says is my life. AND to maybe, just maybe help people overcome the stigma that surrounds both anxiety and depression. I hope people are still reading and I'm sorry for staying silent for so long.
