I think..I'm

I think I’m finally beginning to understand how lonely my childhood actually was. I was expected to be mature and responsible very early, and people often praised me for being “so mature for my age,” but they didn’t see what was underneath that maturity. I had responsibilities toward my younger sister, emotional responsibilities toward the adults around me, and I learned to put my own childhood needs aside. I remember being eight and wanting something as simple as a Barbie doll, but being told I was already old enough to stop playing with dolls. I watched other children being cared for by their mothers at school and secretly wished my own mother would come and feed me or simply spend time with me. When she couldn't, I eventually learned to stop expecting it. I also lost my older sister when I was around seven or eight; she was eighteen and died from an illness that couldn't be cured. At the time, I don't think I fully understood what death meant. Everyone was grieving, while my mind felt strangely blank, and I remember wondering where she was going and why everyone was crying. As the years went on, my cousins became busy with school and their own lives, and I became increasingly alone. At the same time, I experienced physical, emotional, and verbal abuse from the person who was taking care of me. I was sometimes hit, slapped, pushed, had my hair pulled, and made to feel responsible for the adult's anger and unhappiness. I was even told that taking care of me had taken away her beauty, which made me feel as though my existence itself was a burden. I learned to blame myself for almost everything: if someone yelled at me, I assumed I had done something wrong; if I was neglected, I assumed I was the problem; if something terrible happened to me, I thought I must somehow have caused it. I also experienced sexual abuse as a child, and for a long time I blamed myself for being naive and trusting, even though I was only a child. I became so accustomed to suppressing my feelings that I sometimes felt disconnected from myself and from what was happening around me. I still carry a lot of shame, loneliness, and self-blame from those years. I sometimes envy people who had the ordinary childhood experiences I wanted so badly—being comforted, being picked up from school, being allowed to play, feeling like someone's child instead of someone's responsibility. I don't hate my family, because there were also good moments and people who supported me in certain ways, and that makes everything complicated. But I’m beginning to understand that acknowledging the harm doesn't mean I have to hate anyone. I think I was a child who needed affection, safety, and someone to tell me that I wasn't responsible for everything that happened around me. I'm still trying to understand all of this, and I'm still struggling with denial and self-blame, but I think I'm finally starting to talk about it instead of keeping everything inside. I don't know exactly how long healing will take. I just know that the child I was deserved better, and I want to learn how to believe that.