TW!! My entire story- As told by Ginger (which is the name of an old cartoon)

Hi I'm new, so here is everything that makes up who I am today: I'm 24 years old. I'm proud of where I grew up and love my hometown. I'm weary of sharing too many details about myself on the internet and being identified or something.

This is pretty much what happened (all kinds of triggers here)

When I was in 6th grade I had a best friend (let’s call her “K”) By 8th grade K and I were inseparable. In 9th grade something changed. She insulted me, made me feel dumb, "jumped down my throat" whenever she had the opportunity to create a misunderstanding when I thought I was being perfectly clear- to the point where I literally thought I was special needs or metally disabled and nobody ever told me and I thought that the people I thought were my friends were just people who were being nice to me. She bullied me. Hard. What hurt most of all was that K would invite all of my friends to play, excluding me. Leaving no friends to play with. My parents would ask why I wasn’t hanging with K (our families are close). I would say that K was mean and and never invited me. “You’re being too critical, give her another chance!” My dad would say. By 9th grade I was so upset by K’s words and actions that I stopped coming to lunch with my friend group. I would instead go to the art room and pretend it was my study hall. My friends would ask where I was during lunch and I would explain. They occasionally convinced me to rejoin the lunch table. I regretted it every single time. I would leave the table sobbing even into the next period where K sat next to me in Math continuing to torment me. Why didn’t my friends support me? They always would come up to me after an encounter with K and say “I’m so sorry I dont know why she’s so mean to you” but none of them ever bothered to stand up for me. When my birthday fell on the same night as homecoming, K invited all of my friends for a sleep over party at her house and I had nobody to celebrate my birthday with. My dad called her dad and demanded I be invited so then I had to go, knowing full well the host (K) didn’t like me. I was so depressed I would come home after school at 4 pm and go to bed without doing a lick of homework. My grades were suffering because I couldn’t find time to do my work. This lead my mom to bring me to the family doctor where I was prescribed 40 mg of adderall per day for my “ADD”. Now I had another thing for K to make fun of me for. Not only that but sleeping all day is 10000% not a symptom of ADD, and the ADD test was way too generalized to even be able to diagnose me properly IMO. My mom insisted that I haD ADD when I clearly didn’t. (After 8th grade my family took a trip to Italy and I stood on the top of the railing of our 5th story hotel balcony thinking abt jumping.. was that not a sign? I threw tantrums almost every single day. I was so irritable and upset it made me nauseous. Sleeping all day and standing on a 5th story balcony railing are certainly not signs of ADD. Then in 10th grade I started cutting myself (I had expirementrd a few times before but this was the first reall start.) the very first day after I did it one of my teachers noticed and reported me to the guidance counselor. It was so embarrassing to be called out of class and have it announced to the entire class that I was going to the counselor. She asked me about my scars and I said it was from my carrying sharp Skis during ski racing. She aparently didn’t believe me and she called my mom without telling me. When I got home my mom was crying and I didn’t know why and she asked if I’d been cutting my wrists and I gave the same story I told the counselor. I felt so put on the spot, thrown under the bus. This instance was Never to be brought up again by anyone.

I took Adderall from 10th grade until my sophomore year of college when I stopped bc I hated it. (I couldn’t sleep at night and I would get migraines because I’d forget to eat throughout the day. Through out highschool a number of creepy boys harrassed me over the internet starting in 9th grade when a Senior Boy kept asking if I would have sex with him and if I was a virgin, and I barely even knew what that meant. Not to mention an 18 year old trying to hook up with a 14 year old is 100% illegal. This certainly wasn't the only time this happened. Another boy decided it would be okay to reach into my shirt and grab my breasts while I was sitting on the couch with all of our friends. He was courting another girl so I was super confused and when I told my friends but they didn't beleive me because they thought he was only interested in the other girl even though he was groping me in front of everyone. There were numerous other occasions like this too. How i wish I could confront these people now and be like WHAT THE FUCK. Was. that. about.

Skip to 11th grade now-looking at colleges, I met a boy who went to a near by college that I was interested in (for the photography major). we started secretly hanging out. He would drive 45 mins to my house to try to hook up with me when my parents were out. We would make out and then he would start pushing my head down with all of his strength to force me to perform orally, and I would resist because I wasn’t comfortable. He cut things off when I wouldn’t partake in the desired activities. I was devistated. Then we started talking again Senior year of HS year and I had a car and went to visit him at college 1.5 hrs away (He was on the track team so my parents let me go visit to see what the team was like). On my first visit I took 6 shots of coconut rum (never having drank before at all ever not even at prom) and blacked out. I threw up in his bed and then he took my virginity. And I was young and didn’t know things back then. He slipped himself into my back end for a few strokes and then put it back in my vagina. I shouted in pain and he said “oops wrong hole sorry” as if it were an accident. This literally tore my asshole to the point where it bled every time I pooped for a week after. Then I got a bad UTI because my own poop was forcibly shoved into my vagina, and had to tell my mom that I was peeing blood clots the size of a quarter. she threw up when she learned that I wasn’t a virgin (minus the rapey details). I went up to see the boy a few other times.. I forgave him since he said it was an accident. Then the “accident” happened AGAIN but this time it was after he got me high for my very first time. I shouted “Ow” and since it had happened twice now I told him to be more careful because that really really hurts and is not healthy for me. After that, he cut ties with me again so I moved on from him (kind of.. i mean how can you move on from rape really though...). I decided to go to the same school as him bc they had their major I wanted (only offered at one other school in the country). Then after I made my decision his friend reached out to me from New Hampshire to see how I was doing bc I was hurt by the break up. I went to accepted students weekend for the school and this guy said he happened to be In town that weekend and he wanted to take me to lunch. I agreed to go and got in his car. He took me to a vacant parking lot where we started making out. Then he started taking off my clothes and i told him I was on my period (I was and I literally had a tampon in.. don't know how he didn't notice the string while jamming his hands down my pants) and he said “what I drove all this way to see you and you’re not gonna F**k me? At least give me head.” I felt really bad since he did drive 6 hrs.. so I gave it to him and he pushed my head down his shaft as he was ejaculating so that I was forced to either swallow or gag. It went all up my nose and everywhere. ** aparently he thought that was enough for lunch.- that was a bad joke-

My freshman year of college I had moved on, pursuing people my own age that weren’t terrible people. The boy I talked to in HS, now a sophomore at the school, appeared high and drunk at my dorm room and told me he was in love with me and I believed him and we started dating**. I remember once while we were dating he told me that his parents found out he smoked weed and they were on their way to confiscate his bong so we smoked all of his weed in one sitting. After that I was in the shower at his house and my body went numb and tingly and I fell over naked in his shower and blacked out. I woke up in his bed soaking wet with him again “accidentally” in the wrong hole. By now I knew it wasn’t an accident because it had happened at least 4 other times including the two I mentioned before. This boy proceeded to cheat on me and take advantage of me for the 3 long months we dated, and then HE broke up with ME (??? Wtf) and for some reason I was completely devistated. This is where I picked up self harm aggressively. Nobody at the my first college ever noticed.

**The guy who “took me to lunch” was my boyfriends roommate during his sophomore year.

-side note one of the (many) times that boy took advantage of me he came inside me and I was not on birth control.

If you're still reading you're 1/2 way through.

After my awful freshman year, I transfered to a school 1000 miles away. The night my parents dropped me at my apartment, I balled my eyes out and had a full panick attack. I got really really drunk and started SH deeper every day. My arms were torn up.

I tried out for the sailing team and made the team! One day at practice the assistant coach saw my many open wounds and reported me to the athletic director who was old and wise. He didn’t take the legal action he was supposed to when he found out I was cutting, but I think he knew how shitty the system is for dealing with this kind of thing at our school. I’ve always been grateful for that because later in my college career we had new coaching staff and it happened again- I got reported-and the new director knew he had a legal obligation to report me to the dean of students where I had to explain that I was in therapy and recovery is not a straight and narrow path but cutting once every few moths is nothing compared to what I used to do and basically tell them what they need to hear and tell them to leave me alone. It was humiliating so I’m glad I only had to do that once.

Fast fwd to my 2nd semester at the new school. I had a new boyfriend of 8 months who was a senior. He treated me really really well and always expressed concern for my SH behavior. One day we went to a Darty and I blacked out. We must have gotten in an argument or something. I barely remember anything but I do remember sprinting home from the darty sobbing (i dont know why but I wish I did). I got home, grabbed my device (We're trying to spare some details here) and did a hack job on my forearm. I was so drunk I don’t feel how deep it was but my arm was dripping blood on my sheets. I picked myself up and went to the bathroom where I cried myself to sleep on the floor. I must have realized what I had done because evidently I sent a picture of the pool of blood to my best friend. Thank goodness he had my spare key. (Probs was a red flag that my boyfriend didn’t have keys to my apartment but my best friend who was a boy did.) Any way my best friend got into my locked apartment and found me on the floor passed out in a pool of blood in the bathroom. He picked me up and cleaned all of my blood and my gaping wound. He sat with me and offered to call my boyfriend but I guess I didn’t want that so he sat by my bed for like 4 hours while I slept just watching over me. I probs should have gotten stitches but we kept this secret to ourselves. I have 0 idea to this day what made me so upset. Unfortunately my boyfriend was blacked out too so he didn't remember.

I broke up with that boyfriend and started dating my best friend 3 days later (poor form I know, but I didn’t realize how much I loved him until it became an option.)

Anyway, I’ve been dating my best friend for 3 years now and I’ve been clean for 1 year. That’s my happy ending. :)

If you read the entire thing then thank you but also I just go here to post bc I know pretty much nobody will see it. Just wanted to get that off my chest.