MY story
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ABOUT ME
My past life wasn't the best growing up. My mom was a smoker and abusive and I never met my real dad ( he killed himself when I was 5) although every year or so mom would bring home a new man and then I would get a new sibling. (My mom was only abusive because she didn't know how to take her own good advice and she didn't know how to love, my mothers biological mother sent her away and my mom went into a lot of foster homes)....... When mom was pregnant with me she did a lot of drugs and drinking, so when I was born I was on a breathing tube for a couple of months or so because my lungs were so damaged from her smoking… My mom never really loved me, but my sister loved me with everything she had. She was the mother I never really had, she named me, bathed me, changed my clothes, she did everything a real mother should have done…. But when i was 4-5 years old she moved to Florida to be with her biological father leaving me and the rest of my siblings alone with our mother, our mom slowly got worse and worse.she would beat us for no reason and sometimes she would just straight up stop being a mother, then when i was 6 years old (me and my half brother where living with a friend of our moms) I was in the living room getting ready for school when i see on the news that my mom was shot and killed by her biological father who she went to see before she left me and my younger siblings yet again……… Her and her bio father got drunk then started arguing… he had a gun and shot her…… a few weeks later my moms adoptive parents picked me and my brother up and took us to my Aunt, who has loved us and cared for us since 2018 now…. Time skip to 7th-8th grade I started getting bad thoughts about how i thought that my dad killing himself was all my fault and i started to cut myself, at first it wasn't enough to leave a mark then as i continued it started getting deeper and deeper until I had left a big gash on my arms, stomach and upper thighs. My sister/cousin made me go to a counselor every other week or so, until I absolutely refused to continue going, then they stopped making me go. The only reason i didn't wanna go anymore was because after every session i had, every traumatic thing we talked about would be playing over and over in my head causing me to lose sleep, to stop eating, i passed out a few times but only told my aunt about one, i stopped getting enough protein, and then my aunt took me too the doctors to see if i was anemic because i was only 115 pounds and when they said i might be, she started making me specific foods and that's when i thought ¨this is what a loving parent is, this is what it feels like to be cared about¨. Then if you time skip a few months, my aunt found out i was harming myself she started acting kinder and started giving me a little more space, every once in a while we would talk about my trauma together and about my mom and sometimes if i had a good/interesting magazine i would read out loud to her and she would correct my mistakes and if i started stuttering then we would just laugh about it.Honestly the most hard thing for me was my barriers and the distance i put repeatedly between me and my aunt, and that barrier is what caused me to hate and despise being near her for no reason, but then i started letting her closer and closer and we started getting along more and more and then we started talking about things more until a few months ago when she started treating me like someone who just happens to live with her instead of like her niece…but then recently I've been getting pushed back even more and I've relapsed because of it. I've gone to 4 therapists since 2024 and at this point i'm just done with the struggle of trying to get along with my family… i'm just done i've gone to too many things to try and keep trying to get alone with someone who obviously doesn't wanna get alone with me. If I was alone with no friends then I don't think I would be able to cope with all the crap my mom had put me and my siblings through. But that's how life is. It's hard and scary but we survive. And sometimes we don't always wanna survive, but that's when we have to turn and think about our friends the ones who we actually choose to be apart of our lifes. And we also have to think about our siblings and what we would be putting them through by leaving them and by just stopping our life…. So instead of opening up and telling my friends all of my true feelings i just keep almost all of them hidden.. Only the few people that are closet to me know the true face im wearing only they know how difficult it is for me to fake a smile day and night their the only reason i try and get up every morning there the only reason i eat,drink, do my work, and just live day after day. Im grateful to have them in my life....even if I'm going to end up hurting myself worse in the future....
@ravenlight2112
That sounds like a really horrible start in life. My beginning was pretty rough too, but I think you had it far worse. It also sounds like you’ve gained a lot of insight, strength and wisdom in spite of it all.
You mentioned having pushed your aunt away, and later on, your aunt seemed to be increasing emotional distance between the two of you. Is it possible that she did that because she thought that’s what you wanted? Pushing someone away conveys the message “I want space.” Maybe when it seemed she was distancing herself from you, it was to convey, “okay, I’m giving you space.”
People with a traumatic past often become uncomfortable or anxious if someone becomes too close, even when there’s evidence that the closeness doesn’t have a downside. My son pushes me away when he feels like he’d rather not discuss something with me. So, I give him space and wait for him to come around. The point is, there may be one or more reasons why you and your aunt have found yourselves at some emotional distance.
It’s also evident that the two of you have worked hard for a long time to form an endearing and loving bond, and I suspect it will survive periods of giving each other space, misunderstanding and emotional distance. Like many relationships, the bond may be stronger and more reliable than ever after coming back together.
I don’t like hearing how your therapy sessions left you feeling. My understanding is, that a therapists approach needs to be gentle, and to avoid pressuring a patient into revealing more in a session than they can express comfortably. It sounds like a lot of therapists need additional education in order for them to realize that triggering PTSD episodes is the opposite of therapeutic.
Although they went about it in a way that wasn’t helpful to you, maybe their objective was to take you through each event in order for you to understand with absolute clarity that you are totally without blame for what happened to you. Feeling the need to do that might be based on your history of SH.
Circumstances led me to lose all sense of family from an early age, with the exception of my stepmother who may have fulfilled the same role as your aunt. I got angry with my siblings because they rejected her and never knew what a gift she was.
I’ve spent most of my life with friends who were my “family of choice,” and with whom I became far closer and loved very much more than any biological relative.
In truth, I believe an incredible amount of good has come as a result of my early hardships. Empathy comes very naturally to me. While so many keep their greatest affection within family members, I’m able to open my heart fully to anyone who needs it and is safe to do so. From an early age, being a careful listener has been a survival strategy. Now, others feel honored by how well I listen. Indeed, it’s very easy to listen without judgment when one’s own background contains multiple traumas.
In short, because of your suffering and survival, you have a spectacular amount of love to share.
Please share some of it with yourself. It will actually make it easier to share it with others.
