My Story

Hello, everyone.

This is hard because I feel like Im being annoying or burdensome for this, but I thought Id put my story here.

My mother and father met and got together when she was 14 and he was 25. I mention this because the age difference of when they initially met makes me very uncomfortable. I also feel that maybe my mother was forced to grow up earlier than she should have and maybe never properly developed in certain ways emotionally. I also know that her own father was physically abusive—the way shes spoken of him makes me scared of him and I never even met the man.

I have two older sisters. Im very distant from the oldest one--shes the one who was left behind when my parents ended up coming to the U.S. Thats another thing thats always bothered me. How could someone willingly leave their child behind like that? She was about 3 at the time that she was left behind and didnt come to join them until she was around 10. Im less distant from my other sister, the middle child, but I have mixed feelings about her; I feel both admiration and disdain for her because she was always the perfect child. She was the one who was creative just like mother was.

Back to my mother, she is a very manipulative woman—shes emotionally abusive though I feel like I have no right to call what I went through abuse (it doesnt feel bad enough). But nothing was ever good enough for her. If I got 100 on an exam, she would say why didnt you get extra credit?. If I wanted to try something new, she would say you wouldnt be any good at it anyway. If I was in pain, she would say Its not that bad. Youll be fine. In fact, I remember twisting my finger one time and running to her crying, only to be told that Id be fine and shood away.

She always assumes the worst of me, she would always blame me for everything, and is so overdramatic about things. She loves to make everything about her. And yeah, she would hit me sometimes too, but its not like she would beat me until I was black and blue.

I feel that I am the way that I am as a consequence of that. I cant help but feel like my own needs dont matter. I always put others before me. I feel like everything is my fault. Im terrified of everything—especially, screaming/loud voices. I dont like it when others are angry at me. And if I feel like I messed up, I get scared, and start tearing up; its like Im preparing myself for the consequence of doing bad.

My father, well, I have mixed feelings about him. For most of my adolescence, I found myself seeking out a father figure in my teachers. I now understand that its because of how passive he was in response to my mothers treatment of me—it made me feel like I didnt really have a father figure. To this day, he doesnt defend himself against her. He was always the second person to be blamed after me throughout my child. I get very angry when he doesnt defend himself. I get more angry when I come in to defend him and then why I start getting verbally bashed, he does nothing.

I feel like, as a child, I was hurt and just wanted someone to come and save me and no one did. Not even my father. So I feel like Im still looking for that person. I still feel like a part of me is a child, emotionally. And that part of me feels so alone.

Ive previously been diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, but Im working on going back to see a psychologist because I think that I was misdiagnosed. That was about 3 years ago. Something about the diagnosis always felt off to me and something about the psychiatrist who diagnosed also felt off. But I think that everything—my depression, anxiety, dissociation, sleeping problems, memory gaps, etc—all stem from this trauma (that I feel isnt traumatic enough to be called a trauma) throughout my childhood.

There's more stuff, but that's the basics. Thank you for reading.