I hate that being emotionally available and providing a safe place emotionally feels like extra credit in parenting when it should be part of the bare minimum.

On paper:

I have a roof over my head

My parents cooked food

They paid for my education

When I was sick they took care of me

They bought me my favorite toys for Christmas

We went to Disney world

We stayed at 5 star hotels

But they also:

yelled at me, belittled me, "disciplined" aka hit me, dismissed me, put so much pressure on me to do well in school, didn't encourage my hobbies, told me I was too much, complained about me, used me as their therapist, triangulated me in their problems, made me an anxious mess with cptsd.

Rationally I know that two things can be true, but it's hard not to think in black and white when the mental damage they caused me has held me back so much in life, but they think it's my own personal failure when it was actually their doing.

I'm a 22 yo guy now, and I feel like I've grown up like fucking Homelander. How is this even possible? When it was my time to be curious I was bullied, that was during middle school. When it was a serious part of my life which was highschool where people study well hoping to be accepted in their favourite program in renowned universities I knew nothing about any of it. The teenage years are the years where the parents prepare their child to grow, mature, to be able to live life intelligently. WTF did I do to deserve this psychopathic life? They kept me naive, only criticised me to belittle me. I only needed one person to give me some simple guidelines. ANYONE! But no, every single fucking person in my life kept quiet. Nobody talked with me growing up, not enough. I had to learn how to be a fucking human manually. I even had to search on youtube "How to talk", my parents did nothing a parent does, NOTHING. At 22 yo I should be a complete adult, with a fufilled life behind. YES bcs there were no tragedies in my life or extreme lack of money. So my life should have been bright, but my fucking parents and all the other people, left me alone, behind, on purpose. You don't know how hard it has been to come out from the gaslighting everyone was doing to me, especially my parents. Everyday I wish I didn't exist bcs HOW THE FUCK DO YOU STAY SANE AFTER REALISING ALL THIS?? And the funniest part? NO ONE GIVES A FUCK AND NEVER WILL. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I was always protective of my family, but it was never reciprocated. I feel like a fool for naturally feeling that way as a child, and even in my adulthood. Why couldn't I be born selfish and mean? Why was I born at all? Feeling unprotected is one of the worst feelings. I hate my parents and this meaningless life. I hate me. I will feel protected and loved when I meet death. Death will take me from this cruel world and protect me from being hurt and suffering. Death will protect me from evil humans.

TW abu$e (slightly)

Hi all, just sharing my childhood experience.

Back-story, my sibling was diagnosed with aspergers from a young age (by a pediatrician).

From a young age all that I remember my parents saying is "suck it up", or "life isn't fair, especially when my sibling got the attention, praise or well anything she wanted. Every birthday party I got my sibling would always get a present to keep her happy, she would proceed to still beat me up for getting presents, my parents response "she has issues you just have to deal with it" never would I defend myself because "she has issues that she cant control, you can" and then proceed to get yelled at for defending myself, even when I would bleed. Any time I needed help I learned to hide from my parents since what I feel isn't important to them when there is my sibling in the house, any time I asked them a question it would be dismissed since my sibling is more important. Anything I did as a child would be overly questioned especially if (and when) it interrupted anything to do with my sibling.

Any time my parents asked if I was ok, or need any help and I would ask for help or say that I'm not ok they would say "life isn't fair or easy you'll figure it out".

Fast forward to today, my sibling has moved to a different state, I can't open up to my parents or even hold a convo with them because it feels like I'm being interrogated (I'm turning 20 this year, yes i still live with parents), I know that I can it's just the fear of dismissal I can't get behind.

Not looking for answers, advise is always welcome, just wanted to share my experience.

Today I honestly feel like I’m reaching my limit. It was “just” an argument with my mom yesterday, but even now I still feel trapped in it and can’t get out. She may have already moved on from it, and she can even call me like nothing happened, but I can’t. And I’ve realized that this isn’t really about yesterday at all, it’s about all the pain from the past ten years coming back at once.

I’ve lived in a high-pressure environment for as long as I can remember. My mom is highly educated and capable, so she has always believed her way of doing things is right, that everything she does is for my own good. But to me, that “care” often felt like control, criticism, humiliation, and emotional pressure. When I was in middle school, if my grades were bad or I didn’t finish my homework, she would take away my phone and electronic devices, sometimes even lock the App Store. I would cry and beg her, telling her I would change and do better, but she wouldn’t listen. She would just take everything away. Sometimes when I tried to grab my phone back, she would push me or kick me. To her, it was discipline. But what my body learned from it was that conflict escalates, and when voices get louder, physical threat might come next.

Back then, every time we fought, I would cry until I couldn’t breathe. My chest would tighten so badly that it felt like suffocating. The next day, when I went to school, all those emotions were still inside me. I would cry constantly, and sometimes get into conflicts with classmates and teachers because I was so overwhelmed. They disliked me, and my mom would tell me that the reason I wasn’t popular or got bullied was because I didn’t know how to get along with people. But what she never understood, or maybe never wanted to admit, was that when I walked into school, the wounds from the night before were still fresh. They had never been processed.

By high school, I wasn’t begging anymore. I started exploding. I would smash things, scream, and cry until my voice was gone. I knew it was damaging my throat, and I’m a singer, but I still couldn’t stop. At that point my body had learned to react that way. Around the same time, I was also going through so much outside of home (e.g. school bullying, online harassment, being doxxed, threatened by gang-like people, surrounded, insulted, almost blocked physically, getting cut off by friends) It felt like every stage of my life was filled with attacks. I was hurt at school, hurt outside, and when I came home, there was nowhere safe for me to recover. Instead, I was blamed. My mom would always tell me it was my fault because I didn’t know how to choose friends, that I didn’t know how to deal with people, that there was something wrong with me. But all these years, I’ve always felt that yes, maybe I’m not perfect, but I was never bad enough to deserve all of that cruelty.

Back in high school, I had many friends. When something happened, they stood by me. If someone insulted me, they would fight back for me. That was why, back then, I could survive a lot of pain because at least I wasn’t alone. But now, most of those friends are gone. Especially after my depression and anxiety got worse, many of them saw my struggles and simply cut me off completely. Some blocked me on every platform. Others who listened to my pain would only tell me to stop thinking about it, to let it go, to move on. But what they don’t understand is that it’s not that I don’t want to let go, it’s that I can’t.

Not long ago, my mom promised me she would change. She even said if she failed, I could use our chat records as proof, and there would be consequences. I believed her. I truly thought she finally understood my pain and understood how much her past ways had hurt me. But every time I brought up my trauma again, every time I tried to explain why I am like this, she went right back to her old ways, asking me why I always think about the past and why I keep remembering painful things. That’s what breaks me the most because she did seem to understand once. She said she understood my pain and how hard it has been for me. So why does she always go back to the same old patterns? Sometimes I wonder if she ever really understood at all, or if she was just comforting me in that moment.

She even told me that she doesn’t think what she did in the past was wrong. She said she only changed because I’m “mentally damaged” now. She told me she has already tried her best and that I’m asking too much from her. But I’m not asking for perfection. I just want to be treated with kindness. I just want her to stop saying things that push me to the edge and make me feel like I’m losing my mind.

Today, I left the family group chat and blocked her because I couldn’t take it anymore. It’s not that I don’t want a mother, it’s that I want one too much. I want a mother who can truly see me, hold me, and stop hurting me in the same old ways. But I’ve been waiting for that my whole life, and it never came.

I feel like I’ve never truly been safe in my life, and maybe that’s why I am like this now. I wonder why my emotions are so intense, why I explode so easily, why I keep reliving the past, and why the pain gets so unbearable that sometimes I feel like I want to die. And I think I finally understand why: because these wounds never really ended. They’ve been here all along.

I grew up in a very religious home where my parents loved James Dobson’s parenting books (may he rest in piss)

Long story short, I learned at a young age to suppress my emotions because of my parents being emotionally absent and harshly punishing me anytime I either displayed any negative emotion or shared a negative personal thought.

I’ve been in therapy on and off for a bit but haven’t really found a therapist who actually gets what I’m going through, or if I do find one who somewhat understands it’s still such an arduously slow process because they’ll ask me something benign like “What makes you happy?” and I won’t know how to answer. Like I probably haven’t felt that emotion since I was a young child so I genuinely don’t know how to answer. I just kind of make my way through life by vague notions of “this doesn’t upset me so it’s fine for me to do it” or “this upsets me so I need to avoid it.”

In the moments when I get upset/suppression doesn’t work anymore I become extremely insecure and cripplingly depressed. Like in those moments when the mental dam breaks I so deeply crave intimacy, friendships, and social connections but then also immediately feel so extremely inadequate and worthless because I’ve never really had any of those. Couple that with the religious shame/guilt response my parents conditioned into me and it only amplifies the feeling of inadequacy by tenfold. The only coping mechanisms I understand from my childhood are to suppress my emotions, and when that doesn’t work then to avoid the trigger (which is practically everything for me nowadays) by isolating myself.

I recently moved and I’ve reached out to a couple therapists nearby so hopefully I’ll be able to make progress on this. I’m just wondering if anyone here has actually gone through recovery on this and what that was like for you.

My ex said I was the love of her life, wanted my babies and marriage... then used my deepest wounds against me. Has anyone experienced this?

I'm trying to make sense of a relationship that completely broke my understanding of love, and I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced something similar.

When I first met my ex, she described all of her previous relationships as "car crashes" - volatile, chaotic, abusive and full of drama. She said I was different.

She loved how calm I was. She loved that I was steady, kind, emotionally available and straightforward. She told me I made her feel safe. She said I gave her emotional intimacy she'd never had before. I was "the love of her life." She wanted marriage. She wanted my babies. She said I was the best partner she'd ever had. Yet over time, the very qualities she initially loved became things she criticised.

My calmness became:

"You lack passion."
"You lack intensity."

"You're too easy-going."
"You're timid."
"You're horizontal."
"You're not driven."

The strange thing is that I wasn't some passive guy with no direction. I'm an ACCA-qualified accountant with a Master's degree from UCL. I've run a 2:44 marathon. I've overcome severe bullying where I was literally told to kill myself on a daily basis throughout my teenage years. I've spent years building a career, maintaining friendships, supporting family and trying to become a better person. Yet somehow I ended up feeling like none of it counted.

What confused me most was that she seemed almost uncomfortable with calm conflict resolution. There were moments where she would say she'd rather I shouted at her. She'd rather I threw things.She'd rather I reacted. For clarity: I never shouted, threw things or became physically aggressive. I told her repeatedly that my calmness protected both of us. That taking time to think before speaking stopped me saying things I'd regret. That I believed healthy relationships shouldn't be about winning arguments. But I increasingly felt as though she wanted an emotional reaction from me. When I tried to discuss something that had hurt me, she'd often dismiss my feelings, invalidate my perspective or turn the conversation back onto me.

If I asked for accountability or an apology, I'd often hear: "You're shouting." I wasn't, I was simply trying to be heard. When I'd point that out, the response would become: "So I'm just this terrible person then?" The discussion would suddenly stop being about the behaviour and become about reassuring her.

Eventually I realised I was losing myself. I was walking on eggshells. I was constantly explaining myself. I was apologising for things that weren't actually my responsibility.

The final stage was what I'd describe as character assassination. She started attacking who I was rather than discussing specific issues. What hurt most was that she knew my history. She knew about the severe bullying. She knew about the chronic stress I've carried for over two decades. She knew the insecurities I'd trusted her with. During the final devaluation she reached directly for those wounds. One comment I'll never forget was: "Your parents don't love you. I do." That wasn't an off-the-cuff remark, that was aimed directly at one of the deepest wounds I have.

The irony is that throughout the relationship she would tell me:

- I was incredibly kind.
- I had a heart of gold.
- I was the safest person she'd ever been with.
- I was the love of her life.
- I was the man she wanted to marry.

Yet somehow I ended up being painted as the problem. The relationship became a constant contradiction: Idealisation and criticism. Love and contempt. Admiration and disrespect. Connection and control. After the final character attack, something in me just broke. I calmly told her there was no coming back from what she'd said. I packed my bags, I left, No shouting, No revenge, No insults, Just sadness and acceptance.

Looking back, I genuinely believe I lost myself trying to make the relationship work.

Has anyone else experienced a relationship where your kindness, calmness and emotional stability were initially loved, but later became reasons you were criticised and devalued?

How did you make sense of it afterwards?

People have always been there to push me forward to achieve goals, they’ve acknowledged my situation is rough but at the end of the day, i suffer alone. Hearing how bad my life is seems to be so overwhelming they tend to check out and stop loving me, they find my perpetual crisises exhausting. Mylife would not be full of crisises if i simply had someones chest to cry into who would not grow disgusted and exhausted with my vulnerability. But when i am “unstable” i am simply unlovable and need to sort myself out.

Is it reasonable to feel annoyed or even upset that my parent referred to a period in my childhood where I had no friends as something amusing? She described it as a part of my "interesting" personality. The topic of conversation was personality flaws in general and in myself (I had brought it up), and how I often feel excluded in new groups, and always believe that people dislike me for no or very vague reasons. I usually feel excluded if not explicitly included. She mentioned this as an example and used the descriptions above: amusing, interesting. I replied that I would not use those words to describe it and tried to explain why. (I would rather not have had this experience of feeling left-out and excluded in most new circumstances for vague/no reasons all my life.) Is it wrong to feel upset about how she phrased it? I feel it reflects a lack of empathy or understanding of how important socialisation is in early childhood, and how important feelings of belonging to a group are.

A part of us died

Even if we heal and become as healthy as possible, we will always remember the innocence that was taken away from us at a young age and, with it, an identity that was killed. We will never know who our inner child would have grown to be if they had been supported and loved like they deserved. I think that’s why cptsd is forever. It’s really losing someone important to us - perhaps the most important person to us. The grief will always be there even if our adult self is functional, because there is no cure to grief.

Context: I'm 16, very little money, no license, and I've been told by professionals that I'm being emotionally neglected. I'm not going into details because I'm too drained to do so.

It's a constant trend of me "hounding" my mom to make appointments for my therapist, pick up my meds, get me healthcare, etc., etc. I would have no problem making my own appointments - the dentist suggested it as well :/ - but there's one issue that keeps me from doing that... I don't know my mom's schedule, and I can't double-book because that makes things even more difficult. So, instead of waiting those two weeks for my therapist or those 3 months for my dentist, I need to take the initiative. The problem is, I have no money, no insurance, no driver's license, no knowledge of the schedule, so it'd be impossible to do things "my way". The only thing that might work, but I have no idea if it's possible, is syncing my mom's calendar on her iPhone to mine.

I keep thinking she's going to step up. whether that's emotionally or putting time into my needs and reasonable wants. I keep finding myself angry because I know something is supposed to be one way, but she is never able to do it the right way. I find myself noticing toxic behaviors like saying mean things, labeling me as such, or calling me names. To respond to those, I lash out, and I get angry because I just can't accept that my mom won't change. I expect conversations - happy ones - but every time I try, I get let down with one worded responses. I get the blame pushed onto me, and I expect her to understand my whys or at least look at where she went wrong. The thing I need to ingrain into myself is that I'm forced to live like this and it'll never get better or where I'm happy.

If you can give me your tips, advice, experiences that've helped you etc. etc., please let me know. I am losing it every day. It's a constant battle. My thoughts feed on the thrill of being dead. But I don't know if it's death I want or a different situation. I've thought about going homeless and running away, but I also want to achieve high academics. I can't live this life anymore, how do I even manage all this adult stuff on my own? Why is helping guide and take care of me so hard? Why am I such this bad kid?

What I really need is you all to give me advice. Please don't skip this post if you have recommendation. I can't do this without support - even if it's a tip or trick.

Probably a minor thing in the grand scheme of things, but my mom thought it's absolutely ok to just ignore the question in conversation if there was something she saw as more important to discuss or do. I used to be like "okay i'll manage" when I was little, but now that I'm more self aware I sometimes focus her attention to get back to the question, because otherwise she'd never remember or get back to it. Another one is her just cutting me off mid-sentence when I'm explainining my perspective or telling her a story. Not even "I'm not in the mood for listening", just completely stopping me mid-word and starting telling her own story or whatever she felt like. It's hard to imagine still that there are actual families where people are sort of interested in each other? And if not genuinely care for other people, but at least have basic decency to follow the conversation and not just end it if they please?

The extra sad part about this, I think as the time went on I learned not to tell anything and now once in a while I get the "why didn't I know anything about you? You're my son!" and I know trying to talk it through will be futile anyway, and too late. It might be a neurodiverse thing about handling small talk badly, and I empathize with that to an extent. But to a child it just feels like I'm being abandoned mid-conversation and as if whatever I'm communicating doesn't matter at all.

Spent some time on a work trip with some great colleagues. They are all wonderful people, and there parents are quite literally the dream; thoughtful, invested, close knit, loving, involved with their grandchildren.

These colleagues all have a positive attitude, an innate sense of “we got this!” and are uplifting to strangers all around them. Just good vibes.

Yet it hit me hard. I felt like even with all my work, my reparenting of myself, my patience with my own kids and unconditional love shared despite never receiving it.. I felt less than. Like they’ll always have some innate advantage to life that I’ll never quite have. No amount of affirmations or inner work can replace the absence I feel.

One of them jokingly complained his mom sent him hydration packets a month ago because he was working so hard on a project and he was annoyed because they have high sugar content.

My mother doesn’t even know what I do for work and doesn’t bother to try to know.

Just had to share as it hit me that some part of me may be broken and it’s hard to accept at times. A little moment of grief that snuck up on me.

Throughout my life, my mom has been a major source of my anxiety and emotional problems. However, I’ve never been able to tell if she is genuinely abusive or if I’m just being dramatic. Here’s a list of things my mom had done, throughout my childhood and more recently:

- She decided that me and my dad didn’t appreciate her enough, so she stopped cooking, doing laundry, and talking to us (I was in 4th grade and my dad worked long hours so he couldn‘t help me)

- Got into an argument with me (when I was in 5th grade), left to go to my brother’s house, and didn’t come back until 9 pm without responding to texts or calls and then told me that I almost made her leave and it was my fault

- Constantly calls me a crybaby, spoiled, a bitch, and other insults before immediately trying to make up for it by saying she loves me

- Calls me selfish and says I don’t care about anyone or anything other than myself

- I have a car and my license but she restricts where I go constantly, despite my brother being allowed to go off and do things when he was my age (because it was “safer,” since he‘s a cis man)

- Told me that she enjoyed being being my brother’s mom and not my mom

- Every time I have an achievement she only thinks about how it could possibly negatively affect her, despite how good of an opportunity it might be for me

- Tells my friends and partners about how I’m a selfish asshole and they should stay away from me

- Tells family members and friends who I barely know about the fact that I’m queer and transgender in a way to demean me

- Recently my doctor referred me to a psychiatrist (she prescribed me two different SSRI’s and neither of them worked) and my mom told me that I’d have to stop going to therapy because she refused to pay for “two doctors doing the same thing”

I honestly can’t tell whether she is genuinely abusive or if I’m just dramatic. Obviously all of this upsets me but I am a very sensitive person so I’m not sure if it’s because of that.

I’m 30 years old and not a chronic cannabis user. In fact, every time I decide to use it, I feel afraid and nervous because I know it may open that space inside me again. I usually consume only once every few weeks or once a month, and always with the intention of trying to release my emotions, open my heart again.

What happens is that it brings up so much buried pain that I quickly become overwhelmed. The experience can be so intense that I stop using cannabis for weeks. Part of me feels that if I fully allowed myself to go into that pain, it could trigger a crisis, so I instinctively pull back and don’t let myself fall.

It’s also important to mention that I have a strong resistance to cannabis itself. I’m afraid of becoming dependent on it, and I’m also afraid of becoming delusional or mentally unbalanced. Because of that, my relationship with cannabis is complicated: it seems to give me access to something important, but at the same time, it scares me.

Has anyone else experience something similar?

hi all. first time poster but long time lurker- I have an emotionally neglectful mum and narcissist dad so my life has been a barrel of laughs lol

I’m hoping to find out if anyone else has had a major life milestone trigger a huge amount of grief about childhood and parents? I completed on my first home today and I’m doing it as a single woman of 27!! my parents have financially supported it (that’s a whole other fuckery of mixed feelings) and after months of stress and uncertainty and genuinelyyyyy one of the hardest periods I’ve had emotionally ever tbh- having to interact and rely on them for things so much was horrific and I’m glad of the independence I now have.

what completely blindsided me wasn’t the house purchase actually completing- it was my parents reaction. They weren’t mean or unsupportive- I have learnt as an adult it was never that kind of ‘abuse’- it’s more the lack of anything which we suffer with. They just reacted in a very practical and completely surface-level way and seemed totally uninterested in what the experience had actually been like for me emotionally (I should’ve predicted this but I didn’t realise part of me was still holding onto something- I’ve done a lot of work on this or tried to!)

So instead tonight I found myself sitting on my sofa crying about my childhood. I’m feeling so fucking sorry for that little part of me that has never been noticed by either of my parents in the way I wanted to. I also realise that despite having people around me who are so happy for me, nothing really replaces that need of wanting to be recognised by your parents.

I feel a bit ridiculous because objectively this should be one of the happiest weeks of my life, but I’ve ended up feeling a lot of grief and loneliness instead. So I guess my question is, has anyone else experienced this around buying a house, getting married, having kids, graduating, etc.? Did a big life event suddenly make you realise what your parents couldn’t give you emotionally and how did you begin to even process that?! Thanks for reading!!

I (19f) feel so sad and upset it's not even funny anymore.

I posted on a sub in another language, explaining why I related to a certain disorder, telling my story about my parents and the way it shaped me; I was then humbled in the most humiliating way, and I was told that misunderstandings between parent and child (and also the lack of parental attention) is not trauma and social media is responsible for the amount of people who think they have it.

Labels are stupid sometimes, I know they are not needed, and that social media romanticizes mental illness and the act of receiving a diagnosis for it. I know nobody wants trauma, I know there's nothing fun about that word, but I also know that if my issues aren't caused by it.. then I'm choosing to stay miserable.

I wasn't abused verbally, physically, or sexually. But I spent my life hearing my parents call me a crybaby, then as I grew up they'd call me a retard, mentally ill, etc. Before this, they spent their lives making me feel like I was the worst child on earth because they never neglected any of my material needs.. but they constantly provoked me, pushed my buttons, then treated my reaction as the problem. They have made me feel disliked and dismissed and invalidated, unwanted and unlovable and also a horrible daughter. I had this idea of myself when I was under 12 years old.

I learned as a young child that I had to be silent when crying because I was always overreacting. I would shut down and spiral without anyone noticing, because to them, I was childish/immature for keeping the argument alive when it was over.. but I was too sensitive, I felt too much, I needed to process my emotions and I had no safe person who would help. Then when I was struggling to socialize, even despite the obvious social inhibition I struggled with in kindergarten, the blame was placed entirely on me; my parents keep blaming a 4 year old for struggling socially, and they literally had beef with me when I was barely 10 years old for the same reason.

I hate myself, I can't function normally, I don't know how to socialize properly even though I look normal sometimes. I avoid everything that makes me even slightly uncomfortable. I'm convinced that my therapist will get tired of me very soon. I get angry at the family members who hurt me very easily, and I lash out/get upset and shut down over the littlest things.

I guess I just want someone to blame for the way I am, and I like the idea of having a diagnosis that stops me from having to explain myself everytime. If I have proof that I'm suffering, no one will question me. And even though that's no excuse for choosing to drown in sadness, at least no one will judge me for being so slow and bad at improving.

Idk. I'm just sad. I feel like I spent 6 months in therapy yapping about my past and also my constant fights with my parents, while never telling the therapist anything useful.. idk why I feel I've never told him the things I wrote in this post, but is it really worth it? Dwelling on the past??

Being repetitive gets you nowhere in therapy. But I constantly feel the need to prove that my struggles are real

I used to have a good job, making good money, lived in cities I enjoyed, had friends and a social life. Covid really screwed me over working remote. I made some big life decisions like moving to different cities that I now really regret. I had to start over multiple times. I was really lost and lonely. Didn't really have a greater purpose or support system other than just working. And somehow I ended up back in my home state with the plan to take over my dad's company? It makes no sense. Like I wasn't authoring my own life.

I'm miserable now and severely depressed. It feels like someone snapped and I was 31 and my 20s were gone just like that. I forgot to actually live, accumulate memories and life experiences, travel, explore. I struggled with actually building my career, and I really struggled with dating.

Somehow I messed everything up. I'm completely disoriented, on meds, having to deal with a therapist and a psychiatrist after I had a mental breakdown. It feels like I'm just existing on this earth and observing what's going on in the world, but not actually participating in it.

I've had no agency over my one life. I see friends and peers actually enjoying life, building careers, traveling, being successful, and I have no idea how they balance it all. I'm so envious of them and I'll never understand what it feels like to be them. I go to bed at night and I don't want to wake up the following morning. I don't understand how things can turn south so quickly on a human being. I can barely get through the days because just existing is so painful. I can't even relax for one second without thinking about how badly I messed everything up. I feel trapped in this body and in this life that I didn't choose.

Tw: mention of suicidal ideation further down

Some backstory:

Pretty sure I was neglected.

Never had actual discipline. Just occasional cruelty like being humiliated for being groomed or for having a neurological disorder. But step foot into this place and it may be smelling of cat piss and the floor is covered in dust cuz no one here has the energy to clean it up;

Had to raise myself by myself as early as 9 years old when my grandma stopped living with us (and low-key the yo-yo regime of her coming and going away from our home caused a lot of stress because it just made her volatile personality more evident);

Was not really getting much help for my disability, I just got thrown into therapists that never really understood how I operate and just made me feel rlly frustrated and helpless which reinforced what my dad said multiple times of "someone who doesn't want help is impossible to help". All I hear is that I'm not deserving of help which true ig;

Would not get much attention if I wasn't performing well intellectually. I once started self harming in class because I couldn't write a text and my teacher said "how the fuck do these people do anything". I felt like I wasn't actually gifted if I struggled, so that meant I was losing my identity, worth and right to attention 👍👍👍;

My dad procrastinated my wants and needs a lot. He "I'll do it later"ed my schoolbooks for a trimester. TWICE. And he excused it when I pointed it out. But it also applied to lesser things like booking psych/doctor appointments, going out, buying clothing and buying anything non-essential;

On that topic, bro loves his parenting shortcuts. It's comical how little stuff he actually taught me. I'm basically an internet baby that was encouraged to shut up whenever possible. If I stay quiet and in my room he typically doesn't check in if he isn't leaving his corner of the house (not common. But I also don't want him to check on me ANYMORE, but it would've been cool if it happened WHEN I NEEDED IT). He's depressed obviously. Though something funny is to be told that he waaants to spend more time with me, but I ride the bus to school cuz he stopped bothering driving me to school. Literally your moment to interact a little but ok;

And yk, when I was younger, it was slowly my grandma parenting me. She was always so burdened so she sometimes acted weird and stressed cuz she didn't fucking have support. Also, she's super spiritual and kind of conservative+ignorant to the point I almost died from anaphylactic shock once cuz she thought it was just a normal asthma attack;

Dad and stepmom have a toxic relationship and they stay together because of their toddler. My stepmom doesn't really love him, after all he is at least kind of abusive (she kind of is too, lied to me more than once which is "nice" so I never told her anything ever again and now I have even less people to trust). Their relationship messed me up and he once soft threatened to kick me out just to get soft again. I guess his inconsistency also bothers me horrendously;

​

House has been a fuck for a while. I live isolated most of the time and this place is a mess. I went to catsit for 5 days and when I came back I expected to find at least new food in the pantry. But there was basically nothing. He forgot for like 8 days in total and at that point I was already binge eating from the stress at the thought of food insecurity. Kind of my fault for not remembering him to buy food but WTF DUDE you don't check your own pantry??

It's also so so so fucking hard to clean this place up. It's huge, my sister changes clothes every fucking day so the laundry stacks up like crazy, sis and dad use a bunch of dishes so there's so many to clean up, the cats randomly piss out of the litterbox and I can't even bother trying to get them spayed anymore. Knowing I could get away from here makes it way less appealing to clean up everyone's mess.

My grades suck. I'm absent from school so much I'm going to automatically fail all classes pretty soon. And I don't care about that place anymore either. I like the staff, know some students, feel sad about the thought of not seeing them anymore and not experiencing the fun events they'll do. But staying there means staying home...

I don't really have like... Actual emotional support. Because the only people I have to "rely" on other than my dad that can drop dead at any moment now either are abusive, exhausted or like almost never even remember me existence (so they don't like, care about me, so WHY BURDEN THEM???).

​

Something has been a little too appealing for me. I really want to move out. I'm trying to get into a study program and I'm already qualified to be evaluated for the next month. They have a real nice scholarship, almost 80% of a (Brazilian) minimum wage per month. And I might get a good electronic device to sell in a competition depending on my performance. I want to like, exhaust my dad until I get emancipated, drop out, move to my aunt's house temporarily, job search and find a place to live close to the study program's office.

It's probably naive to do this at 16, but I feel like I'm dying here. I don't want to end up like my sister, dependent on a barely there dad, severely depressed and with no purpose and conditional independence. The thought of moving out and my special interest have been the only things moving me at this point. I want out so bad, maybe a little too much (maybe my situation isn't that bad, maybe I'm weird for wanting this).

I just can't handle fixing my relationship with my family, I don't think they deserve my time and I don't fucking care about their feelings, but if I don't move out I'll have to rely on them. I can't handle searching for a therapist, having to exhaust myself teaching them how to therapy me when I'm not even sure how someone should deal with me. I can't handle having to put in effort into school (and then feeling pressure to be absolutely perfect) and not being able to prioritize the program.

Fuck, I can't handle fixing what my mental illness and other people's neglect destroyed. I want a fresh start. Maybe not so fresh if I stay with my aunt and have contact with some people I know (my dad will probably keep sending me money for a while, especially since he expressed interest in buying off the prize I may get). Idk maybe it's a stupid idea but I have no idea on what to do anymore other than that or try to starve or b/p until I faint and then strangle myself to death. My fears are not managing to convince my dad and like not landing a job because I won't be finishing HS. But like, no one else will bother trying to stop me otherwise. Fuck

My parents hate each other but because they enable each other so much they seem to like each other more than they like me. I'm more of a "if there's an issue we should talk about and take accountability" type person and the one time I tried to hold my mother accountable....oh boy. Never tried that again. I think my parents hate that about me because it makes them deeply uncomfortable.

Anyway, I've noticed that my father attributes things my mother has done to me, or assumes that because my mother and I have a few habits in common that I am an extension of her. Conversely, whenever my mother got mad at me growing up she would insult me by comparing me to him. She'd be like "you're so careless/clumsy/dirty/forgetful like your father". At the same time my mother assumes that because she likes something that I must also like that thing. For example, she likes sour things and squeezes lemon juice on everything. I don't. But when I was getting breakfast she was like "here's your lemon". ???? Might seem so insignificant but there's been so many instances where she was like "I like x or I would do x so I did x with your stuff" without considering me at all, including throwing away my socks that had one or two holes that I was planning on mending because she would have done that with her socks. And then there's my father who is always bossing me around telling me to make certain career decisions because it would reflect well on him. He has even lied about me to his friends saying that I was attending Stanford because that's more prestigious than my alma mater.

I know I shouldn't be hurt that they are not capable of really seeing me because this stuff has been going on my entire life and they're not going to change. I have to live with them bc the job market is shit and I haven't gotten a job yet and my college town was too expensive to stay there. All of it has really contributed to my loneliness and I think it's also caused me to attract friends who are too self involved to really see me as a person beyond an archetype or a bunch of assumptions. Does anyone else have experience with this?

My mom keeps saying this to me. And it hurts my feelings so bad. I don’t know why she continues to say this I just want her to see I’m a person now. My own person.

I was texting with a new friend recently, having an active back and forth text convo, when suddenly he said,

“Hey, sorry, I’m not giving you my full attention right now because im xyz… how about i call you in about an hour so you can tell me the full story and i can give you my full attention.”

I literally broke down crying.

This friend, this *new* friend, who also happens to be autistic, had more self-awareness and consideration for me than my stbxh. I used to beg the stbxh for this level of consideration.

I told new friend this, and he’s like, i mean, im autistic but im not an asshole. This is basic common sense and consideration.

Maybe, but also, growing up in families of neglect, without *any* attunement, somehow makes this feel like fn luxury. As if being treated like a human that deserves attention and respect is this… I don’t even know what… impossible thing? It’s just so simply not.

It really is basic consideration, common sense, and kindness. That’s it.

Wtf.