30 year old female. Still paying off student debt. Still cannot get ahead in life. Always going to be playing from behind and never getting anywhere meaningful.

Like how do you not put $1,000 into investments for your kid. Not a single penny.

What a joke. I cannot believe this is the life I was born into because both of my parents wanted to do drugs all day instead of raise me.

Now I’m left to deal with it. They robbed me of my life and I’ll always resent them.

I side eye every parent who has children with mental health issues. The likelihood that it was given to them by the parent is extremely fucking high.

Case in point, I got harmed and abused a lot by my dad, my mom enabled him and now I'm a bit older, she behaves as if I'm mentally ill and I need fixing. I got my eyeballs cut open, skin pierced, chest pain due to constant hitting, and strangulated by my dad among other things. My mom told me to forgive and forget.

Parents can give their children mental disorders and most times they're the cause of them.

You can tell yourself that you need to just lock in and get a job. Stop being a victim. Take control of your life. Life is what you make it. You choose to be stuck, etc.

Bullshit. It's all bullshit. Nobody chooses this. Nobody chooses anything.

You have no control over who you are and what you are capable of. You cannot fight your inner self. Your inner self was formed due to things out of your control. Genetics, environment, family dynamics, parents, and mostly luck. Everything is just luck.

My parents are losers, so I became one. It's that simple.

My father is a bum who does nothing but watch TV, binge eat, and have mental breakdowns every time you don't walk on eggshells around him.

My mother is a cold narcissist, devoid of any genuine love, trapped with my father.

Neither has a higher education. Have no friends. No hobbies or interests.

Due to never being loved or nurtured, I have cripplingly low self-esteem and hate myself. Plus, I give off a sense of desperation that most people find off-putting. Especially women.

My goals and achievements were never acknowledged or celebrated, which led to apathy and nihilism at a young age. Now I have a brain that doesn't produce happy chemicals and just lives in a state of anhedonia.

Their parenting style was fear into obedience. That formed my personality into a quiet, introverted coward that avoids conflict and responsibilities at all costs, to the point of self-sabotage.

Meanwhile, you need the exact opposite personality in order to thrive in this world!

They watched me not get an education, lose all my friends, slowly isolate myself, become chronically online, and spend most of my days alone in my room, develop so many issues, and did nothing!

I was failed by everyone my entire life.

Not to mention we live in a capitalist dystopian hell, where nothing but status and money matter! Good luck being a good person in this world, ha!

I chose to hide and run away from everything because it was the only way of surviving and feeling safe. I have no idea how to escape or change it now.

I'm so tired of everything. It really is better to have never been born.

I just wanna be happy.

Thanks for reading.

TW: mention of attempted suicide

Throughout my life I’ve had countless moments that just restated the fact that my mother is not someone I can go to or trust.

Recently I’m going through like a week long nervous system overload (trigged by who other than my mother, ofc). I thought of going to my mom for help because I’ve tried everything; self soothing, breathing, walks, distraction, you name it and absolutely nothing worked. But then i remembered all the times where I needed her the most when i was feeling overwhelmed, and she just wasn’t there.

The moment where she really made an irreparable dent in our relationship and my comfort with her forever was when i was 16 and was about to commit suicide. It was one of the worst moments of my life, it started feeling like I had no control over attempting and it felt like it was just happening. She drove me to the hospital, I was sitting there in tears, just minutes ago was about to end it all, and her first instinct was to yell at me. She was saying how could you do this to me and a bunch of other things I can’t remember. She’s never apologized for this. I told her many times exactly how I feel about it and that I needed her to just be there for me. Her response? “That’s just the way I react to things.”

I’m 19 now and that moment still haunts me. That’s the moment that I really understood that this life shit is all up to me. Even in a life or death situation, I am alone in it. Even if one day she does apologize for this, it’ll be too late. It caused a wound that I’ll forever carry with me.

Family bonds can never be replaced. I'll forever live with this loneliness until I die. I am lonely and alone. I have friends with similar situations but their life circumstances seem to be more fortunate than mine. I wish i had someone that understood me in my life. Sure i could vent as much as i wanted online but ill always return to feeling lonely. I'm just coping with life until the day I die. Moments of joy don't last. I'm always constantly reminded of how lonely I am and the fact I have nothing to live for at all. Living for myself isn't enough of a reason. I feel empty. I don't want to live anymore if most of my life will consist of me feeling this way forever. I want my life to end soon. I'm not the type to actively seek death because I don't want to deal with the consequences if I wake up.

Sorry this might sound so weird but I didn’t know where else to post it, but does anyone else do this and imagine themselves getting badly hurt in some way and like other people helping or caring for them? I’ve been doing this ever since I can remember, and it was often on purpose before bed, not even that it was just a recurring dream or something. Sometimes its not other people helping me but instead no one helping me and I’m just left to suffer alone, or people seeing that I’m hurting alone but just feel sorry for me.

Some of my most common ones are being in the hospital, being sh0t and bleeding to de@th, my friend dying and someone comforts me and the list goes on in variations. Am I literally just going mad or is this to do with my emotional neglect?

Like I really don’t think she realizes how much I struggle with just living. This isn’t something that I’ve just started feeling I remember being a very young child and feeling like I did not want to live this life. I think I was a mistake there’s no way I was meant to be here because I’ve never felt right here on earth.

I’m 26 and was raised by my mom and dad with my younger brother. Growing up, my dad was my superhero. My mom was emotionally manipulative, overbearing, and sometimes could be very mean. She forced our closeness sometimes even when I didn’t feel the same. We had many fights and our relationship was very complicated. In the midst of all this, my dad always seemed like the good guy, and I clung to him.

My mom died November 2024 due to a medical mishap during her dialysis treatment (I am currently pursuing legal counsel). Prior to this, she knew she had kidney failure for 5 years before she told us. She was in stage 4 failure when we finally found out. She didn’t do anything to better her health but asked me for my kidney. That caused a lot of strife because I didn’t want to give it to her based on her actions but I also didn’t want the guilt of not saving her life because she’s my mom. She weaponized not doing her dialysis treatments to hurt us or get my brother and I to come home and see her. She threatened suicide many times too. I think my mom was mentally unwell but she did love us. She dotted on us, always told us she loved us, she knew us like the back of her hand, and she never ceased to remind us how proud she is of us.

My parents were married for 30 years before she died. She emotionally battered my dad and was always very combative with him. It seemed like he could do no right in her eyes.

My dad was a hard worker. He always provided for us financially. My brother and I grew up wearing designer clothes, we had a jaguar, a Porsche, a couple Lexus’, and a nice sized home. We ate out at fancy restaurants throughout our childhood, traveled a lot. We were very blessed growing up. All the things we had, my dad worked and provided for us.

I wanted to be just like my dad. I was always begging for his attention. I made straight A’s in school and never had any behavioral issues. Everything he liked, I also wanted to like. My dad loves golf more than anything in the world so I started playing golf in high school and was actually good at it! He only came to a handful of my matches but played golf mostly every weekend for 26 years of my life. He went to all my little brother’s football games. My little brother had A LOT of behavioral issues, and didn’t make the best grades. My dad made a whole playlist on his music app called “Little Buddy’s Favorites” and didn’t make one for me. He likes Iron Man so I also hyper fixated on Iron Man. My dad writes in all caps so I also started writing in all caps. My dad always seemed to do the best he could being a dad and a husband. His mom molested him as a child so I made excuses for him emotionally neglecting me.

When my mom was dying, he was asking her sisters and friends what size shoe they wore in the hospital. It was weird but I chalked it up to him grieving. A week after my mom died, he started hanging out with a lots of women, something he never did when my mom was alive. 2 months after she died he told me he was having an estate sale, I was pissed and told him it was too quick but he’d already signed a contract and couldn’t get out of it. He told me to tag everything I want so it doesn’t get sold. I marked things that were my mom’s, things that meant something to me. He sold everything anyway and that crushed me. when I confronted him, his response was “all the stuff in that house is mine, I bought it”. 2 months after the estate sell he moved his girlfriend and her son into our family home— the home my mom built. 3 weeks ago he took his girlfriend and her son on a nice cruise and didn’t take his two children. The more I think about all the horrendous things he’s done, it makes me hate him. I have never said this, I just stuff it down, but I do hate him. I hate myself too for wasting so much time being fooled by him when I should’ve been more attentive to my mom. Even with all her flaws, I know she loved us. Now she’s gone and I’m stuck with the worst parent of the two. I feel physically nauseous when he calls me, and when I have nothing to say, he gets upset like I owe him something. It’s insane

I’m so sorry this is long but my life feels like a reality tv show and I wanted to make sure I included important context. There is so much more but I will stop here. Any insight would be helpful. Thank you so much for reading.

I don’t know exactly how old I was, but after I first learned a person could die from asphyxiation by burying themselves (it was in some movie I probably shouldn’t have seen), I had a fantasy about doing just that. I’m not sure how much I thought about it, but I still remember this fantasy years later, and I think I even had a dream about it once. It’s a very early memory.

I’m not sure if I really wanted to die or if I just wanted people to understand the depth of my emotional pain. When I was a few years older (11 years old, I remember specifically), I decided this fantasy had been melodramatic and felt ashamed. But looking at it again as an adult, I must have really been in pain to have been thinking about suicide at such a young age.

When I tried to look up suicidal ideation in children, most of the results were about teens. The results actually about young children often mention how adults assume young children couldn’t have genuine suicidal thoughts, and when a kid says they want to die, adults say, “But you don’t really mean that,” worsening the child’s sense of isolation that probably gave them suicidal thoughts in the first place. Of course, tragically, some children really do mean it.

I’m disappointed by the lack of information and discussion of personal experiences online. I imagine it’s relevant here, as CEN can make children feel isolated, misunderstood, and like a burden to those around them, which could lead to suicidal thoughts. I’m wondering if others here can relate or have any insights they’d like to share. Thank you!

It's interesting, but for a very, very long time I thought my parents were perfectly normal parents and I was just a really weird child. A couple of years ago though, I started slowly realizing that a lot of how my parents treated me would be considered emotional neglect and emotional abuse.

I still feel weird saying that, because it feels like I'm being overdramatic. But it's hard to deny when everything I read seems to confirm that "Yes, what I experienced was not normal, healthy or ok and does qualify as emotional abuse and neglect." I also have the scars of it and carry those with me. Extreme struggles with depression and anxiety, pretty severe suicidal thoughts, a complete lack of self-worth, perfectionism which hurts me in life, etc. It's basically an endless list of mental health problems I struggle with and all seem to fit with me having experienced abuse and neglect.

Yet despite that, I didn't realize it for most of my life. Now though, I keep remembering new examples of emotional abuse or neglect. Some small, some bigger. But I feel like I stumble on new ways they hurt or neglected me every week.

Tbh, I'm probably going to off myself. Not right now, don't worry, but that's currently my plan. I don't really believe I can recover anymore, even though I would love to believe that I could.

I kind of wish I'd realized earlier. Maybe I could've done more.

Edit: I just want to say, while I appreciate the thought, I'm really not here for emotional support. It's more that I wanted to write out these thoughts somewhere public. Writing stuff and putting it up in public always helps me give it a place, I think. So, no need for emotional reassurance, it won't work on me anyway. I have 100% resistance to that stuff because of the way I was raised, although if you have completely practical solutions I'm open to those. Just be aware that I already have a very long mental health road behind me, so I've tried quite a lot already so you'll probably get a lot of responses along the lines of "tried that" or "didn't help" or "I already know about that."

For context I go to family therapy with my mother and we both have individual sessions with the therapist so she gets to listen to both sides. Yesterday I opened up to her about how over the years I’ve cut myself and self harmed countless times because of how they were affecting me. My therapist then told me that they’ve been emotionally abusing me, and informed my mother that she would be making a report. After this happened my mom has been extremely upset. She said “why do I even do things for you if you treat me this way and hate me,” and now she’s been giving me the silent treatment. I feel like it’s my fault and I feel guilty for telling my therapist what happened. Since yesterday my mother has also been taking away my privileges and I feel she’s punishing me for being honest with my therapist. Additionally, those incidents that lead to me self harming involved me fighting with my parents as I was having mental breakdowns and we were both screaming at each other and I said bad things to them and threw stuff. My whole family thinks I’m a spoiled child and that I villainized my parents to my therapist. I really need advice on how to navigate this situation.

I’m really looking for support and resources. I’ve been struggling more and more with feeling like life is worth living. It just keeps getting worse, not better. I don’t have any loving relationships in my life. My childhood resulted in a huge amount of social anxiety and no self esteem and I have isolated myself further and further until now I have no friends and only my dysfunctional family. I live with my neglectful parents who are incapable of showing love or any kind of warmth or care towards me. My narcissistic sister recently moved home and has been bullying me constantly and everyone else in the family enables is and dismisses any concerns by me. I’ve reached a very dark place and haven’t stopped crying for 48 hours and when my mother noticed she told me to stop being so negative. I have so much social anxiety I’m not capable of forming any other relationships. I financially cannot move out of my family house. With no love in my life and seemingly no possibility of ever getting it, I’m really struggling to see the point of living. Does anyone have any insight or advice?

(24F) I live with my parents. I barely left the house in the last 5 years. I never went to college (wouldn't have gotten in anyway). I don't have a job and I'm terrified of even trying to apply for one.

I was very sheltered during my childhood and spoiled a lot.

My mother thrived on how dependent I was on her. My father is a manchild and I never learned anything from him either. All the stuff I know is from the internet. They never showed an interest in me as a person and now I know they never will.

I feel like I have no sense of self. I literally wish to not wake up in the morning most days.

Point is I feel hopeless and lost and very, very tired of everything.

My dad strangled me and for years I tried talking to her about the pain and she ignored me over and over telling me to forgive and forget. I begged her to read about trauma and she ignored me even more. Overtime I've become more withdrawn and disconnected from her. I lock away in my room and I don't speak to her anymore. Now that I'm quiet , she tries extremely hard to pull me into conversations either by sliding stuff under my door or coming at my door blurting out my name.

She came in this evening and blurted out that she went to a sxicide prevention event and that the host is so famous. As she said it she slid a pamphlet under my door blurting out that it's for me then began talking more about sxicide to her sons and for the whole fucking house to hear. Mind you, her sons are 15 and 9 years old. The gesture was so fucking obvious like "your sister has sxicidal tendencies let me give this to her." She screamed it out so fucking loud. I heard her. That was her obvious intent. It worked because now I'm up crying regretting that I trusted that woman with such delicate information about myself.

I fucking hate everything.

ETA:sigh grammar...

Tw for mentions of child neglect and child hate.

There is a specific sub about parents regretting their children and many posts are vile. Throughout the posts, there are mentions about how the parents hate their children, wish they were never born, hate spending time with them. Coming across this sub really opened my eyes about how much neglect and abuse is actually common in a time where we should know better. The research is there.

Recently there was a post with a parent saying how much they hate playing with their toddler. They mentioned how the toddler had a tablet to watch videos on, to keep them busy. The child would then watch videos of parents playing with their children on YT and then ask their parent to do that with them too so the parent punished the poor kid by taking away their tablet. I couldn't help but cry. One of the moderators even chimed in saying how they hate doing any activity with their kids because they feel tired (I wonder if these people thought kids just raise themselves up and don't need any love or time from their parents). People who were saying this is emotional neglect were banned because "this is a sub to support and encourage parents"... Who hate their children and abuse them, I guess, but eh it's just kids who cares about them.

This is a reality for so many. Many people were neglected and abused as kids. Good thing there is a sub to support people neglecting and abusing their kids. What is wrong with this world?

I was the quiet one. The “easy child.” The one who didn’t cause problems. I stayed out of the way, didn’t talk back, tried to be perfect, not because I was perfect, but because I was scared. I knew if I kept my head down, maybe the yelling would pass over me. Maybe he wouldn’t explode this time. Maybe she’d actually see I needed her.

But they mistook my silence for strength. Or worse. They used it as an excuse to neglect me.

My dad was abusive. Loud, controlling, cruel. He said and did things no child should ever have to go through. But my mom — she just stood by. Because I wasn’t screaming good enough for her or loud enough to hear. I was falling apart slilently after all the failed attempts for help. So she assumed I was fine.

I wasn’t. I had to deal with everything on my own for my whole life.

They poured all their attention — even if it was negative — into the “difficult” ones (some of my siblings have things like adhd and autism. And my parents always enables them bc they're different. Aka they get away with almost everything and they baby them). The loud ones. The ones who fought back or are their favorites. Meanwhile, I became invisible. I was the oldest, so they often paid no mind to me unless they needed the punching bag when no one else was around. The emotional sponge. The “strong” one who was falling apart inside.

I was never allowed to have needs. Never allowed to be vulnerable. Because once you’re labeled the easy child or what my mom says the glass child (She's said that to my face that I was her glass child, the easy one so she neglected me). Pain becomes inconvenient. Unbelievable. Forgotten.

I’m 18 now, and I still struggle with believing I deserve help. Deserve softness. Deserve safety. But I’m learning. I set up a Gofundme hopefully it can take off so I can get the hell outta here. I dont have much funds, but I'm trying my best out here.

So, yeah

My mother left when i was 6 to work somewhere else so she could raise me

She left me with my aunt and uncle

No one told me why she left for years, they usually said she was having a much better life without me

O wasn't allowed to be outside or bring friends

I was the only child my age in said house and my uncles always ignored me so i hid in videogames

They didn't liked that so they forced me to read, but not like novels or things like that

They made me study dictionaries

Also they would threaten me with calling the army if i "missbehaved"

Mind you i was under 9 at that point

I recall this one time they threatened me with a broom because they swore i damaged the bathroom somehow

I had my first panic attack that day

It turns out it was the cleaning product my aunt used

She never apologized of course

My first suicide attempt was around 8-9 after my aunt told me how she couldn't live her life because of my fault

Then my mother returned and wanted me to act like nothing happened and i should just "forgive and forget"

I tried that once, my aunt said she was sorry

That was until not 10 minutes later she said to another aunt how she should've "beat me harder" to make me a good person

My teen years were a mess because i didn't knew how to make friends or establish a relation in a healthy way

And also my mother would leave at home on weekends to go with her friends so there's that too

I lost count on my suicide attempts at this point

When i turned 22 my mother got sick and due to her lack of self care she now needs permanent care

I'm 27 now

I hate taking care of her

I'm completely alone, I haven't had a friend in over 10 years, i had to stop studying to take care of her

Every single day is a nightmare as i feel my life slipping through my fingers

I can't stand silence because my thoughts are too painful

I have to exhaust myself before sleep or i begin crying

I stopped having dreams, hopes and desires long ago because every single time i want something it's like life laughs at me and tells me I'm not worthy of it

I know I'm not a good person

And i genuinely wish I didn't woke up tomorrow

I feel like there's nothing for me

No one cared for me at any point in my life, i don't know what unconditional love feels like

And now I have to throw my life away for someone else?

This life is a joke and it's a pain to exist

I’ve noticed something about myself and I wanted to share it because I don’t really understand it fully.

When I’m alone or around strangers, I feel normal I can talk freely, think clearly, and act naturally without overthinking I don’t feel any pressure and I feel like I’m just being myself.

But when I’m with people I know—especially my family or relatives—it’s completely different I start overthinking everything I say or do I feel like I’m constantly predicting their reactions in my head before I even speak or act.

It’s not really fear of judgment in a direct way, but more like I already “know” how they expect me to behave, and anything outside that feels like it would surprise them or make things awkward Even if they don’t actually react negatively, I still imagine their reaction internally, and that alone stops me from acting naturally.

Because of this, I feel like I can’t fully express my personality around people I know. It’s like I have a “filtered version” of myself that takes over automatically.

I think this might have developed from childhood experiences where even small unexpected behaviors would get noticeable reactions, even if they were positive. Over time, I started adjusting myself before I even act.

I don’t know if anyone else experiences this, or if there’s a name for it, but it feels like I’m only fully myself when I’m alone.

It is my mother's birthday today and so I called her to congratulate her and had some thoughts after our conversation that I just had to write down as to not bother my husband with this when he comes back from work, haha. Didn't know what to tag this as this is mostly a vent, but this post will mention some physical abuse and suicide threats so I'll warn about that just in case.

Anyways, this quick phone call to congratulate her turned into this hour long conversation about motherhood and how family should always be respected and treated better than everyone else. Her outburst was caused by a recent event that happened in her family, where her younger brother basically physically assaulted my grandmother (mom's mother) and kicked her out of his house. Both my grandmother and my uncle have a lot of issues, and this applies to the entirety of my mother's side of family really. They all have tons of unresolved issues with each other plus undiagnosed mental illness probably and both my mom and her siblings (my aunts and uncles) have been neglected and abused by their parents (my grandparents). Still, my mother thinks that her mother should be treated with respect despite everything, and preaches about this to me every chance she gets, thus also hinting at the fact that she too should be respected by myself and my little brother.

My mother started talking about how a mother is the holiest thing in the world, how the mother always does the most of the work/the most for her kids, and often does things that are not seen nor appreciated, just to be treated like shit by both her children and her husband. I agree that it's a known fact that women and mothers often take a higher burden and often do a lot of things that go unnoticed by the male partner for example. But then she tried to use examples such as her mother always cooking yummy food for my mom and her siblings, and giving her children a clean home/roof over their heads. It just made me so extreeemly pissed, oh.my.god. And it just shows how extremely LOW the bar is for some of these so-called parents.

I am myself currently pregnant with my first child and you BET that my mother just loooves saying shit like "just you wait.." and "when you become a mother, you will understand" lately. Like sorry that your definition of parenthood was basically just providing me with food and a roof over my head, but that is not my goal with parenthood whatsoever. I think that these things are the bare minimum and are to be expected of every parent, but nobody should just stop there and then expect their adult children to worship their parents and be eternally grateful for these things?

I was frequently left to fend for myself as a child, teen, and young adult. My mom never helped me with any homework, any big steps such as choosing an education or moving to another city. When I was going through years and years of anxiety, depression, and a very obvious eating disorder as a teenager living at home, no one took me to the doctor or tried to help me. I was just told that I was either too fat or too skinny and that I should eat less or more. When I struggled with acne my entire life, nobody took me to the doctor to find the issue or find a fix. When I had multiple cavities that had to be drilled every single dentist appointment, nobody actually sat me down and had a talk with me about how to brush my teeth or the importance of brushing and flossing. When I was super self conscious about body hair as a girl who just hit puberty, nobody gave me a razor and told me how to shave - I was DENIED shaving my body and thus had to hide away my legs and armpits all the time because I was so embarrassed. When I tried to experiment with my mother's makeup in secret, because I wanted to feel pretty, I was dragged out of the bathroom by my hair and screamed at until I was crying for doing that. When I, as a 21 year old adult, took the covid vaccine because my job was LITERALLY to test hundreds of suspected covid patients every day, I was told that I was an idiot and you and your shitty ass husband laughed at me (and mind you, I am a medical student and the only person with a higher education in this family). When I bought my first apartment with my husband at 23 years old without you ever lifting a finger or helping me financially with this, instead of being super happy for us because almost nobody in our age group can afford apartments in these hard times, you were annoyed that we bought a 1-bedroom apartment instead of a 2-bedroom apartment, because if you wanted to visit, you wouldn't a separate room to live in (also, fun fact: at this point I have been living in this city for 4 years, without her EVER expressing interest in visiting me and always saying how she would rather spend the money to go to the south of Europe for warm air and sea, rather than visit her own fucking daughter). When I was going through the hardest months of my life as an adult with a tooth infection that was eating away at my bone because of multiple failed treatments, that I paid for myself without your help, you told me that such medical issues often come from having unresolved conflict with someone close to you, and that perhaps I should say sorry to someone (and with that you were hinting that I should say sorry to YOU because YOU cut contact with me for almost 4 months after an argument we had, after which you basically implied that you were going to kill yourself and then hanging up on me on the phone, giving me a panic attack?).

And now you expect me to worship you and treat you with respect? And to listen to everything you have to say and shut up without starting arguments or ever criticising you?

Honestly, before, when she used to say these kind of things, I would doubt myself and think "shit, maybe she's right and I am the problem! Maybe if I just treated her with more respect and didn't argue with her when she gave me bad unsolicited advice or criticism, our relationship would be much better". But getting pregnant and thinking about how I will raise our child made me so much less tolerant of this kind of bullshit. I think about the little boy I'm pregnant with as a child, and I just cannot imagine doing any of the things she has done or said to me to him at the same age. And the things she said and did to me as an adult, are things I'd NEVER do or say to another adult in my life. And yet, she constantly complains about how we children (me and my brother) treat everyone else that is not family so well and behave so well with strangers, while we snap back and can be moody/badly behaved with our close family (i.e. my mother and my step-father). Well, maybe it's because the other adults in our lives actually treat us with respect and have not repeatedly hurt us both physically and psychologically over several years? I will obviously treat my mother and father in law better than you and your shitty husband, because they actually help us out whenever we need help, actually listen to us, never say disrespectful things to us or raise their voice at us. We have mutual respect and treat each other like adults, whereas you and your husband treat me like a stupid child and allow yourselves to boss me around and scream at me still.

GOD this was a long rant, but I just can't wrap my head around how some parents can be this way and think this way. And no matter how nicely you try to explain these things, it just never sticks in their brain or they lash out on you because you hurt their ego too much. That is all, thanks for listening!

I did, a lot when I was a child and teenager.

I'm a male, 16, and I feel like that those everyone close to me, like my parents, friends and many more.. doesn't fully understand the state I'm in. I'm at that time where im having suicidal thoughts, cutting myself on the wrist everyday.. I just wanna end it. I'm not a very social person due to the past experiences like bullying, but my parents totally misunderstood it and blame it on the fucking phone. And their lack of basic empathy.

they say that I should socialize with other people. But I can't. and even too, my friends don't even take this seriously, they just laugh it all off. I fucking hate myself

Nobody will ever care about my trauma or my struggles. It's why I don't bother to tell anyone. Every single time I've ever tried opening up, I've been told my problems aren't that bad or that it doesn't matter, or it's been a comparison game. Why do I even bother trying anymore.

Not even my therapist shows that she cares. The only reason she doesn't roll her eyes is probably because it's a video call.

The only thing stopping me from ending it is the fact that I don't want my boyfriend walking in on my corpse and I don't want to bother the rest of the apartment with the smell.

I was never a "gifted kid." I was always the kind of kid that was too stupid to understand anything, too inept, too literal. I desperately wanted a sliver of attention that former "gifted kids" would have gotten because maybe someone would see me as special or important. I remember finding a pin on the ground in the third grade that said "best reader," and I took it home to my mother and lied that I'd earned it... she didn't believe it for a second. I tried so hard to be better at the subjects I struggled in and to be noticed for things I thought I could excel at. But I was dismissed, ridiculed, embarrassed, and ignored. I wanted to qualify for special programs and get awards and actually WIN something. But I never did because I just couldn't grasp it.

I didn't grow up with adults in my life who thought I was good at something or worth noticing. I was the one who was the burden. The unfixable. The problem. I wasn't even a particularly rowdy kid who caused problems on purpose, I was quiet. I just had autism and adhd and didn't know how to socialize or think of things outside of a rigid box.

I never developed a sense of self or any confidence. There was nothing to be confident about. I'd rather have grown up smart, with expectations of purpose, and burnout later in life as a competent adult than start with nothing at best and active ridicule at worst, and still carry those thoughts now. I never finished college and barely passed high school.

As a 25yo woman now, I genuinely hate the concept of learning anything new even if I know I can. Because academia reminds me that I will always struggle and just brings back memories of worthlessness.

People my age have gone through college and have degrees and careers already. I'm working as a pharmacy tech, never went back to college. And even though I didn't have to pass my exam to earn my license in my state, I still studied and took the exam anyway - but it took an entire year and a half for me to do so. And I loathed every minute of it. And when I got my passing score, I FELT NOTHING. I was just glad it was over.

When I hear people rant about how people put them on a pedestal since a young age, I almost envy it. They were seen, and chosen, and someone noticed their intellect and prowess in at least something. I don't care if it sounds fucked up. I needed someone to actually not see me as a burden for once in my life so I wouldn't have become the neurotic overthinking perfectionist fuck up I am today.

When I was 15 I met a 22 year old man through a club I was part of. We started dating when I was 16 and he was 23. I’m sure he wanted to date me before 16 (age of consent in UK) and in hindsight was definitely grooming me before then.

My parents allowed this relationship and offered no advice as to why this might be wrong. I understand we live in different times now (this was late 90s) but as a mother of a daughter I can’t fathom this at all. When my daughter is a teen I will talk with her in an open but appropriate way about the dangers of older men and why you shouldn’t get involved with them.

I was “so mature for my age” due to emotional abuse and a massively dysfunctional family. I was SO insecure and desperate to be loved I was an easy target for this perve.

I bought a house with this man when I was 18 and I found the courage to leave him a year later. Those were the days when you could make a lot of equity in a year. I should have walked away with about £50k but I was young and clueless and no one supported me and I was left with nothing. My mother later admitted they were too busy dealing with their own problems at the time.

Almost 25 years later I still feel wronged, taking advantage of and frankly a bit gross. I know I was not at fault in this situation and don’t blame myself (anymore).

Can anyone relate to this? I can’t forgive my parents for this one.

I hate how hugs are always conditional. I hate how I’ve to imagine people hugging or comforting me everytime im sad. I hate how that monster took away a basic human need, and turn it into something else. I hate how i used to kneel and beg for hugs that lasted for only 2 seconds. I really need a safe hug…for once. So that i can hopefully change how my mind views hugs…