Syvelocin
June 28th, 2011, 01:07 AM
My damn life story, finally. I've meant to share this for a long time. Get it off my chest, you know? Finally decided to write it. Read none of it. Read all of it. Read a paragraph. I will not condense it, so live with its length.
Don't bother to reply if all you're going to say is "I'm sorry." I'm not looking for sympathy. That isn't the point. I'd rather have this completely unanswered than littered with your pity. This is normal to me, what I've lived with and still do. I don't pity myself, so you shouldn't either.
Starting from corruption.
My mum met my father on an extended vacation in Finland. He was already married, and my mum was young. Predictably, yes, I was an accident. Of course I was an accident. Most likely though, when you hear me talking about my father, I mean my stepdad. Because my blood father isn't my father.
I have the same aspiration as my mum used to. She wanted to be an actress. A theatre actress though. And having a kid didn't help that. As well, her income wasn't great at the time. Eventually, arrangements were made and I spent a good chunk of my childhood with my aunt. My mum later took on being a full-time student fitting a late-shift job in between that, so it seemed like I saw her less and less because she was trying to make a life for me out of her own mistakes. But at the same time, she made another mistake. One that she wouldn't stop regretting, still hasn't to this day.
My aunt was actually an alcoholic. Way, way too deep into it. She was horrible. Spent her nights drinking and the days in bed. I don't even know how the extent of this had gone unnoticed by the rest of the family for so long. I don't know if it was the drinking, or if it was really her conscious decision, I really hope it was the first one, but she really started to act like she almost loathed me. But in a sort of (I hate to describe it this way) bipolar fashion, where one minute she'd be making me breakfast and the other screaming at me, shouting things like "I should never have agreed to take care of you." The abuse didn't start for a couple years. It gradually built itself up. It was always in the evenings, which is why I'm more confident than not that it was the drinking that made her that way. Probably why I'm so opposed to drinking now.
My mum took me back when she finished medical school, and my aunt went into rehab, my mum having forced her into it when I finally got up the courage to tell her what was going on. My mum became a nurse. And that was her niche. She could support me. That's when the calm came, the best part of my life. We lived away from everything, in a small house in Suffolk. Where I met amazing friends and was happy. My mum met my stepdad there as well. I think it was because I lacked a father figure for so long, that I accepted him into my life much quicker than most would. Now I'm as close to him as I would a father that had been with me since birth. They were meant for each other though, I knew that. I know that. The last good thing I remember is my brother's birth. I was thirteen. My teen years weren't good to me.
I had been quite the manic child for most of my life. Not depressed. Sad sometimes, but not depressed. So my mum kind of hoped that was all it would be. She's told me quite frequently how she never wanted kids in fear that they'd be just as unhappy as she was as a kid. And of course I got her bipolar disorder. The depression didn't start until my teen years though. After my brother was born, but it had no correlation. I started wearing all black and my school performance went down a notch. Typical happenings. And just the depression alone drove me to self-harm. I've said before though it was just a nasty fight. We don't fight often. My mum is bipolar and I'm bipolar so it's never been easy but we're happier than a good amount of mothers and daughters are. Still not perfect though. Usually we just annoy each other if there's conflict but this one was bad. I did something and I shouted your typical teenage lines, "I hate you," "I want to die," etc. I ran upstairs, sat on my bed, and one thing alone was on my mind. The scissors on the table.
I hate to think that I'm your cliché self-harmer. But I am. And I won't pretend like I didn't enjoy the attention as a kid. I didn't start for attention, but anything that would take the attention from my brother and give it to me wasn't a bad bonus. Nothing against him. It just made that time of my life a bit more bearable, to let me know that I wasn't invisible.
We moved that summer. The office where my stepdad worked was closing. Something about losing money in the company. So we had to move to where the jobs were. Somewhere much bigger, much more promising than a small town. London of course. It was perfect, yes? Lost my best friends. Moved closer to my mum's side of the family. It was great. New house in Camden, about twenty minutes from the house my mum grew up in, where my grandfather lives. About thirty minutes from my aunts house. She took this as an opportunity to make nice with us. I believed her, my mum tolerates her. You can't forget about actual harm your own family did to your daughter, but you can't exactly erase decades of sisterhood, and a now-sober, once-best friend. My mum didn't trust her with me, or me being there, either one. My aunt's pleas that she was "right in the head now" and "sorry for what she did" queued supervised visits for a while until my mum thought she had earned the right to have me by myself. And I forgave her. Some people think I'm crazy for it, some agree with my decision. Other than my mum, she's my closest family member now. But not without creating conflict within my mum of course.
At this point in the story, I think most people expect my aunt to go back on that, but no, she hasn't done anything of the likes. Instead, it was actually her boyfriend of one year at the time. Seemed like a friendly man the first time I met him. I was staying at my aunts house for the weekend, and while she was out shopping, he came over. Don't think my aunt was expecting him that weekend of course. This is the only part that is at all condensed of my story, for obvious reasons. He touched me. He raped me. He said I looked like her, only twenty years younger. Only better breasts. Only more attractive. It was quick. But not painless. And he left, and I just cried. Never said anything about it for months.
That's what put the idea in my head. I could manipulate my body. I could change it all, everything he said about me. I could stop eating. I could slow puberty. I could lose any womanly features I had or was getting. I could become undesirable. Eating maintains curves. Eating was the enemy.
I was already small. At that point, I was only going to gain one or two inches in height before I was at my full height. My genes were of short to medium sized women with small frames and some of them, eating disorders themselves. My mum's younger sister had issues with anorexia as well. But point being, I didn't need to lose weight. But that was the heaviest I've ever been, the weight I was at fourteen. I'm five pounds under that weight currently, but it's been worse. And not many people know how much I weigh. Maybe one or two on VT, I'm not sure.
It was the domino effect though. Once I moved, everything bad that happened after that all stacked together. None of it happened alone. I had to deal with the self-harm, bipolar disorder, lack of relationships, the sexual abuse, my past, all at the same time. And it just increased. I had been a smoker before. I got that from my mum. Because of the crowd I hung with, my fake friends, I got into drugs as well, and from then on, it felt like my body was deteriorating in every way. I wasn't feeding it, I was shooting up whenever I got the chance. And then came the HIV diagnosis. And so my body was consuming itself, the narcotics surely didn't help, and my damn t-cells were being killed off. Of course, then my mum was going through more emotional trauma than I ever had. That's the thing about fatal, incurable conditions. Once you go through the stages of grieving, you're almost numb to it. The people who love you only seem to get more distressed.
I don't remember all my trips to the hospital. They all mesh together. The first and second were very memorable of course. The first time I went, it was for self-harm. Never said a word other than that, because I saw how they treated this one girl with anorexia, Kathy (no, not our Kathy :P). The second time, I couldn't get out of it. After the rehab, I was on the tubes as well. But it's not a simple as that. There's so much more to the war than being force fed and discharged ten days later.
My motives behind anorexia flipped. I guess after years of telling myself nothing that happened to me actually happened to me. And when I found out that manipulating your body alone can't stop your greatest fears from happening. Eventually it was just the control. I wanted to see how low I could make the number go. Like seeing how long you can stand to hold your breath until you can't ignore your body's urges any more. And I got to 5 stone. 70lbs. That used to be a bragging right. Now it's embarrassing.
After that, it was back and forth between normal eating one day and starving myself the other. At least it was uneventful for the next couple years. A dozen or so hospital stays maybe. But quieter than it had been.
This is where it'll probably get more familiar for anyone here.
I met Jay when I was seventeen. I don't know what it was. I was comfortable around him. I don't trust men in my personal life. But I trusted him. He was older. I didn't care. I gave him a chance because he wanted the chance. Two-thirds of the attraction was one-sided though. I'm sure my past experiences took a toll on my sexuality. I was almost glad for the HIV, because it gave me an excuse to not be intimate. It eliminated a problem I'd surely face in a relationship with a man.
He knew it might not work out. I tried though. He was a great friend. I moved here for him, which, considering how I feel for the southern United States, is probably the largest act of love I've ever shown. As much as some people insist, emotional attraction isn't all that matters. The average person needs some of it all for the relationship to work well. Emotional, sexual, and physical attraction. I'm sure of that. We had been together for almost a good two years before the January wedding. I was told it was stupid. And it was. Because right after that, I realized just how hard I fell for my best friend. I met her at Emory, my first week, in one of my classes. Liz has been a very, very good friend for me. And I knew there was an attraction there. She's really pretty. And an amazing person. But after my small, non-religious little wedding, something cracked. And what I was so excited for just prior became the only thing in the way of what I wanted. It isn't like I have much of a history of commitment. But that's where this stretch of my life started. We had been sort of dating for months before I finally told Jay. Nothing serious though. I have issues with hurting others as well. I put them before me. So in the end, I would never wait terribly long to tell him, but it wasn't what I wanted to do.
And I told you guys how that went down. He goes on about how hurt he is and how I'm not really lesbian. He believed me when I said it, when he had no doubt that I would stay with him. He was completely supportive. I guess, only if he still had me in the end.
I can't live alone. It doesn't work like that. I'm a paranoid, psychotic, little girl, and always will be. I'm not supposed to live alone. My psychiatrist says so even. I need someone keeping a fucking eye on me. I don't trust myself either, but no one else does anyway. Thankfully, now kicked out of my flat, I am living with Liz. And if you take away the emotional distress and my chronic depression, I'm doing better than I have for a while.
Moral of the story, kids, refuse when your parents say that you're moving, screaming is your friend, and if relationships are difficult, you just haven't tried being with your own sex.
That was more painful than I thought it would be. You are officially crazy in my eyes if you got this far. That's like fanfiction-sized. A forum post would be under-exaggerating, but a novel would be over-exaggerating.
Don't bother to reply if all you're going to say is "I'm sorry." I'm not looking for sympathy. That isn't the point. I'd rather have this completely unanswered than littered with your pity. This is normal to me, what I've lived with and still do. I don't pity myself, so you shouldn't either.
Starting from corruption.
My mum met my father on an extended vacation in Finland. He was already married, and my mum was young. Predictably, yes, I was an accident. Of course I was an accident. Most likely though, when you hear me talking about my father, I mean my stepdad. Because my blood father isn't my father.
I have the same aspiration as my mum used to. She wanted to be an actress. A theatre actress though. And having a kid didn't help that. As well, her income wasn't great at the time. Eventually, arrangements were made and I spent a good chunk of my childhood with my aunt. My mum later took on being a full-time student fitting a late-shift job in between that, so it seemed like I saw her less and less because she was trying to make a life for me out of her own mistakes. But at the same time, she made another mistake. One that she wouldn't stop regretting, still hasn't to this day.
My aunt was actually an alcoholic. Way, way too deep into it. She was horrible. Spent her nights drinking and the days in bed. I don't even know how the extent of this had gone unnoticed by the rest of the family for so long. I don't know if it was the drinking, or if it was really her conscious decision, I really hope it was the first one, but she really started to act like she almost loathed me. But in a sort of (I hate to describe it this way) bipolar fashion, where one minute she'd be making me breakfast and the other screaming at me, shouting things like "I should never have agreed to take care of you." The abuse didn't start for a couple years. It gradually built itself up. It was always in the evenings, which is why I'm more confident than not that it was the drinking that made her that way. Probably why I'm so opposed to drinking now.
My mum took me back when she finished medical school, and my aunt went into rehab, my mum having forced her into it when I finally got up the courage to tell her what was going on. My mum became a nurse. And that was her niche. She could support me. That's when the calm came, the best part of my life. We lived away from everything, in a small house in Suffolk. Where I met amazing friends and was happy. My mum met my stepdad there as well. I think it was because I lacked a father figure for so long, that I accepted him into my life much quicker than most would. Now I'm as close to him as I would a father that had been with me since birth. They were meant for each other though, I knew that. I know that. The last good thing I remember is my brother's birth. I was thirteen. My teen years weren't good to me.
I had been quite the manic child for most of my life. Not depressed. Sad sometimes, but not depressed. So my mum kind of hoped that was all it would be. She's told me quite frequently how she never wanted kids in fear that they'd be just as unhappy as she was as a kid. And of course I got her bipolar disorder. The depression didn't start until my teen years though. After my brother was born, but it had no correlation. I started wearing all black and my school performance went down a notch. Typical happenings. And just the depression alone drove me to self-harm. I've said before though it was just a nasty fight. We don't fight often. My mum is bipolar and I'm bipolar so it's never been easy but we're happier than a good amount of mothers and daughters are. Still not perfect though. Usually we just annoy each other if there's conflict but this one was bad. I did something and I shouted your typical teenage lines, "I hate you," "I want to die," etc. I ran upstairs, sat on my bed, and one thing alone was on my mind. The scissors on the table.
I hate to think that I'm your cliché self-harmer. But I am. And I won't pretend like I didn't enjoy the attention as a kid. I didn't start for attention, but anything that would take the attention from my brother and give it to me wasn't a bad bonus. Nothing against him. It just made that time of my life a bit more bearable, to let me know that I wasn't invisible.
We moved that summer. The office where my stepdad worked was closing. Something about losing money in the company. So we had to move to where the jobs were. Somewhere much bigger, much more promising than a small town. London of course. It was perfect, yes? Lost my best friends. Moved closer to my mum's side of the family. It was great. New house in Camden, about twenty minutes from the house my mum grew up in, where my grandfather lives. About thirty minutes from my aunts house. She took this as an opportunity to make nice with us. I believed her, my mum tolerates her. You can't forget about actual harm your own family did to your daughter, but you can't exactly erase decades of sisterhood, and a now-sober, once-best friend. My mum didn't trust her with me, or me being there, either one. My aunt's pleas that she was "right in the head now" and "sorry for what she did" queued supervised visits for a while until my mum thought she had earned the right to have me by myself. And I forgave her. Some people think I'm crazy for it, some agree with my decision. Other than my mum, she's my closest family member now. But not without creating conflict within my mum of course.
At this point in the story, I think most people expect my aunt to go back on that, but no, she hasn't done anything of the likes. Instead, it was actually her boyfriend of one year at the time. Seemed like a friendly man the first time I met him. I was staying at my aunts house for the weekend, and while she was out shopping, he came over. Don't think my aunt was expecting him that weekend of course. This is the only part that is at all condensed of my story, for obvious reasons. He touched me. He raped me. He said I looked like her, only twenty years younger. Only better breasts. Only more attractive. It was quick. But not painless. And he left, and I just cried. Never said anything about it for months.
That's what put the idea in my head. I could manipulate my body. I could change it all, everything he said about me. I could stop eating. I could slow puberty. I could lose any womanly features I had or was getting. I could become undesirable. Eating maintains curves. Eating was the enemy.
I was already small. At that point, I was only going to gain one or two inches in height before I was at my full height. My genes were of short to medium sized women with small frames and some of them, eating disorders themselves. My mum's younger sister had issues with anorexia as well. But point being, I didn't need to lose weight. But that was the heaviest I've ever been, the weight I was at fourteen. I'm five pounds under that weight currently, but it's been worse. And not many people know how much I weigh. Maybe one or two on VT, I'm not sure.
It was the domino effect though. Once I moved, everything bad that happened after that all stacked together. None of it happened alone. I had to deal with the self-harm, bipolar disorder, lack of relationships, the sexual abuse, my past, all at the same time. And it just increased. I had been a smoker before. I got that from my mum. Because of the crowd I hung with, my fake friends, I got into drugs as well, and from then on, it felt like my body was deteriorating in every way. I wasn't feeding it, I was shooting up whenever I got the chance. And then came the HIV diagnosis. And so my body was consuming itself, the narcotics surely didn't help, and my damn t-cells were being killed off. Of course, then my mum was going through more emotional trauma than I ever had. That's the thing about fatal, incurable conditions. Once you go through the stages of grieving, you're almost numb to it. The people who love you only seem to get more distressed.
I don't remember all my trips to the hospital. They all mesh together. The first and second were very memorable of course. The first time I went, it was for self-harm. Never said a word other than that, because I saw how they treated this one girl with anorexia, Kathy (no, not our Kathy :P). The second time, I couldn't get out of it. After the rehab, I was on the tubes as well. But it's not a simple as that. There's so much more to the war than being force fed and discharged ten days later.
My motives behind anorexia flipped. I guess after years of telling myself nothing that happened to me actually happened to me. And when I found out that manipulating your body alone can't stop your greatest fears from happening. Eventually it was just the control. I wanted to see how low I could make the number go. Like seeing how long you can stand to hold your breath until you can't ignore your body's urges any more. And I got to 5 stone. 70lbs. That used to be a bragging right. Now it's embarrassing.
After that, it was back and forth between normal eating one day and starving myself the other. At least it was uneventful for the next couple years. A dozen or so hospital stays maybe. But quieter than it had been.
This is where it'll probably get more familiar for anyone here.
I met Jay when I was seventeen. I don't know what it was. I was comfortable around him. I don't trust men in my personal life. But I trusted him. He was older. I didn't care. I gave him a chance because he wanted the chance. Two-thirds of the attraction was one-sided though. I'm sure my past experiences took a toll on my sexuality. I was almost glad for the HIV, because it gave me an excuse to not be intimate. It eliminated a problem I'd surely face in a relationship with a man.
He knew it might not work out. I tried though. He was a great friend. I moved here for him, which, considering how I feel for the southern United States, is probably the largest act of love I've ever shown. As much as some people insist, emotional attraction isn't all that matters. The average person needs some of it all for the relationship to work well. Emotional, sexual, and physical attraction. I'm sure of that. We had been together for almost a good two years before the January wedding. I was told it was stupid. And it was. Because right after that, I realized just how hard I fell for my best friend. I met her at Emory, my first week, in one of my classes. Liz has been a very, very good friend for me. And I knew there was an attraction there. She's really pretty. And an amazing person. But after my small, non-religious little wedding, something cracked. And what I was so excited for just prior became the only thing in the way of what I wanted. It isn't like I have much of a history of commitment. But that's where this stretch of my life started. We had been sort of dating for months before I finally told Jay. Nothing serious though. I have issues with hurting others as well. I put them before me. So in the end, I would never wait terribly long to tell him, but it wasn't what I wanted to do.
And I told you guys how that went down. He goes on about how hurt he is and how I'm not really lesbian. He believed me when I said it, when he had no doubt that I would stay with him. He was completely supportive. I guess, only if he still had me in the end.
I can't live alone. It doesn't work like that. I'm a paranoid, psychotic, little girl, and always will be. I'm not supposed to live alone. My psychiatrist says so even. I need someone keeping a fucking eye on me. I don't trust myself either, but no one else does anyway. Thankfully, now kicked out of my flat, I am living with Liz. And if you take away the emotional distress and my chronic depression, I'm doing better than I have for a while.
Moral of the story, kids, refuse when your parents say that you're moving, screaming is your friend, and if relationships are difficult, you just haven't tried being with your own sex.
That was more painful than I thought it would be. You are officially crazy in my eyes if you got this far. That's like fanfiction-sized. A forum post would be under-exaggerating, but a novel would be over-exaggerating.