All Things Animation

When I was 12, I had about 5 (or more #repressedmemories) people text me their last words. I texted and called them until I thought they got better. In between texts, I would look up ways to help someone who is suicidal. I had already been a peer leader at my school, so I knew about “I statements” and how to deflect the conversation.

I’m happy to say that every single person that came to me got better and survived from their suicidal tendencies at that time.

Eventually, some of us grew apart, but I hear from social media how good they’re doing. 

But I still had to deal with my own problems.

At one point my parents found out the “work” I was doing and they got mad I didn’t tell them. They yelled at me and I felt AWFUL for keeping this in, but parents were the very reason my friends wanted to die. 

I didn’t know what to do with these feelings. I kept them bottled up inside. I had learned in my science class that if you got enough bumps and bruises you could die faster (like not 100 but 70 yrs old), so I that’s when I started my self-destructive behaviors. I didn’t drink or smoke, but I started messing up all of my relationships - trying to get people to not miss me when I’m gone.

(I think it was that age when I started thinking that people forgot about me when I left them and I started having delusions that I would imagine people. My greatest fears were 1) being trafficked and 2) imaging or forgetting I had a sibling my whole life.

I didn’t realize how much I took on internally. I started expressing myself in the only way my parents would let me - clothes and hair etc. I would push every line and button to the brink 1) because I was used to the bullying and 2) so that I took the focus off my suicidal friends.

I thought that’s what my purpose in life was -- to be a freak that helped people. 

I just got a job and also started intensive therapy. I really like the job I have. It’s comfortable and I can freely be a nerd but I have to learn new things. Which isn’t bad, but with my rejection-sensitive dysphoria and my flashbacks, it’s not that fun.

However, the therapy is going pretty well. They usually start people on a full-day program, but I started on the half-day so I can make money and get out of my parent’s house.

I really hate living at home because with every conversation with my mom, she finds a way to shit on everything I do. Like literally, if I’m not bouncing off the walls excited she thinks I’m depressed, which I do have, but me not being energetic 24/7 does not mean I’m depressed. I’m just learning how not to fake how i am around people.

I do enough of that at work b/c yknow customer service. 

Also, this isn’t a bad thing, but my manager for this and next week talks SO MUCH! I would rather be quiet. He tells me stories and gives me advice. I need to stop talking about person stuff at work, especially when customer’s are around.

Anyway, I get to meet my ACTUAL manager soon. She’s female which will be good for comfortability, but I tend to overshare more because I didn’t have a good mother-figure growing up.

When I was 12, I had many friends try to kill themselves. They would text me saying their last words and it would be up to me (and a few other people) to save their life.

I had lived for 22 years thinking that was all I was good for. I would make friends with people that I thought were shy, help them be more confident, then they would make better friends.

In 2020, my college roommate called me crying saying that she couldn’t hold on to life anymore. I ran out of dinner with my friend to go save her. She ended up being fine, but the next day one of my other good friends told me that I was manipulative and mean. I took it WAY too personally and basically blocked her out of my life. I was a real b*tch. 

Me, her, and 5 other friends went on out spring break trip. We did as any college kid would do as their life was falling apart -- smoke and drink until we couldn’t think about how our life was being ripped out from in front of us.

On one of the nights, my close friend said she was gonna go for a swim. She took a whole bottle of Vodka, her phone to Facetime our other friends, and was sitting on the edge of the dock by herself.

Now while all of this was happening, I was on the second floor drinking and smoking to the point of black out. She fell into the water. My other friends were watching and one jumped up and helped her out of the water. 

I was PISSED. Not that she fell into the water, but because she was being messy AF. I was thinking “Girl we ALL are going through a hard time right now, why are you being so dramatic.”  (Don’t be like this).

I couldn’t figure out why she was acting so weird. Turns out having suicidal friends all my life and being suicidal since 8, makes you kind of desensitized to suicide attempts and talk.

I treated her like a POS for 2 years because she kept telling me that people aren’t supposed to be like that. She kept telling me that her parents were abusive and that it was apart of her culture. I invalidated everything. 

I had good reason too (no I didn’t). My parents treat me worse and I didn’t spend every conversation talking about it.

We used to hang out everyday, we used to be excited to see each other, we used to talk about how we would be best friends forever. But then EVERY LITTLE THING she did somehow became some sort of attack on me, to be better than me, to make me look bad. (Read up on my childhood stories for more on that.

I have never had a “best friend.” They all either moved away or stopped talking to me. I felt like it was my fault somehow. I would always argue with them and said mean things because I thought that was how people were supposed to act.

I started treating people like they were movie characters. I would go find the “shy” person, befriend them, make them more outgoing then they would move on to other friends. 

I thought I needed to protect other people, but I don’t. 

My parents!

There will be many posts about my family on this blog. 

The first thing you need to know about them is that they are elitists and think they can cure ANY illness with prayer. 

So I said I was in a cult, well my mom helped start it. It was a small college church group, but my mom helped build it into an empire that had a summer camp with getaway weekends, mission trips, and churches all around the southeast united states.

I haven’t talked to anyone who left and thinks of it as a cult except some family members who joined then left. My parents treat the family members not in that church as if they are possessed by the devil. I genuinely wasn’t treated like a person my entire childhood. I was kind of a joke or a minstrel show. 

Ever since I was little, I thought scientists or something were watching me and if I committed a certain list of “sins,” a monster would be unleashed into the world. 

I had lived with that thought and it moved to all of my relationships up until basically a few weeks ago. I felt isolated in my thoughts until I joined a religious trauma support group and started connecting to people there.

I was raised in a cult. This sounds dramatic, but it was. I’ve been looking into cult survivor groups and religious trauma groups. I tried to leave the church when I was 12, my parents didn’t let me. I tried leaving when I was 16, and I thought I left. Finally at 22 when my nth un-alive attempt sent me to the hospital that I finally 1) realized it was a cult and 2) realized how shitty I have been to people. 

I have had a “Holier Than Thou” attitude my entire life and I couldn’t figure out why all my relationships failed. I was trying to “fix” people with the guise of helping them.

About a month before I turned 22, I realized how bad I was at communicating and expressing myself and I constantly overshared.

I spent my formative years on tumblr with other depressed people so I thought it was normal to feel depressed all the time and just waiting to die. I was vocal about it to my friends and family and they FLIPPED out. 

When I finished my grippy socks vacation, I was yelled at for saying how I felt. I was patronized by everyone except for one friend that was also suicidal from a young age. It was a hard thing to realize that people don’t actually live like this and that life could move on.

I thought I was gonna be dead by 18 then 20 then 22. Now I’m 22 and I feel like the world has opened up.