Navigating Life. Seeking Joy.

Cordelia. 27. INFP (Mediator)

Primarily venting about childhood abuse I experienced being raised by two unfit parents. Discussing issues surrounding mental health, CPTSD, and recovering from childhood abuse.

Mental health recovery focused and abuse survivor advocate.

Tw: my life.

Skin conditions like eczema and psoriasis.

Regular nausea and vomiting.

Chronic infections in my ears, nose and throat.

Hair pulling.

Excessive brain fog.

Self harm.

Digestive problems.

Screaming night terrors.

Anger issues.

Other emotional outbursts like weeping and screaming in panic in response to minor triggers.

Panic in small spaces.

Fear of being touched.

Social withdrawal.

Dental and oral problems from teeth clenching and grinding.

My regular day as a teenager: My alarm has gone off at 5am because my door is still gone and it's my only chance to get dressed in privacy while everyone is asleep. I'm out of the shower now and my parents are fighting. Turns out I accidentally the alarm to snooze and woke them both up. They will definitely take this out on me later.

I'm dressed and downstairs looking for food. We have plenty of what I want but I'm not allowed to eat eggs twice in a week. Will they notice if I scramble some up real quick? Oh nevermind, mum is here now. She's being snappy with me and being nasty about my appearance. I will definitely go to school carrying the weight of that all day. Ruh-oh, I seemed dismissive in my response to her claiming I ruined her reputation by being fat and ugly in public and now she's charging towards me with a shoe. I'm gonna get a beat down for being rude, but really we both know I'm getting beat down because she's in a bad mood with her boyfriend.

I'm in the car with my mums friend she hired to drive me. He's a 500lb white guy who is so verbally combative with me there is no point in starting a conversation. I say good morning, put on my headphones and arrange my hair in front of my face so I can cry in secret in the back seat. I'm starving because I got beat with a shoe when I should have been eating breakfast but the driver feels snubbed at me listening to music. He makes some nasty comments about me wearing my hair over my face and then makes a jab at my intelligence. His daughter sits in the front seat unbothered.

I am now at school and have been stopped in the driveway. My trousers are the wrong shade of navy and I'm out of uniform. I'm told to go straight to the head of years office and on my way I'm tripped by someone in my year. I call them a dickhead and get carded for language. Good thing I'm already on my way to the office.

I wait outside my head of years office for 20 minutes and when the 8am bell goes I have to decide if I'll get in more trouble if I miss first period or if I'm not here when he gets here. I decide to skip first period because the hallway is quiet and warm and I need a minute to decompress anyways. He'll just excuse my absence when he gives me my uniform violation.

My second period is maths and my teacher has decided to put my homework on the projector to circle everything I did wrong while laughing at me. Because he's laughing so is the rest of the class. The kids have been throwing paper at me for 10 minutes while he pretends not to notice and I refuse to cry in front of these arseholes. I take the corrections with dignity and can't concentrate the rest of the class because I'm humiliated.

Third period I sit between two horrible guys. I have been placed here because the teacher knows if they are more focused on torturing me than on the teacher the class goes smoother. I'm being groped under the table. I try to put a stop to it subtly but I can't so I raise my hand to report it. My teacher says my name and then speaks over me while I try to report what's going on. Eventually I lose my shit on the guy with his hand on my leg and hit him in the face with a bible. I get a detention. He doesn't.

It's now lunch time and even though I'm starving hungry the comments my mum made this morning are swirling around in my head. I decide that I have been given a really great opportunity to fast until dinner and it's not like anybody will notice or care, so I skip eating and feel good that I'm at least trying to gain my mothers affection by starving myself into an acceptable body.

It's fourth lesson now. I'm really regretting missing lunch and I feel a stone in my stomach every time I think about going home. It's my favourite lesson of the day but I can't focus, I'm too busy making deals with Jesus to make my parents be in a good mood by 4pm. I have homework from every class today and I won't be able to complete as much of it as I can tonight if they are. I went to the toilet at lunchtime but that was 2 hours ago and this is my last teacher of the day who actually behaves like a reasonable person, so I ask to go. I go to every single toilet in the school and they have all been locked. Technically it's illegal to do that, but who the fuck is going to sue on my behalf? I get found walking the hallways and get a write up for not being in class.

I finish my last lesson of the day and look for a toilet to use in vain. They're still all locked. I swing my bag onto my shoulder and decide if I can get home as fast as possible I'll be able to pee as fast as possible. I get into the car with the driver and wait ten minutes for his daughter to show up. We chat about 80s metal and I think he's starting to warm up to me after 4 years of knowing me, but then I wrongly attribute Gene Simmons to Motley Cru and he's back to laughing in my face again. He drives me home and I knock on the door because I'm not allowed to carry a key.

Jesus obviously went back on our deal because my mum is pissed. She is accusing me of skipping school today. Apparently when I waited in the hallway as asked for my head of year to dress code me, an auto text went to my mums phone informing her that I'd missed morning registration, and instead of calling the school and asking for any further information she has decided to beat me. I can't change her mind even though in the whole time she has known me I have never ditched school and she has received these autotexts for years and has never reacted like this before. She beats me with my own maths textbook and I bleed down my uniform. I need a shower because when she kicked me in the stomach I pissed myself a little. She promises she will call the school tonight to find out for sure if I was telling the truth about being there all day and if I'm lying I'll get it again. I can't help but wonder why she didn't do that before kicking the literal piss out of me.

I get into the shower and let the warm water flow over me. I feel my muscles relax and my jaw unclench. Was it like that the whole day? I can't be sure. I decide to use my special scented soap I only use for special occasions because I feel rough and I hope the smell of raspberry and mint will make me feel better. It does. I know I need to get out but I feel so safe and warm in the shower so I decide I'm going to wash and condition my hair while I'm here. I have the £1 strawberry shampoo/conditioner from Savers and when I'm fully rinsed I smell like berries and feel like the horrible day has been washed off me. I start mentally planning my homework load. When I start hearing the door banging.

My mum is outside demanding I turn the water off, it's been off for 10 minutes, I'm standing in a towel. Not even 2 minutes later she's banging at the door again demanding I make the bathroom accessible to everyone else. We live in a 2 bath house. I ask for a minute to put my clothes on. Request denied. She barges in because the bathrooms in this house don't have locks and turfs me onto the landing holding a towel up to my body for modesty. I start trying to get dried and dressed as quickly as possible but when I notice my step dad's shadow has been on the landing, I freeze and watch it. It doesn't move so I know he's watching me. I wrap my towel around my body and let my wet hair out so I can use the hair towel for extra coverage. Then I take the blanket off my bed and use that too. I'll have to sleep on damp sheets tonight but I don't have any other option. I wait for him to get out of my way and my mum to calm down about me monopolising the only space with a closed door I have acsess too before creeping back inside to put some pyjamas on.

My mum would keep me awake until the crack of dawn, screaming into my face. Looming over me. Chasing me into corners. Beating me with whatever was close to hand until I delivered perfection ten times in a row.

Now I'm not a parent but I think they don't employ that method in schools for a reason. Even the super fucked up ones that'd hit kids with rulers or whatever in the 1900's didn't just terrify six year olds into learning their ABC's.

I think of all the things I do now to ensure I'm being a responsible worker. I show up rested. I fuel my body. I put in the work to make sure I'm not showing up to do my job on the brink of a meltdown. I would not expect myself to do anything ten times perfect under those conditions. Especially something I was just learning that day. So why would she expect a little girl to?

My mum demanded rest. If her alarm clock woke up everyone in her house at 4am we had strict instructions to not wake her to deal with it. If she needed a nap in her bed in the middle of the day we were not to wake her under any circumstances. If we were sick and in no fit condition to go to school she'd shove us into our uniforms and drag us over there because having a sick child at home infringed on her rest.

My mum knew about fuel too. She ate at regular intervals. She carried snacks in her bag. She would stop for something to eat if she needed to because she understood she wouldn't function right if she were hungry.

She would call out of work if she was too agitated to do her job. I'll never forget the day I came home to a beating because an error on the schools system had me marked absent and she was so incensed at the assumption I'd ditched she left work to sit on the couch and stew in her anger.

So if my mum understood, to whatever level, she needed to be fed and rested and emotionally before she could be expected to produce good work. To be able to finish her day prepared for the next one. To be able to have a nap and come back to something fresh. Why was I, a seven year old child, expected to learn how to read and write at 4am, after a day full of school and learning and play, with no food in my tummy and with tears rolling down my fat little cheeks as I tried to force the answers to come into my head so she wouldn't hit me again? How could she possibly understand that she couldn't do good work under those conditions, but expect me to?

It must have been obvious at some point that I wasn't getting any better tonight. Was it after hour two? Three? Five? Ten? How long into that whole mess did it take her to realise that hitting me again wouldn't change the outcome? Did she think I was intentionally provoking her into beating me? Withholding some secret genius three letter word prowess just to fuck with her? Literally why else would she keep hitting me until the sun came up?

I was so tiny.

When I sat at the kitchen table in my white shirt and pinnafore, my feet didn't touch the floor.

And I was so good. A stern look would have reduced me to a tearful apology.

I wanted to read so much. I had been asking my kindergarten teachers over and over again "when do I get to learn how to read?" I was curious and resilient.

I'd have learned how to spell those words by Friday either way.

It was all so pointless and cruel.

I cannot get my head around it.

I was about seven years old and she had been in one of her screaming rages all day. I'd kept out of her way as best I could but when she came into my room shouting incoherently I had to take notice. The problem was, I couldn't understand her. I asked her to repeat herself but by the fourth of fifth time she just yanked me up, shoved a laundry basket into my hands and shoved me.

Now, this was stressful, but I atleast had some context now. I knew where the laundry basket came from and where it went, so I guessed she wanted me to go in that direction and hoped I was right. The laundry basket lived in the laundry room downstairs. I was upstairs. And the basket was probably twice as wide as me. So I held it close to my chest with my arms around it and gently tried to step down the stairs sideways without the banister to steady me.

My mum was behind me sighing and huffing, so I stopped for a moment to check her expression and see if I wasn't too late to switch tac and take the basket somewhere else. It was when I moved my outside foot to search for the step below my mother reached out and pushed me.

It was an angry, momentary lapse in control. It took less than a second to do it, but the fallout was big. I tilted down, almost caught myself on the lower step my foot had been searching for before going completely off kilter. My shoulder took most of the impact, my head took quite a bit too. Something in my knee or ankle or hip hurt, as if I'd twisted it while scrambling for balance.

I was at the bottom of the stairs. The laundry basket in bits under me. I held it for a second before falling apart into tears. My mum tried to pull me up off the hallway floor by my arms but all it did was bring my bloody hand into view which made me cry even harder. I reached to my face to wipe tears and just smeared blood. I think when the laundry basket broke I ended up with a plastic shard piercing the skin.

I was being incredibly loud in the part of the house I was most likely to be heard from outside. My mother needed me to move away from the hallway, but my hands were gross and bloody and she didn't want to touch me, so she settled for crouching next to me and hissing "shhh shhh shhh" in my face and holding her palm up, warning me that if I didn't shut up soon I'd be taking a slap to the face.

Eventually I got a hold of myself and felt the embarrassment wash over me as I pulled all those feelings inwards.

Crunch Austics

If you need your meal to be crunchy try air frying or oven baking frozen potatoes and roast parsnips. They both have a mild flavour and get crispy in about 15 minutes of baking. Cook up some Dino nuggets for protein and serve with mustard for dipping.

Mush Autistics

Oh yes. The mush. Soft, predicable, comforting. Sometimes you just need to chow down on a tasty bowl of mush.

Add dry lentils and the grain of your choosing to a rice cooker. I like bulgur wheat but rice is very good for this too. Add salt, pepper and whatever seasoning/spice blend you like with a tin of tomatoes and spoon of oil or butter.

She started throwing things at me faster, so if I hadn't put the last thing away quite yet, it would hit my body. To compensate I just started putting everything she threw onto my bed and concluded I'd put it away when the throwing part was over. So she started throwing heavier and more breakable things at me. Little porcelain figures, a handheld mirror, picture frames. I was not a very co ordinated kid, and I think she expected something I cared about to break and to get supply off my reaction to it.

I had a PVC pencil case. It was basically a kids toy. Completely made out of flexible pvc. No hard bits. No sharp edges. It was empty except for a few random hair bobbles. My mum launched it so hard and so fast across the room I had no chance to react to it. It hit me square in the face. Hard.

I stumbled back and picked it up and blinked back tears and thought it was my fault. But it wasn't my fault. Nobody who expected a child to catch it would have thrown it that hard. If she wanted me to catch it, it would have hit my torso. She didn't say anything. Neither did I. She went back to throwing things. I went back to catching them. Until she gave me this long, scathing look.

I just stood there. Scared of what might come next.

"You're bleeding." She told me deadpan.

"No I'm not." I responded, afraid that if I were I'd be in trouble.

She sighed and went back to throwing. I went back to catching. She stormed out and I started emptying the drawers she was clearing. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I had been bleeding.

My face had these welt lines running across it and I could see where the blood had beaded up and then dried down. That pencil case weighed no more than a couple hundred grams. The force she'd have had to have exerted on it to injure me like that is pretty high. She 100% wanted to hurt me.

My mum was, by all standards, a great mum. She supported me. She worked hard for me. She looked after me. She did all the things a mum is supposed to do.

I eat this at least twice a week.

Rotisserie Chicken (I've also used precooked sausage. Chicken sausage is my favorite, pork and vegetarian are second best and hot dogs will do too.)

1 third of a cucumber, sliced into sticks.

2 medium carrots, trimmed

A handful of snap peas

1 apple, sliced

2 Bell pepper, sliced into batons

150g of cottage cheese, blended smooth if you can be bothered.

Flavoring sauce of choice. I like yellow mustard, ceasar dressing or ranch seasoning mixed into the cottage cheese.

Literally just dip and eat. It's delicious.

This takes me about 15 minutes to prepare,

~500kcal

>40g protein

5 Plant Servings

Key:

● Microwave

○ Rice cooker

☆ both

Grains/Starches

● Cous Cous ● Popcorn

○ Dried Beans

☆ Pasta ☆ Rice ☆ Porridge/Oats ☆ Potato ☆ Sweet Potato ☆ Canned/tinned Beans/Lentils ☆ Quinoa ☆ Bulgur ☆ Barley ☆ Chia

Vegetables

This list is way too long so just know you can steam basically all vegetables in both. Add desired vegetable to your rice cooker pot or microwave safe bowl, add 2-3 tablespoons of water, cover and cook for 2-4 minutes. For frozen vegetables add no extra water and cook for 3-5 minutes.

Meat/Protein

○ Shelled Shellfish

☆ Chicken ☆ Beef ☆ Fish ☆ Eggs ☆ Tofu ☆ Textured Vegetable Protein ☆ Pork ☆ Meatballs ☆ Hot Dog ☆ Unshelled Shellfish

Dishes

These are dishes I personally have made start to end only cooking in one appliance.

● Spaghetti and meatballs ● Cheesy broccoli pasta ● Chickpea curry and Rice ● Buttered sweetcorn ● Baked Potato

○ Chicken Noodle Soup ○ Faux Pho ○ Chicken Stock ○ Chilli (both Con Carne and plant based) ○ Bolegnase ○ Rice Pudding ○ Yogurt

☆ Bipimbap ☆ Steamed eggs ☆ Ramen with protein and vegetables ☆ Mashed potato ☆ Gnocci ☆ Steamed chicken/fish and vegetables ☆ Porridge