I just need a moment.
I don’t know if anyone will read this and I don’t particularly care, but for all that I have no time to pursue it I am a writer and my story wants to be told. I’m not brave enough to tell it as myself and so I will tell it here where I am a faceless stranger on the internet until I am ready in the real world. Perhaps I never will be, but I like to think that eventually I will.
Warning- this is dark. Mentions of abuse, thoughts of suicide, kind of self harm etc. I don’t quite know how to do the whole trigger tagging thing but I’m trying.
I have been emotionally and verbally abused by my parents for most of my life. I can’t even tell you when it started- only that one day my father was carrying me around on his shoulders chasing lightning bugs and the next he was locking me in a pitch dark basement for hours on end because *someone* had misplaced some stupid baseball case. He shoved a child, maybe 10 or 11 years old who was absolutely petrified of the dark, screaming and crying, into the basement and threatened to shove her down the stairs if she made noise. I am still scared of the dark but not as extreme- when I turn off lights my heart races and I jump at shadows.
I tend to leave a lot of lights on.
And for 18-or-19 years of my life I tried to make my parents proud. I was the most Type A kid possible. I was a straight A student all the way through high school and most of college. I played Viola, took French, rode horses, did figure skating, was in the spelling bee, read Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire as an 8 year old, was in AP classes, the gifted IEP program, advanced math, and got into 28 of the 32 colleges I applied to. I was in the top 20 students of my almost 400 student graduating class, never did drugs, smoked, drank alcohol, dated/kissed/had sex/partied. I was the golden child.
And it was never enough.
It almost destoyed me- hearing constantly that I was stupid and stubborn and spoiled and a bitch and enduring the hours of shouting when I had made some simple stupid mistake where every minor infraction and flaw was dragged out in a tirade wore on me.
As a teenager, I often considered suicide. After all- if I was such a useless failure, a drag on my family, wouldn’t they be happier if I was gone? It never got past brief considerations, but I was in a hell of a depression for several years. Animals saved me. Horses, riding, gave me reason to live and pulled me through the worst of it.
I always chalked up my hovering parents as overprotective and paranoid. That’s why I wasn’t allowed to stay over with friends or go to the mall or the park or anything without them. I wasn’t allowed to get my license until I was 18 because they were worried. They requested I give them full access to my phone and grades and everything because they cared. It wasn’t until senior year of high school, when we had a presentation in health class about the different forms of abuse in relationships that it sunk in. The presentation was speaking in terms of romantic partners but it was enough. I started to ask around and finally realized that my parents weren’t normal.
I am in my 20s. My parents still control my life. They control my finances, my medical insurance, my birth certificate, phone, car, college, everything. They have tried to control my course selection at college, my grad school applications, and my relationship with other family members, cutting me off from them. They have denied me medical care and dismissed medical concerns repeatedly- nothing serious (yet) but most people are concerned when their otherwise healthy daughter nearly collapses in the middle of class. Mine told me an emergency room was too expensive and I was overreacting. They have engineered me to be completely dependent on them and when I try to ask help to understand things like loans and credit cards and bills and rent they brush me off and say “later.” I have finally realized there is no later. I am a prisoner first, not a daughter.
I’m finally aware that I need to leave. I have eight more months of classes. I just need to hold out until then and then I can leave. Whether I get into grad school or move in with a friend I am no longer tied here and I can finally be free. They’re not going to let me, I know. I’ve started plans- set up bank accounts they’re not cosigned onto, sorted out some people I can stay with short term.
Eight months.
I can’t wait.
