I’m having a moment right now, so I wanted to take the time to contemplate some of the events in my life & how they affected me.
When I was young, I often used to get terribly sick. This ended up with my mom sleeping with me every night to make sure I was okay. To make sure my fevers weren’t too high, that I wasn’t having convulsions, that I was breathing. I think this caused the start of an intense attachment to my mother. All of this lightly improved when I had surgery done in my ears - I believe I was 5 or 6 years old.
Around this time is where I start to remember things from my childhood. My parents worked far from home, so our routine was: wake up at 4am, get dropped off at a babysitter’s, & don’t get picked up until 5-6pm.
We went through quite a bit of babysitters. I don’t remember my first one well, but I believe she loved & cared for me. I was told I was always happy when I got picked up. I had the second babysitter starting at 5. I only remember a few moments with her - screaming at me because I was unable to take a cold medicine due to getting nauseous, separating me from the other kids my age & having me play by myself, getting angry that I didn’t go and find her car around the block of the school (she was supposed to come to the classroom to get me) then shoving me onto the floor of the front passenger seat, hitting me when I started crying due to another girl pushing me down the stairs. She used to tell my parents I was a very good kid. I remember at one point telling my mother that she wasn’t very nice to me. Then came a new babysitter.
This one I don’t remember at all. But she was going to be an in-house nanny. I believe her time with us was very short because my older brother told my mother that she had hit me, after my she was told explicitly not to use physical punishment.
Let’s get to the next one. I think at this point I’m 7-8. There are memories that I have with this one that I simply cannot explain, but they stayed with me. I’m unsure why. Most of the time they had me sleep in a guest bedroom. There was one night where I was forced to sleep in the same bed with a relative’s boyfriend. They must’ve been adults. I have no memory of anything besides the fact that they had me do that. She had her two young daughters, around my age, & maybe one or two young girls around the ages of 2-3. Yet, I was the only one forced to shower with other young boys. There was one day where her oldest daughter, only a year older than me, wanted me to play dolls with her. I didn’t know what sex was at the time, but she had me play it out with the dolls. Her mom came in while it was happening & began yelling at me. She took me into another room and told me never to repeat the word or actions again. Again, I didn’t know what sex was at all. I didn’t know what I was doing wrong, nor was it explained why. I remember her telling me she’d hit me if I said the word. I did it because apparently I was feeling feisty, I don’t know. She just kept progressively hitting me harder with a TV remote until I stopped. I tell my mother once again, that I don’t think this babysitter was very nice to me.
We get to the final babysitter, who was my best friend’s mom. Honestly, I think she was the most normal one I had besides the first one. I don’t have any recollection of bad memories with her.
All while this was happening with babysitters, at home, I began to be afraid of my father. He was always right, we were always wrong. He’d hit my older brother with a belt. He’d scream at my mother & me. He’d threaten me all the time with the belt. When him & my mother would fight, I remember my father involving me a majority of the time. I don’t know why. For example, the fight would start between them. Then my father would tell me sternly to come into their room, locking my mother out. He would just yell & yell at me and I never understood why. I think it was because this is what made my mother react while the rest of the time she’d try to be calm not to further anger him. This happened a couple more times. The biggest fight resulted into my father going to jail for the night for assaulting my mother.
I didn’t have a safe space with most of my babysitters & I didn’t feel safe at home with my father. How does a young child react to that? With me, I learned to be quiet at all times. I learned to be careful with every thing I said & did.
Now, I’m 10-11. My father got laid off, so the fear heightened during the summer time when my mom worked a couple hours away from home during the week. My brother moved out. I remember my father getting so angry with me that it seemed as if he was going to throw a laundry hamper at me, but instead threw it over. He went to my room and threw everything out downstairs then making me clean all of it up. There was a time where he threatened me with the belt. Yelling at me to take my pants off & I started crying and backing away from him. My mother comes downstairs to stop him. I run upstairs and lock myself in the bathroom with a knife thinking he was really going to hurt me that time. I remember telling her at the time I was so scared of him.
He’s called me names. Calling me a slut when he found my first boyfriend & I kissing (I had just turned 13). The final moment he had with me was when I was 18. I asked where the trash bags were. He tells me & I don’t find them in the place that he says. He also doesn’t find them there & grabs them from a different place and throws the bags at me. I ask why he was being that way towards me. He tries to pull the same stunt he used to do - sternly asks me to sit in the same room as him, look him right in the eyes as he talks to me. I start to lash out because I was so unsure why he was angry with me. I tell him that if he continued to be this way, he would never see me again when I moved out. My mother comes out & asks what’s wrong. He begins to berate my mother. It turns into a big screaming match between the two of them and I slept over at my boyfriend’s house for the night. I still had the same fear I had when I was a child.
I can’t help it, but I get nauseous and stressed around men who are displaying feelings of anger. I’m sure we can understand the reason why at this point.
Being forced to walk on eggshells all the time I believe caused me to have very high expectations of myself. That if I didn’t meet those expectations, that I was going to be hit. Or that I would be berated. Or that I simply wasn’t good enough. I also have a fear of everyone leaving me because of this.
During high school, I formed some unhealthy attachments to men in ways I didn’t realize at the time. Freshman year, I began talking to someone who was 6 years older than me. He knew my age. I never gave the implications that I liked him romantically. He was simply an older boy who I had fun playing video games with. It was him who expressed anything romantic first. He would be the first person I told everyone to. Who I could say anything to, so obviously I began to have “feelings” as well. Regarding the certain subject, I can only say that it turned explicit at some point. It got so intense to the point where he considered visiting me, where he would take my virginity. Eventually, because he dealt with mental health issues as well, he told a therapist & his mother about me & just stopped speaking to me. This broke my heart because although the relationship was so entirely wrong, he was the only person who I could go to.
Around the time this happened, I began to self-harm. It wasn’t due to him, but I truly had no other outlet besides engaging in disordered eating behaviors.
Overall, I think these events contributed to me never feeling good enough. Although I’m working on my mental health & made great progress, I can’t help but feeling I’m not doing my best because I’m not “better”. It drains me. I’m tired all the time. I’m afraid for my future self. These kind of thoughts make me feel hopeless at times.
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