My Hell Pt. 1

We all start out our lives with hope, joy, and our imaginations bursting at the seams. All the while unable to stop ourselves from wanting ever so badly to grow up. Our imaginations run wild with the thoughts of how amazing it will be to finally be big, we will get to drive cars, vote, and over all just do whatever we want. When we are young enough to truly think these thoughts the adults in our lives caution us to just enjoy being a child, that being an adult is not what we think it is going to be. They were right.

Children live in a world where the worst thing that they have to think about is what to wear to school the next day, or if they remembered to do the homework from the night before. To go back to those days would be such a blessing. Now instead the thoughts of how I am to survive swirl through my brain. Trying to block out the words of my family. Trying to figure out how I am going to get through college, how I am going to pay for it.

I no longer live in that child's world. I wish that I did. I now live in a world where when I see my mother, I straighten my spine ready to fend off an attack. I now live in a world where when I hear their voices, I try to put their words out of my head. I live in a world where footsteps send chills down my spine. I live in a world where I am alone, where I am hated.

To live in a house and not a home for up to three years now is a damaging thing to not only one's mental health, but physical and emotional. For this first entry I would like to explain my past to you and who I am now. I am a nineteen-year-old biological female. I am attending a Catholic college in the United States of America. My parents are die hard Christian conservatives. I have three younger siblings two sisters and a brother. Now we on the outside are the perfect family. Straight A's, all involved in sports, scholarships, church goers. But underneath the surface haven't you ever wondered what actually goes on in a perfect household?

I am bisexual, as well as demisexual. A part of the LGBTQ community, I am sure that you can just imagine how well my conservative parents took that. Well... You could imagine that if I was not so scared to tell them. When I was just in middle school, I asked my mother what would happen if any of us were gay and the reply I got was less then awe inspiring. I was told that my dad would kick us out within a heartbeat and that she would make him let us come back but she would not approve of it.

Now that that little tidbit is out in the open it is time to dive even deeper into this adult world. I have a biological father out there in the world that I had not spoken to since I was about six who managed to find me on social media. We started talking and this man, who my mom had basically made me terrified of, this man's side of the story made more sense than what my mother had been telling me about him my whole life. To give perspective my mother took his trauma and twisted it to make him seem like this horrible human. When in reality the more I talk to this man, and the more I learn about this past that I had been barred from I realize how much I have lost. How much I could have had family wise if my mother had not cut me off from it.

Last section of this for today I think that needs to be brought up is the response given to me going through depression. I was suicidal since middle school, but my sophomore year began the year that I truly couldn't keep the thoughts away anymore. That was the year covid shut down schools. The response I was given by my mother after being forced to tell her why I was crying, was her telling me how her life had been worse and that I need to pull it together and just get out of my depression. During this time how I kept myself from killing myself was by planning out how to kill myself and perfecting the plan more and more each time I had a suicidal spell. I had made two friends during this time online who helped me through this time period for me. They kept me alive. While my mother continued to tell me that they were not real friends due to them being online.

When they say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, they are right. Yet, I shouldn't have had to be strong when facing my own family. This is my story. This is the perfect family's dirty little secret. This is my hell.