I’m making this post to try and reach out to people who can relate and offer advice. I’m also really interested in hearing other people’s experiences, so please blow this post up if possible. All thoughts and comments are welcome though. This is gonna be kind of a long post, so please bear with me.
Before I get into the abuse i suffered at the hands of my parents, I wanted to kind of describe myself a little bit when I was still a kid. I was always a very bright and precocious child. Straight A’s without trying, advanced courses, winning spelling bee’s and reading bee’s left and right. While my parents dogged my brother about his grades, they went to tons of assemblies to watch me succeed. Before the fighting got really bad, I interacted with my peers all the time. I wasn’t the most extroverted kid, but nobody really disliked me, since I always had something witty to say. I kept a tight group of 2 or 3 friends and that was all I needed. Always did well in school without even trying... and now that I’ve been living on my own going to college for 3 years, I can barely be fucked to do the minimum amount of coursework to pass my classes. I actively avoid talking to my classmates whenever possible, and have only made 1 friend from my classes. I wake up dreading to have to get out of bed, and I go to bed dreading having to wake up. I smoke weed or drink almost every single night because I’m tired of being sober and listening to my self-deprecating thoughts all the time.
Ok, time for the actual body of this post: I have been living on my own for about 3 years now, ever since I graduated high school. I never got along very well with my parents or brother and for pretty much the entire time I was in high school we did nothing but fight all the time. My mom had some pretty impulsive anger issues and that often caused fights to get physical or end with destroying something of mine (usually expensive). My dad didn’t have the same level of anger issues, but he would never stop my mom once she got into a rage.
These fights we got into often started off pretty innocent (not doing dishes, taking a pop out of the fridge without asking) but would spiral out of control since both sides would constantly add more fuel to it without trying to defuse the situation. I was by no means an “easy child”, but by comparing my punishments with some of my friends’ I know I wasn’t a wild child either. I once had a steak knife thrown at me for a fight that started over cleaning my room. If I hadn’t used my laptop to defend myself, I probably would have been impaled (she broke my laptop without paying for it, but given the circumstances I guess I’m lucky). Some of the weirder and more extreme punishments are listed here:
1) I was pulled off of academic quiz team right before our final competition, because I “enjoyed it too much” and they “had no other way to punish me”. I think this was after I refused to sit with them at one of the marching band banquets, and chose to sit with my friends instead
2) I had my ping pong table flipped in half right in front of me for mouthing off about staying out after curfew
3) pulled off of a marching band spring break vacation that I had already paid for myself. My mother then used the 1000$ I lost as an incentive to behave, then never gave it back.
4) grounded and sequestered to my room (without a door) for 4 months. No screens, no friends, not even a book left in my room and a major ass beating to top it all off. It was actually the worst 4 months of my life. All because I got caught smoking weed.
These are just the examples that come to mind immediately. There’s a shit ton of others that I’m sure I can’t remember, as well as a lot of more usual behaviors out of excessively strict parents.
Needless to say I tried not to interact with them whenever possible. Also, my mom loved to talk shit about me to the extended family, often making me sound like some sort of heartless evil monster. As a result, I pretty much only liked spending time with my grandparents. I stayed in my room, watched YouTube videos, played video games, and tried to be out of the house as much as possible. However, being grounded all the time stunted my social skills badly. I could never join clubs because we lived 6 miles from school which means I would rely on rides to get to and from meetings and practices. When we moved to a new school district from 7-8th grade, I ate lunch in the bathroom every single day because I couldn’t make any friends. I was constantly stressed and tired from the fighting and I didn’t want to talk about my home life at school. School was always my escape from home and I liked the separation.
My depression and apathy really started kicking in my junior year of high school. Nobody suspected a thing since my academics didn’t take a plunge in the slightest, but I never had to work very hard in school in the first place. I was great at putting on a facade and pretending everything was ok so nobody ever questioned me about it and I guess I kind of liked it that way. It was a super fucked situation that’s hard to explain now, much less 4 years ago. I just wanted to be normal and fit in so badly and I worried that talking about these things would just alienate them from me.
Finally, my graduation date came. I had a 4.3 GPA, Summa Cum Laude, 15 AP credits that earned me a LOT of college credit and solid scholarships from my school choices. On the day of the ceremony I was very sick and said that I didn’t want to go. I actually called my dad to pick me up early and take me home, and he put my mom on the phone so she could yell at me about “how ungrateful I was after everything they did for me in school”. At this point I was fuming, because we already had been fighting for weeks leading up to graduation. I retorted with something along the lines of “if this ceremony is for the people who helped me through school, then you shouldn’t show up” and hung up the phone.
Ceremony goes by, I walk onstage just feeling underwhelmed and nauseated. I get my degree and leave the auditorium once everyone is dismissed. When I see my parents, my mom is oddly calm but I realize it’s only because my grandma came and wanted to get some pictures. As soon as we’re in the car she starts screaming and crying like usual. 20 minutes of arguing later, she told me I have until the end of the month to pack up my shit and leave. At this point in my life, I’m 18 years old, working part-time as a lifeguard making minimum wage. I have no car, less than 1000$ in savings, about to start college and no idea where to sleep. I still figured sleeping on the streets would be better than dealing with my mother’s banshee screaming and unpredictable violence.
Over the next couple months I started working as a server to make more money, and bounced from couch to couch at friends’ houses. I was too proud to ask to stay for more than a few weeks at a time, until I confided with my childhood friend about my situation. We had grown a little apart, but the love was still there, and without their kindness I probably would have ended my life years ago. They had already long since accepted me as one of their family (I was friends with him before either of his sisters were even born), but staying on their couch for 7 months was probably the closest thing I’ve experienced to having a real and functional family. I took those 7 months to finish my first semester of my computer engineering degree, save up some money and move out to a shitty off-campus apartment.
The entire first 2 years of college I was either working full-time with a full load of classes or working 2 jobs to save up money for rent and school. I used my restaurant job to feed me regularly by snagging extra food, I stayed up late every night studying, working, and doing homework. My grades were good, and although I was tired and stressed I felt good too. I didn’t make many friends simply because I sprinted from classes to work, and had no free time for clubs. It was probably around this time where I got a lot heavier into drug use. It went from a ~very~ occasional occurrence, to once a week, to multiple times a week and recently almost every day. It started as a way to make my feet hurt less after a 12-hour shift, or a way to loosen up at a social event, but over time it just became habit
It was also during this time that I “reconnected” with my parents. I got into a really bad car accident and totaled my car and I called asking for insurance information. My dad refused and sent my mom to meet me instead. I wasn’t really unhappy to see them... but I wasn’t happy to see them either. At this point I spent an entire year growing on my own and now I’m face to face with my abusers again. What struck me was how weird of an experience it is to face your abusers after their power to abuse is gone... the people I had looked at with nothing but fear and resentment for so long no longer had the ability to make me feel that way. We had a significant history together which would repeat no more. Thus, I was intensely apathetic about them, while my mom at least pretended to feel bad for what she did. I held ALL the power now, and I wasn’t sure how to use it. They knew i would be fine never hearing from them again, so the onus was on them to repair the damage they caused. Needless to say they did an extremely poor job at it. But, being a 19-year old who spent the better part of 5 years actively despising these people, I guess I just ran out of anger. I’m never going to forget the abuse and getting kicked out, nor will I forgive it, but rather I just “got over” it. It’s something that happened and can’t change. Since it wasn’t going to happen anymore, that was the attitude I adopted.
The hard times are gone now, and have been for a while now. I saved enough money to only have to work 1 job OR go to classes, not both. I have savings, I made a very good group of friends and it seems like things should be turning up.
But I feel so empty inside. I should be happy that my life will probably never be that hard again. I’m more than halfway through college and my academic freedom is within reach... and the thought is terrifying. I don’t care about anything anymore, barely even myself. I still don’t know how to talk about my problems because I’m convinced it sounds like whining and nobody cares (which I know is bullshit, but it’s a weirdly strong kind of social anxiety). I try going to talk therapy but It seems pointless. I’ve never been one to seek approval from others and talking about my problems and thoughts makes me uncomfortable. I don’t have any passion left for what I’m studying because I hated all the internships I had, and at this point I’m convinced I can’t work a desk job for a career. I’m thoroughly convinced I’m a failure and I can’t derail the train of apathetic and depressive thoughts; rather, that very train is derailing ME.
I’ve spent so long being alone and trying to find some sort of happiness that it sometimes feels like I’ll never really be able to trust and care about someone. There’s nobody in my life who can relate to what I’ve been through, and I’m losing all motivation to try to find them. Even while I was staying on my friends couch, I felt lonely, albeit less so than when I actually was alone. Sitting down with their family for dinner a few nights a week just wasn’t enough to overcome years and years of isolation.
I think this post was half-rant and half cry for help. It was a little cathartic to write, but overall I’m just scared and confused and tired.
TL:DR: I was kicked out of my house after graduation after years of abuse and fighting with my parents. After living on my own for 3 years and “making up” with them, I feel less motivated and more lonely than ever
Submitted April 12, 2019 at 07:32AM by noobisle1 http://bit.ly/2UNPf8C