My birthday feels as if it will forever just be the time I left my family, and as if no joy can come from it.
Four days after I turned 24, I had promised all my belongings would be out.
But by then I had given up.
She was limiting my access to my things because she could not stop attacking me whenever she saw me. My existence disgusted her.
She threw my belongings in the backyard as we were packing the basement. She threw them roughly into bins, breaking glass and precious things.
When I grabbed garbage bags to save them and run out, she laughed at me.
“Had I known it was all garbage I would have thrown them harder or done that myself”
I am a quiet, traumatized, anxious person. I was sick every time I went to retrieve my things. I didn’t understand why she couldn’t just let me be to take my things and leave.
She texted me and said that we should limit contact to remain civil, which I had already been attempting to do.
I avoided her like the plague each time I went and it still wasn’t enough.
She believed my mental health warranted being arrested or locked up all because I fought back to her screams and stood up to her abuse. She believed my trans identity was a personality disorder. One she had cut to fit me, never having believed my professional diagnosis of C-PTSD.
She admitted she had known about her ex grooming me and assaulting me as a child, as did another adult in my life. Both had done nothing. Both hid it or didn’t believe me. Both think they still deserve to work with children.
My uncle lied every time I called for help, said he would be there.
I should have known, seeing as he had immediately tried to pass me off to his now ex wife- someone of no blood relation to me.
Seemed fitting since our family never actually dealt with things; we ignored them or the whole family gossiped.
My grandmother told me she believed me- and my mother told her I had spun a web of lies. My grandmother told her everything I had confessed to her in confidence and it was just used as ammunition against me.
I want to tell myself I don’t miss the false sense of security that even an abusive family brought.
But f***, I do and I unfortunately think I always will.
The nightmares are getting fewer, but I also think I’m just better at forgetting them when I wake.
I hardly remember the good dreams anymore either.
