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I’m just gonna list some memories that have stuck with me. I’ll acknowledge how they made me feel, and still make me feel. I’ll see them and, hopefully, let them go. This may be triggering for some people. There’s a lot, you don’t have to read it. I’m offloading here so I don’t weigh anyone down with it in real life. I want to move on, and knowing that this is trauma, that I am traumatised, is a first step.
1) Infant school. A boy my age is kissing me. I don’t really like the taste or feeling, but it’s what happens in all of the films and ads and it’s what we see everywhere so it must be right. It must be very grown up. I excitedly tell my friend about how my neighbours are two women and they want to be married, and am confused when she says the word ‘lesbian’. That’s a bad word, it can’t be right.
^now, this makes me feel sick. It wasn’t normal kid play, it wasn’t cute, and it makes me feel sick. The lesbian thing is just sad - that, as a child, I didn’t make the connection between the loving relationship that I saw, and the word that I saw thrown about with such anger everywhere else. I love the lgbtqia+ community, lesbians, especially gnc/butch lesbians that refuse to pretend to be anything else. They never deserved to be seen that way, treated like something filthy to be hidden, and I’m so sorry.
2) First School. Another kid, on learning my (neutral) name, tells me ‘you’re a boy! You’re called that, so you must be a boy!’. A few days later, they tell me ‘my mum says you’re a weird boy. You pretend not to be so you can look at girls in the toilets’. We’re, like, 6 years old. I have no idea what they’re talking about, or why anyone would want to spend more time than necessary in the toilets. A rumour spreads, anyway. This is when I begin learning to hate my name. My year 5 photo is the last time I genuinely smiled. My laugh was made fun of, then the sound I made to subdue it, then the shape of my mouth at all. Any time I smiled, someone would mockingly imitate it until it stopped happening altogether.
^now, as a non-binary person, I have mixed feelings. I didn’t know I was non-binary at the time, but bullies have a way of noticing differences like that. The transphobia learned by a small child is heartbreaking. I got bullied for my original name an awful lot growing up, to the point where I get slightly panicky when I hear it, so I don’t go by that name any more. Also, kids, don’t ever bully someone for their smile. That shit stays with people for life.
3) Next School. I don’t know anyone, but most of them know each other. I’m wary, but try to make friends. A group of pretty girls start touching my hair. I don’t know what to do, or what to say. They eventually lose interest. Other kids chip away at every difference they can find. The culture is vicious. I need alliances. I pretend to have a crush on a boy, who apparently likes me back. It’s very sudden and public, like most school relationships. I don’t want to touch him. Girls that have never even looked at me before start saying things like ‘what’s wrong with him, why would anyone be interested in THAT thing’. His friends try to attack me. I stand my ground, and later tell him what happened. He says ‘if you want me around, you have to get along with my friends too’. I tell him, publicly as always, ‘you’re dumped’. Now I’m a cold-hearted bitch, and no one’s scared to tell me that.
^I want to tell this kid that it’s gonna be ok. You don’t need him, you’ll be safe, it’ll be ok. I still feel so helpless and confused and angry, a lingering ghost of that scared child, but I’m strong now. I’m safe. We were all kids, maybe they didn’t know what they were doing.
4) Same school, teenage years. There’s a boy I can’t stop looking at, because it makes me feel at home and sad all at once. He looks like Peter Pan, in an illustrated story I’ve read since I was little. I want to know him. He has a deep voice, and laughs a lot. I want to be him. That can’t be right, that can’t be it. He confuses me. He’s nice to me a lot of the time, but with certain people around he’s mean, or says nothing when they’re threatening me. He sees me crying, picks me up and hugs me. I tell him to let go. He says he won’t let go until I hug him back. I know he means well, but I don’t feel safe. I can’t trust him.
^yearning, envy, frustration. It wasn’t his fault, he was probably confused as well and trying his best with what knowledge he had. I hope he learned better boundaries & consent stuff though. I feel panicky and lost when I remember being lifted and held tight, knowing that he wasn’t going to stop and was strong enough to hurt me if he wanted. He didn’t, but the possibility was terrifying. I started working out the next day. I still wonder about him, what he really thought of me, what he’d think if he knew all that was going through my head. He doesn’t exist, though. Hopefully, there’s an adult in his place. Peter Pan grew up.
5) school, 15. 2 of my best friends have been self harming, and attempting worse. I leave my phone on loud at night, and pretend I was already staying up late when they call me. I talk them down when I can, and call an ambulance when it’s needed. With permission, I draw detailed, colourful illustrations on the areas they’re most tempted to damage. The next time they call, I say ‘that picture is mine. Your skin is beautiful, don’t you dare mess it up. I’ll add some more colours to it tomorrow’. They’re on a waiting list for therapy. The list is 2-3 years long. They don’t think they’ll make it that long.
^they did make it, dw. Looking back, I feel…hurt. You’ll see why later. Anyway, I feel like maybe I should have had some boundaries…but at the same time, I genuinely think that my involvement was a big part of them staying around. ‘Pouring from an empty cup’ comes to mind. But if they’d gone…I think I would have done, too. I had to go through the motions, be strong for them, pretend to be so much more stable than I really was. But yeah I have a lot of mixed feelings around these people. It was intense, we were so close.
6) school, 16. I’ve been skipping some lessons. I bring coffee with alcohol in a flask, continuing the comforting fuzziness from plain white rum each night before. I talk back to teachers, make people laugh whenever I can. I bring cookies in as a peace offering. I throw the bully down the stairs. A group of kids try to push me in front of a car. I’m stronger than them, and stay firmly planted where I was. I’m stronger than most people at this school now - I join the boys’ gym lesson, and do more reps than any of them. I don’t back down from fights, and I don’t lose. Nothing matters, I don’t plan on being around past 17. I just want to go down in flames, leave the place in a cloud of smoke and disappear without my friends knowing.
^I have no idea how teachers and parents didn’t notice this as a problem. Like, obviously I wasn’t saying thoughts out loud, but…actions. Anyways, I have bipolar. Untreated manic/depressive stuff, right there. I’m kind of proud of throwing that asshole down the stairs, ngl. The confidence that mania gives you is just wild. I feel anxious when I remember that year, though.
7) same year. A slightly younger androgynous kid has acquired me as a bodyguard, because I saw things in them that I recognised in myself. They had no opinion on anything, just shut down and hunched their shoulders in a way that says ‘please don’t see me, please don’t hurt me’. I make a point of spending time with them each day, asking them things even when there’s no chance of an answer. Eventually, they sheepishly ask if I’ll go to the toilet with them. They’ve been getting threats, and they’re scared to go alone. I say of course, and it becomes a daily ritual. Anyone who so much as looks at them wrong has me to answer to.
^I now know this kid was probably trans. I didn’t know at the time, and I’m sure I probably made some well meaning but clumsy mistakes when I spoke to them. I’m so glad that, even at my almost-worst, I was able to help them in some small way though. I hope they’re doing ok now. I wish I could tell them everything I’ve learned, but we don’t know each other now.
8) school ski trip. One of my other friends convinced me to go, then chose to share a room with someone else and pretended she didn’t know me. Me and androgynous kid are sharing, by process of elimination. The bully is on the same trip, somehow gaining a group of older lackeys along the way. I’m still working out every day. On the bus, the group start hitting me and androgynous kid. They saw at our seatbelts and try to take the seats apart, and try to find heavier things to hit with, shouting the whole time. The teacher tells me to ‘just stay out of their way’. Androgynous kid is fully shut down, but nearly sobs while begging me ‘please don’t do anything’. I don’t want to draw attention to them. I look at the bully’s smug bastard face. I wait. Later on, outside, at night, in the alps, I tip icy water over his head and watch his hair and shirt freeze. He swings around, trying to throw a punch, but he’s locking up from cold and I dodge easily. His companions are too shocked to do anything. I slowly walk back to androgynous kid. Over the next few days, the bullying is limited to uncertain words, at a safe distance. They won’t risk it now. On the same trip, a school teacher who desperately wants to be a cool kid makes us do a black run. It’s basically a sheer drop, all ice. I don’t want to. I suddenly have something to live for, someone to look after. I have a panic attack, but have to hide it. I’m moved to a slower group, where I spend my time lifting everyone else and retrieving skis when they fall. A boy keeps flirting with me. In a snowball fight, he tackles me and almost keeps me pinned. I forget how strong I am for a second, old fears rising in my throat, then flip him over and shove a fistful of snow in his face. The teacher kisses me on the cheek. I can’t move. Peter Pan boy tells me I should be nicer to the bully. I decide I don’t actually like him that much, just the idea of him.
^I’m seriously proud of how I kept attention off that poor kid and on me. The other stuff…I just have to keep telling myself I’m safe now, it’s ok, I’m a grownup and I’m safe now.wtf though. What were those teachers doing.
9) my 17th and 18h birthdays. 17th - my mum asks what I want to do. I say not much, just something quiet please. She makes some food. My dad goes to try a bit, before it’s dished out, she screams at him that he’s ruining my birthday. I say no, I’d really just rather have no shouting, he’s not ruined anything. She gets defensive ‘oh so now I’m ruining it, am I?! He didn’t even remember your birthday, I got everything’ they’re just shouting at each other now ‘yes, fine, I forgot, everything’s my fault. Is that what you want to hear?’. I leave the room. Now they’re both screaming at me that I’m ungrateful, I need to apologise to my mother, it was supposed to be nice and she’s put so much afford in and I’m ruining it. I go out the next day with my friends and butyl myself loads of nerdy shit. One friend brings a random creepy boy along. He keeps asking me for pics/videos of me eating specific foods, slowly, seductively. I send him a video of myself ripping a packet of polos apart with my teeth, and tell him to fuck off. 18th - this is my last chance to see my friends before my family moves house. Two of them (the same 2 that I had kept my phone on for, talked down, made into art pieces) told me ‘if you want to go out so much, go by yourself. We don’t want to do anything today’. My one other friend goes out with me. I try too hard to be positive and energetic, I don’t want to think. I’m about to head to the bar when a man old enough to be our dad picks me up and pins me to a wall. I make eye contact with my friend. She does nothing. He gets close and says ‘just being friendly, I won’t hurt ya’. I tell him to go away. He says he can’t hear me. I look at my friend again, look around the room. No one moves, no one cares. I grit my teeth, and subtly wrap my studded bracelet around my fist. With a snapping motion I break free with that arm, and push the metal into his cheek. He understands that well enough, and drops me. My friend and I go outside. She says she’s super shaken. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to think. I want a distraction. ‘It happens. Please can we stay out, do something else? I don’t want this to be my only memory from tonight’. She wants to go home. I call a taxi. When I tell my parents, they don’t see it as a problem. Mum says ‘well he didn’t pin you down and shag you, did he?’. Dad says ‘these things happen’. I consider bringing a knife to my next night out.
^so this. This is a big one. I’m scared to celebrate birthdays, haven’t celebrated since. I also haven’t made friends since then, and it’s been years. The 2 friends haven’t been in contact with me at all. They’re alive, they just don’t want to know me. It hurts. We were so close, I gave them everything I had, and they used it all and dropped me when they were better. I still don’t regret helping them, though. But it’s impacted me heavily. I don’t trust anyone. I want friends, so badly, but I’m terrified of being close to anyone. The second thing…I’m just about ready to admit that it was a trauma. I felt so ashamed for so long, because ‘nothing really happened’, I fought and got away, but I felt so bad. I get flashbacks to all of the memories mentioned, but I can’t call it PTSD because it’s not like the trauma of ‘real’ violence.
10) SH and attempts. No one was there to talk me out of it. My mum saw scars and joked ‘you know you’re supposed to cut the other way, right?’. Most of it is still secret. The last attempt, I spent a night in hospital and, for a day, it seemed like things would change. But the novelty wore off quickly, and my family went right back to how they had been. When I truly wanted to get better, I looked stuff up on Google. Results were mainly geared towards ‘friends and family of depressed people’ ‘how to deal with depressed people’ ‘cutting ties with suicidal people for your own health’. The depressed person was selfish, the people they knew (obviously the real victims) would have to let them go to avoid sinking with them. This mentality was everywhere I looked. As far as advice for actual mentally ill people…just wait it out, I guess. Some day it gets better, some say it doesn’t but you have to keep going anyway for some reason. I took my prescribed medicine and felt numb. Sometimes it caused manic phases. The first time I laughed, my mum said ‘are you high?’. I didn’t do it around her again.
^this ones still a bit raw. It was 2 years ago. I’m doing better because I sorted my own damn self out, but if I get bad again…I still am in a similar situation. No safety net. The stigma around mentally ill people, the advice I see neurotypicals giving each other…it makes me furious. You don’t have to give all of your energy away like I did for my friends, but at very least don’t make it worse!
11) 19-21 told my mum I’m non-binary. At first she said she was fine with it, then it turned out she had thought I meant bisexual (which I’d already told her at like age 13). When I talked about wanting top surgery, and the waiting times, she said ‘just as well you can never afford to go private, and it’s not gonna happen’. She’s supportive to sobbing queens on rupauls drag race, but she doesn’t support me. We recently had an argument about pronouns (I always get misgendered, I’m used to it. someone else got misgendered, she said ‘they wouldn’t care’, I said ‘yes they would’, she said ‘non-binary has only existed for like 3 years, it’s made up so people can feel like victims’ etc, and she kept doubling down and of course dad agreed with her despite them both being completely wrong) and the next morning, she kept sending me messages about how difficult it is for poor little cishets to get it right, and I really need to be more understanding, and they/them is hard to learn, barely even a word really, and they’ll never learn by being corrected so I should just leave them alone and accept that they get it wrong (?).
^I think that my mum is maybe emotionally abusive. I say ‘think’, because I don’t believe she knows what she’s doing. I don’t believe she does it on purpose. Regardless, she does chip away at the confidence of the people who live with her. I’m exhausted from being around her and dad. He’s irritating in his own way (weaponised incompetence, melodramatic, takes literally everything as an insult, always assumes I’m looking for an argument and says things to me that he’d never say to my mum or anyone he respected). I feel hurt, like from my friends earlier. I wanted my parents affection since I was a little kid. I don’t think they really wanted children, same as they didn’t want each other - they just got married and had kids because it’s what people of their generation were supposed to do. As a small kid, I remember my mum called me a bitch and screamed at me because I splashed water around by accident at the beach. I remember asking dad to teach me photography, or paint a replica boat with me (both things he was interested in), and him always having something else to do. I remember spending way too many nights crying myself to sleep with a teddy, hearing my parents argue and slam doors. I remember having to go out at night with a torch and call whatever parents name like they were a missing dog, so many times. Mum always offloads stuff on me, even when I was a little kid. She’d sit on the end of my bed and reel off things she hated about my dad, what my brothers had done wrong, ways I’d upset her. She’d ask me if she was a failure as a parent, and I wouldn’t know what to say. She still does this, but the last bit changes slightly - now, she says ‘oh, I’m such a bitch, I’m so horrible to your father’ and proceeds not to change. …yeah this is me rattling off now because I triggered myself. It’s ok, I’m safe, I’m a grown up. I recognise that I am triggered.
12) nights out, festivals. I self sabotage. I want to look perfect, be perfect, and I’m a mess. I feel like I don’t belong. I get panicky, but have to hide it. Someone asks me the wrong question, and the floodgates open and I can’t take the words back. I don’t know these people. They feel sorry for me. I hate it. One of them calls me an energy vampire. Actually that’s worse. I get stuck repeating words, trying to scramble out of the panic. One of them says ‘you don’t need to say sorry for existing’. I want to disappear.
^this memory bothers me several times every day/night. I wish they’d met me on a good day. There’s nothing I can do about it now - if it’s meant to be, I’ll see them again and do better. If not, I can’t change anything, and that has to be ok. I’m scared of lack of control, but in small amounts it’s probably good for me.
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I am sorry that you've experienced this. I encourage you to be true to yourself. Those memories may never go away but don't allow the memories to eat at you. Live life on your terms. Do what makes you most happy, no matter how weird it may feel at first.
You are perfectly yourself and learn to accept that. People will come and go but you can never leave yourself. Learn how to love you and enjoy yourself. It will feel hard and really awkward at first but keep at it. Your future self will thank you and you are not alone. I am still working on mastering this. Ever day is different, some days you will feel like you are mastering life and maybe the next day you have no clue what you are doing. Both days keep pushing. It's just a feeling do not allow yourself to be controlled by feelings. Fight against the feeling. You can choose how you would like to feel. Practice Practice Practice.
Life isn't easy. However, enjoy the highs and lows. Make new more enjoyable memories. Your best life is ahead of you, not behind you.
ReplyWasn’t expecting anyone to fully read it tbh, but thank you for your time! I appreciate it!
That’s really good advice - ‘choose how you would like to feel’, and being able to develop it as a skill rather than just having emotions as something that happen to you.
I think the main thing I’m gonna be working on is fearlessness, & being in the moment. Hopefully there will be some fun dumbassery in the next year lol
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