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Dear Mom,

When I was young, I feared you. I feared your judgement. I feared your misunderstandings. I feared the shame. I feared the criticisms about the way I walked, talked, stood, held my hands, jittered in anxiety.

I wanted you to love me, so I held my tongue. I wanted you to love me so I took your past into consideration. I wanted you to love me so I sacrificed my beliefs, ideas, and behaviors to not anger you; to stay safe.

I accepted your lies about my father. I accepted your lies about our family. I accepted your lives about how others should behave.

Sure, you had trauma in your upbringing, but I can't forgive you for passing that on to me. I can't forgive you for passing that on to my sister. I won't acknowledge your pain, because you refused to acknowledge mine.

When I disfigured myself, you thought of yourself. You nag me on money, you shame me for self-medicating, you tell me my thinking is black and white. Yet you live in fantasies. You are just like me, but you refuse to see it.

You tell me now that you understand, but that is new, isn't it? Remember 2 years ago when you didn't? When you continued to attack me for being the person you created? Remember the last year? When my inner child had to scream at you, in tears and sorrow, to get you to come to the rudimentary, ever slipping, understanding of what you've done?

Do you remember anything that doesn't directly impact you? You carry the facade of being quiet and understated, but that wasnt the person I knew. You were always cold, ignorant, and simple minded. You took out your personal pain on your children, children you never had to have. You made a choice, then you molded them into copies of yourself, just so you could project your self-hatred onto them.

I could reason you were doing it unconsciously, that I should not feel the disgust I do. That I should be conscientious of your pain. But I won't. I've done that for years, to no avail. You gave me no credit for that, and it kills me to pretend that it was ever ok.

I dont have a single happy memory of you. My earliest memory is of Disney Land. I don't remember the characters, fantasy or excitement. I remember you and my aunt losing me and me sitting in a chair at the security office. I dont remember feeling scared or abandoned or even upset. I only remember feeling... this is how it is.

I remember your accusation of my character. I remember when you ignored me when I had behavioral problems at school. I remember you not caring when I spent my entire summers holed up in my room, reading books and picking my dandruff. I remember learning from the internet how to wipe my own *. I remember learning how to cook from Youtube. I remember spending hours in the tub to avoid you.

I don't think I love you. Many years ago I thought I was a sociopath for believing this. What kind of monster doesn't love their own mother? The real question should have been: What kind of mother treats their children the way you did?

I'm done. You begged me for real conversation for years, constantly annoyed when I talked about politics, religion, or other subjects outside of my personal life. Now that I've done what you've demanded for so long you desperately try to run from my cutting thoughts. You fall back to your old antics, accusing me of black and white thinking, defending monsters so that your nature is not too damaged.

If you were not my mother I would laugh at your foolishness and move on. But you're in my head. My only solution is to leave you forever. You will not understand why. But I no longer care. I have only one life, there is nothing more. I will not spend the rest of it under your abuse - the world is abusive enough, I'd prefer those closest to me to be my barriers against this ugliness rather than preservers of the pit.

Goodbye Mother. I am in your life out of necessity. Once I have the tools and resources to leave, you will never hear from me again. It breaks my heart, but I know now that it is my only option.

Goodbye forever Mom,

Your Unseen Daughter

Hi Yaya,
Welcome 

Hope

Thanks!

Hi Yaya and a warm welcome to OOTS! 

I am sorry for what you've gone through and what you're dealing with now.  I must say though that the sense I had when reading through your post is that you have a very clear idea of what happened to you, what it caused and that you are doing a good job at starting to recover. I hope being here at OOTS helps you with that.

Thanks!

I've spent most on my life obsessing over the 'accuracy' of how I feel and only more recently have I stopped apologizing for my families behavior. Still hard, yesterday I was just in a state of depression. Hopefully I'll find better ways of dealing to break the cycle.

Welcome, Yaya. I´m sorry for everything that happened to you and that you feel like an outsider, as you put it. I´ve always felt that way myself, still do many times. I know it´s the result of emotional neglect and disconnecting from myself as a coping mechanism, but it´s still hard to accept. I hope you can find here what you´re looking for. 

Thanks!

Yea, its so isolating, sometimes I'm not sure if I feel like an outsider because I actually am, or because I see so many people dealing with similar problems but just shoving them down deep.  But I understand how it feels!

Hi everyone, Yaya here.

I have spent an inordinate amount of time obsessing over my thoughts and feelings throughout my life. Always felt something was inherently wrong with me. Felt isolated and disconnected from family at a very young age, blamed it on myself, thought I wasn't a good enough person or didn't have the right tools to make connections. Always made friends in HS, but similarly felt disconnected ftom them, always felt like an outsider looking in on normal people doing normal things.

My mother was emotionally unavailable, also true for the rest of my family. My father was not around. He was a drug abuser, have very few memories of him, most of them were him extremely sick from the abuse. My mother did not raise me and my sister. One of my earliest memories is of her still wiping my bottom at about 8 years old.I was never taught any lessons. When I behaved in ways she did not like she would just give me the cold shoulder, not speaking to me for hours, days, a week or so. And then she'd pretend everything went back to normal. Any "discussions" about what it was that upset her were accusations of my failures and other belittling behavior, usually with her being very loud with me. She pit my sister and I against each other constantly. The both of us stayed in our rooms, never spoke much growing up, still don't. When we would be eating at the table my mother would attack the both of us for not being closer, blaming us for the the families dysfunction.

When I was 14, entering highschool, a boy my age groomed me. He exposed me to pornography and over a period of a month he would up the ante of what he showed me and eventually penetrated me. I enjoyed the physical act, went back two more times for it. But after that it haunted me. I felt used. I felt "sinful" and wrong. It wasnt until very recently I accepted this for the grooming it was, but I was always the passive actor and he meticulously initiated the series of events that led to the inevitable. I spent most of my adult life chasing men and finding myself in the same pathetic state of mind as I did all those years ago.

When I was 19 I began to feel more depressed, being in the "real world" I realized people weren't much nicer and I had very few social skills and coping mechanisms. I began cutting up my legs. That lasted for about half a year or so. When my mother found out, after going through my diaries, she insisted I go to therapy. I distinctly remember her telling me to not let the therapist blame her for this. My therapist eventually ended up telling me that my problem was not I wasnt "getting p***y". I promptly left after that session. My next therapeutic attempt would be years later at an established institution and they refused to treat me unless I took a concoction of SSRIs, MAOIs, and sleeping medication. Have been put off from therapy ever since.

Drugs, particularly Marijuana and alcohol from time to time, became my main coping mechanism after cutting. I would be sober for a few months or a year, but the loneliness and general feeling of catastrophe drove me back to drugs and escapism.The last few years has been the worst of the drug abuse, daily vaping of weed, 4 beers a day. For the past few months I've calmed down significantly but still use marijuana to feel better and "alive", in much smaller doses than previously and maybe once a week or monthly.

Obesity and overeating have also been a constant in my life, my first coping mechanism. I dont remember a time I wasnt overweight. I've ballooned a bit the last few years, concurrent with the drug abuse, but I've begun a weight loss journey, figuring out my triggers, eliminating foods that make me feel bad or lethargic.

As a backdrop to these interpersonal experiences I dealt with gender identity issues. I always felt that my body and parts were just...not right. 2 months ago I took the step of beginning Estrogen and I have felt significantly better and more assured of myself. I even was able to get a job after a long period of unemployment.

I hope this post wasn't too long.