For all my life I have been struggling. Struggling to fit in. Struggling to feel loved because I have dealt with too much heart break. But most of all, struggle to feel close to people. Whether it be the way I was treated or by my Reactive Attachment Disorder. But it took a long time to talk to someone about it. 15 years to be exact. And that someone is someone I haven’t met face to face but met on an app called Twitch. The conversation ended up happenening on discord one night when I had a fight with my parents and ended up saying last goodbyes. I scared so many people and I realized how bad I was hurting and I reached out. But to get to all the events that led up to that point. At age 2 1/2 I was adopted. My biological father was in prison for selling child pornography and my biological mother was on drugs (meth). I grew up to hate them. For a while I was practically raising my baby biological sister. When I was fostered by a family I was molested by the father while I was a toddler. Then it comes to my current family, it comes to physical abuse from my brother for years. For 14 years I have been abused by my brother. He would throw full plastic refillable water bottles at me, throw chairs at me, throw pretty much anything he saw at me. He would body slam me and wrestle me until I couldn’t breathe. He would even throw ME into things. When I was enduring this I would find a way to run away and run blocks down the street with no shoes, to where I learned to put on shoes when my parents left. Then, when I was outside, he’d throw rocks or snow at me as I ran down the road crying. He has also told me he had friends who would jump me at school. He has scared me and hurt me for years and ever since I had back surgery for scoliosis and after he choked me to where I almost passed out he never did anything again, physically. When it comes to my parents, we fight, all the time. And the argument is always the same. How I do everything wrong. My parents have said repeatedly how I have done everything wrong, done nothing at all, and “can’t you see, you are the problem” and how they have only adopted me because no one else wanted me because I was not pretty. Along with that I have been dealing with bullying in school. I reached a point where it hurt so much that I felt I couldn’t deal with it any longer. I had said last goodbyes, talked to people and took a breath. Then, 2 weeks later, my parents had that fight again and this time put all those words together and I went to my room, crying and devastated. I didn’t see hope at the end of the tunnel for a moment and grabbed my pocket knife out of my purse and brought it up to my wrist. I was so close to doing it but ended up thinking about my Twitch and discord family. My life is bad yes but my family is Twitch. And I have hope at the end of this tunnel and it is Twitch.
I can’t begin to imagine what it is like to have suffered this much abuse for so long. You’ve shown great strength to push through such pain and reach out for support. I don’t know what exactly it will take to help you overcome all of this, but I encourage you to not let these things define your self worth and define you. You are more than what people have done to you. You are the only one who gets to decide your value, so I hope you can turn within and find every little tiny thing that’s good about who you are and foster those things. You don’t have total control over what people have done or will try to do to you, but you can control how you react and whether or not you stand up for yourself. You might try researching what sort of counseling resources may be available through your school or local shelters geared towards helping victims of domestic violence. Reach out in your community to see what sort of professional guidance is available for you to lean on. Have hope.