How I Brought In 2017.

For the last week I’ve been getting up and writing in the mornings again. I miss that, it’s something I had stopped doing because I’ve gotten stuck writing for work. Now I spend one day writing articles a week and find that My mind is clearer, I’m thinking freely again, instead of rolling story ideas and deadlines around in My head. I’m actually enjoying personal writing again.

This morning I lie in bed thinking. I’m not sure what made Me think about My cold demeanor but I started somehow thinking about why I couldn’t get close to anyone. Maybe I was wishing I could. Maybe I was thinking that on this holiday I should be around people I cared for. I think that’s it, I sent a text to My Chicago sweetie at 3 a.m. telling him I wish we could spend the day together. It’s weird, we haven’t seen each other in years, but he and I have the closest connection I have with anyone.

We talk about everything, he knows all My secrets and flaws and he loves Me in spite of them. In a perfect world, we’d be together but I can’t uproot My son and I wouldn’t ask him to uproot his kids. Ten years of love, trust and bonding have almost convinced Me the reason I can’t find love is because I’ve met My soulmate already. But I digress.

I found Myself pondering the reasons I find it hard to connect to people. I said to Myself, how could I feel close to anyone, I’ve been through so much. In My bed, there in the dark, I started to relive some of the moments and situations in life that made Me shy away from people.

I said to Myself, how could I trust anyone when I watched the man who was supposed to care for and protect Me beat My mother. How could I trust or connect when that mother idly stood by as he beat a 4-year-old Me? How could I trust or connect when My babysitter started to molest an 8-year-old Me, continuing for years and scarring Me for life. How could I trust or connect when I told My mother years later, finally able to muster up the courage, and she called Me a liar. When that same mother stood across from Me in court at age 14 and told the judge I was a liar and that her best friend loved Me too much to hurt Me.

How can I trust and connect to people when My first real relationship was with a guy who ran between Me and another girl for 3 years? I’ve allowed almost every relationship I’ve had to mimic it, feeling almost as if it were normal. I had no parent to tell Me it wasn’t, no guidance at home. How can I trust and connect when fucking men became a means of survival by 16 because My mother would say things like “I’ll buy you deodorant when your father pays child support?” How can I trust and connect when I tried to tell My dad time and time again that before his death My step dad abused Me, My mom best friend molested Me and My mother was neglectful and abusive and he did nothing?

How can I trust and connect when My mother died of AIDS, getting sicker and sicker yet never TOLD any of us kids what was going on? I was 17 when the bitch died, what if My grandmother hadn’t already told Me she was HIV positive? Was she just going to keep going in and out the hospital, wasting away, getting sicker and sicker, and think it had no effect on me, on us? How can I trust and connect when My HIV positive mother found love and decided that because Me and her new lover daughter didn’t get along, I was expendable? How can I connect and trust when I had to get used to coming home from school on a Friday to an empty house, when My mother would pack up the other two kids and stay at her boyfriends all summer, leaving Me with My grandmother? I was a teenager, do you have any idea what it’s like to grow up abused and unwanted, neglected and mistreated your WHOLE life?

How can I trust and connect when after My mother dies, leaving us with My grandmother, My whole life was just shaken up one day with no notice? How can I trust and connect when literally DAYS before My finals, prom and a week before graduation, I come home to find all My belongs in trash bags? How can I trust and connect when my grandmother arbitrarily threw Me into the system, without a care for My safety or well being 3 months before My 18th birthday?

How can I trust and connect when I called My father, who had done so little for Me My whole life, begging him to let Me come to his home? Please don’t let them throw Me in some group home with strangers, and he said because I didn’t get along with his wife, I couldn’t come there. Only after I had been subjected to a pap smear, blood work and every other demeaning test, lice being checked for lice, did My father call and say I could come there.

How can I trust and connect when that same father, who allowed his damaged daughter, come to his home only to be emotionally abused by his wife? She called Me “that crazy bitch” for almost the first year I lived there. I left after a year and a half, months after I had My son and they had helped Me run through the insurance money I collected form having a dead mother and stepfather.

How can I trust and connect when all the traumatic things that happened in My past left me so mentally and emotionally scarred the states actually labeled Me “emotionally disabled?” How can I trust and connect when My family ignores the fact that I have an illness and continues to treat Me as an outcast and trouble maker. They refuse to see or understand their part in My issues. Even worse, they continue much of the same behaviors, leaving Me to stay in My own corner. I’ve lived in My apartment for 3 years, My parents (father and stepmother) have no idea where I live. I’ve never invited them here or given them My address.

It’s hard to talk to people how know you and yet they know more about you than you, or they don’t understand your illness. Sometimes when I switch I do things and I don’t know. I’ve had guys say we’ve slept together and I’m looking at them like do I even know you? Guys who say we’ve had long term friendships and I’m like I met you once or twice, but they know so much about Me, it’s hard to deny their story.

No matter how much time I spend with some people they can’t even begin to truly understand how complicated I and My mind are. How important trust is and once it’s broken that’s kinda it for Me. I’m loyal to a fault, so I may not tell you to go away, but I never treat you the same or feel the same with you. You become one of them. It’s hard to build or trust people when I live by a tenet of pure honesty and every guy I date has lied and cheated and mistreated Me.

I have worked so hard to get this stable. My life used to be a mess, I had no place I felt lie was home. I moved all the time, I never even allowed Myself to think about decorating a place because no place was ever secure and stable. It was just another stop on the road for Me. I had a slew of men in My life and phone, always trying to please everyone else while I was miserable. No one’s really cared for Me, except for Theodore, My best friend of 15 years and now he’s gone. Everyone wants what they want from me, which is usually to fulfill some type of fantasy in their minds that actually has little to do with who I am or what I want.

Through seven years of extensive therapy, transitions and life changes I’m finally in a mind state and place in life where life is decent. I am not being used nor abused. My home life is stable, I have furniture and My walls are decorated, I’m single but not lonely. I know that I have options and none of them are on par with what I want and I’m fine with waiting. I love Myself, I’ve went natural and stopped chasing someone else’s idea of beauty. I’m doing what I love, whether I make big money for it or not, I’m writing.

I’m so close to real freedom I can almost smell it. My mom getting diagnosed with HIV right around the time she gave birth to My little brother changed My life. The next few years I spent a lot of time trying to make up her slack until she fell in love and had her new man to do it. I got pregnant less than a yer after I graduated and became a full-time parent then, I had to join the workforce. I never had a childhood, never had time to do the things I wanted as a young lady and as an adult have had no real freedom.

All I got goes to My son and running My little home business, which brings Me so little joy these days. I have dreams and aspirations, goals I can’t even begin to achieve until I have done My duty of raising My son to the age of 18. When I’m not legally responsible for him anymore then I can finally have some money for Myself and not feel like I’m abandoning him as I travel and do the things that make Me happy.

For a long time I was just so miserable I wished I would die, I felt I had no reason to live. I complained all year I had no purpose. Now I do, I am working and striving towards financial independence so as soon as that child turns 18 in 2 years I can pack up and eave Baltimore. I don’t want to be here, live here, think about all the things here that have left Me hurt and traumatized. I hate moving through this city seeing the house I was in when My stepdad was murdered in front of Me. I hate seeing all the place we lived while I was molested. I hate looking at all the schools I went to because we moved constantly. I hate running into people who know Me and are offended that I know nothing about them or can’t remember conversations. I want to start a new, peaceful existence.

My online life looks vibrant, most people would be surprised to discover I barely leave My house. It’s now winter, you’ll be hard pressed to find Me outside after 5 p.m. Walking the streets alone at night bothers My PTSD. Hell, lying in My bed alone at night affects My PTSD. I’ve been raped, molested, beaten almost to death in bed. Hell, I was in bed when the door was kicked open and My step father was murdered in front of Me. People would be shocked to know I get out of bed something 3 or 4 times a night to check the doors and windows because I heard a noise. I couldn’t sleep in the dark until I was 30.

Trust man I don’t trust My own shadow and a real connection. I’d tell you it was impossible but My love in Chicago has put up with My nonsense for 10 years but he’s not around me daily lol. I wonder how he would handle Me if he were. He gives me hope, but it’s a small slice of it. People don’t understand Me, I overstand people and their actions. I’ve been hurt so much that the moment I sense they are trying to use or abuse Me I back off.. Even worse, I meet people and forget them…

Read More of My Ups and Downs

#essay #lifechanges #mentalillness