My Parents: What Trauma?

My parents: what trauma?

Me: uh-

Sometimes I have an impulse to just cry and yell and scream, over and over, until every mother fucker hears me when I say how fucking terrible she was to me

She sold me. She sold me. She sold me. She sold me. She sold me. She sold me. Shesoldmeshesoldmeshesoldmeshesoldme.

Sincerely, with emphasis: fuck.

That trauma survivor feeling when you wake up from a nightmare that was a memory and it fucking clings to your bones like a maladaptive koala

“And I don’t think anybody should feel bad if they get diagnosed with a mental illness, ’cause it’s just information about you that helps you to know how to take better care of yourself.

“Being bipolar, there’s nothing wrong with it. Being bipolar is like not knowing how to swim. It might be embarrassing to tell people, and it might be hard to take you certain places. But they have arm floaties. And if you just take your arm floaties, you can go wherever the hell you want.

“And I know some of you are like, ‘But Taylor, what if people judge me for taking arm floaties?’ Well, those people don’t care if you live or die, so maybe who cares? Maybe fuck those people a little. I don’t know.”

Taylor Tomlinson, Look At You (2022)

I can't believe I'm 31 and still putting pieces together.

Shortly after reporting my stepfather to the police for rape, his father, the man I had called grandpa for a fucking decade, started coming to the burger joint I worked at. I couldn't get a restraining order because he didn't do anything but order a burger and sit at a table directly across from the register and stare at me. He'd leave when he finished his food.

When I told people, their reaction was always "why would he do that? That's so weird." But knowing what I know now, knowing he'd been paying my mother thousands of dollars over the years to keep both of us quiet, knowing he had effectively been paying my mother to let his son use me-

It was just intimidation. Money wasn't keeping me quiet so he wanted to scare me into silence. Wanted me to know he had more power, more resources, more time.

And they did win the court case. And he did scare the shit out of me. So much so that I nearly quit my job.

I was just faulty merchandise to him. God.

After therapy today, I spent 5 hours writing fanfiction in which the main character gets the comfort I wish I had been given as a kid. I didn't do anything on my to-do list but I'm gonna count this as productive anyway.