Do I think my childhood was the cause of my issues today? Yes and yes. My upbringing is definitely the foundation of who I am today.
My childhood very summarized- my mother was 18, my father was 30, both of them are alcoholics, they met in a pub one night and were together for 3 months, then my mother found out she was having me and left without telling him I existed. I was neglected and abused my entire life, my mother spent more money on drugs and alcohol than on food so a lot of people thought I had an eating disorder because I was so thin. My mother had no qualms about having sex with the door open, and she had relationships with men who were also drunks and into drugs. She ended up with a guy that ruined our lives, we lost everything but the clothes on our backs. We had the NCA following us undercover because of their involvement in a drug ring, they’d sit in their unmarked car outside our house all day, and follow us in our car wherever we went. They knew that my mother and her boyfriend knew, so the NCA would actually beep their horn every night when they left our house.
I lived in my room and NEVER came out while my mother boyfriend was there, not for anything, even food or needing to pee. When I had the house to myself I’d live it up, cranking up the music and bounding around the house and eating, all the while watching for them to come back, which is when I’d frantically turn everything off and race back to my room.
He used to tell me I was selfish, a drama queen, and a manipulator that played mind games with people to control them and get my own selfish way. I was 13. He also used to say that my negative thoughts were creating negative energy that was causing all the bad things that were happening to us.
When I was 14 I was basically dumped with my auntie for 2 years while my mother lived in a car with her boyfriend doing speed. Then he went jail I went back with my mother because my auntie didn’t want me with her, we stayed at my grandparents for a little while until my grandfather beat me up one night and my family (other than my mother) took his defense.
We nearly ended up in a shelter but my mother begged a land agent to let us stay in a house we put our names down for, telling them if we didn’t get it we’d have nowhere to live. Well we got the house, but we had no beds, and the carpet was riddled with fleas that would crawl up into the blankets at night and I’d wake up with bites all over my stomach. My source of entertainment was basically sitting on the floor picking fleas out of the carpet.
We had furniture donated to us by the church, my mother got her bed first so at 15 I was sharing a bed with her. Eventually I got my bed. Then her boyfriend got out of jail and came back, he smashed our bathroom window, he used to sit in his car out in the street and watch our home.
When I was 17 I moved out of home, the 13th time I moved house, and I’ve remained here ever since. One of my cousins moved in with my mother at 15 and was dealing drugs, even to my mother. She is sober now, but I think she still smokes weed.
I met my father when I was 18, when I called him his girlfriend thought I was calling to buy drugs from him. My father isn’t a very nice guy, very melodramatic and gets angry at the drop of a hat. His girlfriend gave someone my address, phone number, and told him where I worked so he was rocking up everywhere I went. She got him to tell me it was my father who gave him my details but it was actually her trying to find out bad things about me.
I try to keep to myself. Things aren’t any less stressing, currently my auntie is engaged to a transsexual paedophile, and my cousin lost her virginity to his son (her step brother basically). My grandfather is still an alcoholic, my cousin is in a relationship with a guy who beats her up, my father is dying of cancer and won’t acknowledge me as his child, my mother is living in Salvation Army housing on disability and can’t leave the house for more than 2 hours at a time before she has a panic attack.
I have still not moved on from my past, I am currently in therapy every 2 weeks and seeing a dermatologist because of stress related hair loss. Because of my stress I can’t work, find it hard to be with people (I was also bullied in school), and my memory is as bad as my 70 year old grandmother. I can barely get out of bed or clean my house from exhaustion. I think I am welcome nowhere because I have never been welcome, I wasn’t born because someone WANTED me, my grandfather wouldn’t speak to my mother for over a month when he found out she was going to have me, my mothers boyfriend spent his time trying to get rid of me, my auntie wanted me out of her house, nobody wanted to be friends with me in school, my mother was glad I was gone when I left home, and my neighbour wasn’t exactly keen to have me here. I am in constant torment of my own thoughts, always thinking worse case scenario because I was so used to having to do that to be prepared. I get very snappy and have a lot of built up anger. I used to have so many ambitions when I was young, I KNOW I could have been big, but now I barely have the enthusiasm to check the mail.
I wonder what my life would have been had it been different, I wonder what kind of person I could be or where I would be in life.