Hi everyone. Hope you're all doing well. This will be all over the place, as I have a lot of things on my mind and I hope I'm not judged for this.

I have had a lot of feelings today. I basically cried all day, and it's about stuff happening now and things that happened in my childhood.

1: I'm stuck in a body that I'm not too fond of. I'm grateful for it, but I wish I was in a position where I could start transitioning (I'm on the trans spectrum). I'm constantly thinking about the body I want and it makes me sad that it'll take me a while to get there. (My family doesn't know I'm trans)

I'm also gay (I use queer since it's more broad but there has been some discourse around that word) and my grandma found out and she has said some things to me that were downright rude and disgusting. My mom knows, but my mom was abused by my grandma and it seems like she's afraid to ask her to leave. My grandma has other children in her home country, but she uses my mom because she knows my mom can't say no to her.

So I'm stuck in a house where I can't be myself. I'm out but I'm not REALLY out.

2: Growing up poor really affects you and you don't see the effects until you're older. It gives you what I like to call a "poverty mentality". I hate asking for things because when I was a child I'd ask for things and my mom would say, "I don't have the money this week, but maybe next week". And next week would come but we'd have to spend it on something more important. So I just learned not to ask for things. So now when friends just give me things I feel so flustered because I'm like, "I don't have the money to give them anything back". I can't just accept things because I feel so bad.

My mom and my grandma believe they don't deserve the best since they grew up poor and the best wasn't available to them. So they both just settle. They're both stagnant (my mom is very ambitious but she's very stagnant emotionally). And it's hard being in an environment where you're trying to stretch your wings but the energy is so stagnant.

3: My mom has gotten very religious. Something great happened to me and she said we'd go out to celebrate, only for her to say she had to go to church instead (I truly believe she just didn't have the money to celebrate). So I said, "I thought we were going out to eat..." and she laughed and said, "You don't expect me to choose between you and the church, do you?" That comment still hurts me.

4: The thing that bothers me the most is that my mom knows how emotionally abusive my grandma was/is. She knows about my grandma's sexually inappropriate behavior towards me that involved touching when I was 5. My mom knows that, when I was a kid, my grandma would talk to me and use derogatory terms to describe my mom and tried to turn me against her, all before I was 9 years old. I was a little kid (6/7) and I was very affectionate and I'd hug my grandma, only for her to push me off of her and say, "Leave me alone!" She has accused me of lying, she has commented negatively on my looks, she's said people don't like me because I'm "weird" and other things (those are the "nicer" things she's said). But my mom will not ask my grandma to leave.

Don't get me wrong: I know my mom loves me and I love her to death. I'd do anything for her. I'm so grateful for everything that she's done/continues to do for me. I really want to stress that. I love her so much and my dream is to buy her a house so she'll finally know what it's like to not struggle.

But sometimes I feel like I'm dealing with all of these things by myself. In a way, I kind of am.

It's not my job to fix this family, so I've started focusing more on myself. I treat my grandma with respect (because everyone deserve respect). If she asks me for help, I'll help her. But I stick to myself and try to get out of the house as much as possible.

So that's why I'm desperately trying to find a job so I can move out and be myself and be in an environment that's not so stagnant.

I try to explain this to people and they always think my grandma "isn't that bad". Or that I should be "the bigger person". Or that I'm "ungrateful". It's all very victim-blaming and it makes me feel like a bad person.

So I'm trying to be brave and post this here.

I hope people understand what I'm trying to say. Thank you for letting me be vulnerable.