TRIGGER WARNING: Very long post, dunno what to do with myself ☞☜

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hellostarlight

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Hello guys, new user here. Kind of a heavy first topic but it needs to be said. Not quite sure what I am and aren't allowed to talk about so forgive me m(_ _)m

Basically, since I was a very small child (about 2+) I have been abused and/or neglected in every way possible by different people. I won't go into details because again I don't know how much I'm allowed to say. This includes family, family friends, strangers, teachers, "friends" and classmates. There hasn't been a year that's gone by when I haven't been abused or whatever the name is for it when you're 16+. I have problems with intimacy and trust as a result and a lot of people think I'm weird because of my body language I guess (flinching, awkward when I give/receive hugs, head in my phone or day dreaming to avoid people, sometimes crave touch other times feel disgusted and scared by it) and I feel like I'm emotionally stunted... like part of me is still 3 years old, part of me is 30 and another part is my actual age. It confuses people a lot because one minute they'll treat me like I'm their little sister and the next minute I'll be like their parent haha.

In addition to this, recently I've had people following me home, shouting at me on the street and just generally being very creepy. I will admit, I do have a resting scared face and everyone tells me I look vulnerable when I'm on my own which isn't helped by the fact that I look about 12 (I'm 17 now, so I guess I'm kind of young anyway). I feel unsafe even though those people haven't physically touched me and the thing is it seems like something that most women just have to "get over." Maybe if I were most women I would do that too, but I'm not, so I can't. It freaks me out. It also hurts when I tell my friends and they laugh. I know they don't understand how much it affects me because they don't know my past but it still makes me feel ashamed. Shame and embarrassment are a huge deal for me. It's what most people have used to control me for years, and it works. That and straight up intimidation, though for the past few years intimidation by people I know has started to make me angry more than anything else now.

My therapist pretty much screwed me over by putting me on the wrong treatment, making me talk to a bunch of police and social workers who couldn't do anything as my abusers are long gone anyway, telling my whole family I have been abused without warning me at all and then just leaving me to deal with the mess and dropping me completely, my anti-depressants have messed me up physically and I gained nothing from them, my family are stuck between pretending the abuse never happened and expecting me to be normal and excluding me completely as some sort of alien and asking me questions about how i'll ever function in life, like I'm supposed to have the answers. I'm getting really sick of looking for help and people that just aren't there. I'm really trying to believe that there are people like me out there and people who actually care about others and will try to help them or professionals who are actually there to do their job and not just to get money and mess people about but it often feels like I'm just trying to convince myself of that so I don't feel alone as I don't have any first-hand evidence that those people exist.

Looking back there have been so many red flags; if not about the abuse then about an eating disorder that began when I was 11 or because I was obviously extremely emotionally unstable at school; especially when I was 9 - 13. Not only that but surely they could've noticed that my male teachers were being dodgy and that my home life wasn't great. Instead everyone turned a blind eye, told me the teachers and my family seemed fine to them and shouted at me to shut up and get over it -_- which didn't exactly help my self-esteem. When I first became suicidal, my family got angry at me and told me I was tearing the family apart and trying to deliberately ruin their lives, like I have nothing better to do. Obviously, this made the suicidal feelings stronger which they then thought was me trying to get attention and be difficult on purpose. I really can't win with my family and the older I get the more often I feel like I just want to cut the whole lot of them off, but other times they'll say nice things to me and seem like they care all of a sudden. It messes with my head. I'm able to deal with my suicidal thoughts now, but back then I was extremely unstable. I don't even know how I survived. My family even knew about some of the abuse and at first accused me of making it all up, then after I gave them proof just were like, "Oh. So what's for lunch?"

I had one friend who was like an older sister to me. She died of cancer. Since then, my two of my uncles have also died of cancer, one having died this year. I was also sexually assaulted several times by a man who was known to my family a couple of days after I made a new years resolution to be happy and focus on improving my mental health. Yeah, right ~_~'. The thing is, I didn't even see it coming. It started out with a "Hello," then more talk about himself and lies about how close he actually was to my family (to make me less likely to talk about what was to come I figured - and it worked) and just questions about school, politics, recent events... then he started manhandling me by the shoulders, then waist, then hips when no one was around and then it just progressed. I'm 1000% sure that if I hadn't decided to keep my distance after it progressed and only stayed around him when my family were around it would've progressed further. He tried to get me to go into my room with him afterwards and my heart was beating so fast. I was so scared about what he'd do, but my neighbors were outside so they'd hear and possibly see if he tried anything so we just went back out. This man also has two grown children older than me and a wife. His wife and children will never know what he did.

I haven't been to school in months; only just started going 1 day per week even though my exams are 1 week away. Really stressed and more alone than ever knowing no one around me knows how I feel. I have even had family members joke about my situation in front of me to each other. The only things that have been keeping me going are food and willpower haha. But I guess the food one is still kind of iffy and I really want to get that under control :T. The only problem is that food gives me immediate comfort and satisfaction unlike anything else, and so does the abstinence of it on other days. My willpower just comes and goes with my moods - most days I'll be sad, then happy, then sad, then happy again or the opposite way around. That in itself is tiring lol. Some days it's even worse than that.

It just sucks because I know I'm not reaching even half of my potential; I know if I were with positive, decent people I'd be such a different person. I tried moving out of my area for my college on purpose, but it hasn't helped much ^^; just makes the journey even more difficult lol. I know that I have talents; not trying to brag obviously but I do. Talents are useless though if you can't even use them, and I know that now as a teen is the best time to start a career out of my talents. I also know that I can't cure a lifetime of hurt in a year, though. It hurts to know that maybe if my problems were sliced to a quarter I'd probably be out there now having fun and putting myself out there.

Underneath I'm a really happy, bubbly, confident girl and I have so much love to give and so many dreams and things that I want to do and I want to bring other people with me so they can do the same. I want to be positive and break away from everything but it follows me wherever I go, whether I'm looking for it/consciously thinking about it or not. I can't change other people and I know that... but at the same time I don't want to accept the fact that people are going to try and do all sorts to me. I can't ignore the fact that it happens pretty often in comparison to most women. And I don't want my opinion of people and especially not men to go down. Unfortunately, I have only met a handful of decent men with pure intentions in my lifetime and it sucks because there probably are more nice men out there... not to mention men are the only people I'm attracted to haha. I'm trying to keep as open as I can at this point but I'm aware that doing that is also letting abusive people in :/ I really don't want to totally shut half of the population off just because I have a tendency to meet the wrong ones lol. After all I only really need 1 man haha (future husband :p). It would be nice to be friends with guys too but I've heard that it's impossible for a guy and a girl to be just friends ^^; and I don't want to give out the wrong impression or mess anyone about.

Aside from all that, I haven't studied and my coursework is months late. Friends and distant family members are all asking where I am and whats up, but I can't exactly tell them. They're all normal people and I've heard the things they say about "crazy people" and how they pity abused people. I really want to make friends who are like me not just so I can have someone who sees me for who I am but also so I can feel comfortable enough to have fun doing the things I like and enjoying what I have left of my teenage years :p. Life has been too stressful and scary so far and I want to move on but I don't know how to do that on my own and neither does anyone else; professional or not.

I don't even know what I'm looking for. I know I want decent friends, but besides that... I guess I want a happier life? Part of me wants a real relationship too, as I've never had one that didn't involve control and abuse. Don't know where to start. Feel like I've done all I can do as a person to improve my life, but feel like you can't go from the bottom to the top totally on your own. My mind is skewed and I know that, but if no one is showing me the way a mind should work I don't know what I'm supposed to be working on if that makes sense lol. I go by things based on evidence and an average; so let's say I go to the shops and every time I've been to the shops so far someone has given me a blue apple (?) I'll automatically expect to be given a blue apple when I next go to the shops. And that's how I treat the interactions I have with people. The majority of my experiences with humans have been scarring; not all, but most. It's very hard to focus on the minority because I feel like I'll be putting myself in danger. It's probably coincidence, but the few times I let my guard down people come in and take advantage of me. It doesn't really help when I'm trying to move on from my past.

Anyways, thank you if you read aaaaall of that 0_0 you deserve a gold medal :D 💋♕ sorry for it being so long, I just wanted to give people a picture of why I feel so lonely even though there are a lot of people around. Ironically, my coursework is on loneliness too. I should get an A* xD.
 
I'll be your friend.

Message me and I'll give you my Skype. Then we can talk. :)
 
I'll be free to chat anytime as well, if you're wanting to anyway, and I may not be able to understand everything that you're going through, but I do understand some.
 
Don't know about others but I sure deserve Gold medal for reading all this :D

Hey there Starlight, welcome to ALL

And Yes, we indeed have some decent man here ;)
 
I'm sorry to hear about all these things you've gone through. You sound like an incredibly strong person, to me.
I can't say I know what you're going through, but I've known people who've gone through similar things before and a lot of them find peace in 'starting fresh' somewhere new, away from all of their old problems, the people, and the places. Some might think of it as running away but I think in reality it's probably more a way of getting out of that cycle of memories.
I didn't go through the same things, but I had things I had to get away from myself a long time ago. And it did help me.

However, you mentioned you moved out of the area for college and this just made it more difficult. Is there a reason why it's more difficult? You're having problems getting to school because you don't want to be around all the people. But is that the only reason? If so, maybe you can start taking online courses, or maybe transfer to a smaller school? If transferring is possible, I'm not sure what sort of place you live now, but smaller more 'scenic' towns seem to help a lot with forgetting the past. Having fewer people around and having all the beauty of nature helps you feel as if there is a lot more time and places to cope with things in your own way.

I would suggest trying your best to get to school either way, though. As you said, the best time to use your talents is 'now', not necessarily just because you're in your teens but simply because 'now' is always the best time to take advantage of your potential. You may also find that truly participating in activities helps you to deal with your other problems. Finding new ways to focus your thoughts and energy into something productive and useful, rather than allowing it to return to harm you.

I'll also point out that, while I'm not sure what exactly your family does or says around you, but from the sounds of the 'one-way then the other-way' attitude is that they do seem to care about you but are completely unable to know how to deal with the situation or help you. Most people do not even know themselves very well so they're unable to completely process some rather extreme situations in a way that actually comes out 'appropriate'. The best thing for you to do, whenever you can manage it, is maybe sit down and have a talk with them and just tell them how you feel and tell them how you want them to react.

And, while I'm at it, but being gawked or shouted at or whatever else is not just something that anyone just needs to 'get over'. Everyone deserves respect, especially people who have gone through a lot like you have. That is nothing but a social farce to keep women demoralized, in other words it is a ridiculous social problem that society has yet to face or even to recognize and so they just make excuses or justifications for it and feed these things to everyone else, hoping it will work. So don't feel bad that you can't 'get over' this, you shouldn't have to.

Anyway, I'm not sure if anything above might be useful to you, take it as you might. As you can see above, you've got plenty of people here to help.
 
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