something about being traumatized and mentally ill for years on end without any help is that it alters your brain and messes with how it processes memories and data. this becomes really inconvenient especially during fights or stressful events because your brain will be aware that something happened but it won't be able to pinpoint what exactly happened down to specific details or what was exactly said. this sucks because it makes you more vulnerable to manipulation and being gaslit. you're easily convinced that you're in the wrong and that you're a bad person simply because of the unreliability your memories provide. i want you to know that you aren't a bad person and i'm so sorry there are people out there who have taken advantage of your incapability to have a reliable memory.
I think there is a very specific bitterness and pain that accompanies the realisation and reluctant acceptance that you lost your childhood and adolescence to trauma and mental illness, and it's something that people can't appreciate unless they've lived it too. Well meaning but utterly clueless people my age tell me "well I can't believe that I'm this age either!" and people older than me say things like "we all feel like we didn't make the best of our youth!" but I know that it isn't the same .
there is a deep longing in me for the safety of an innocent childhood, or the carefree turmoil of a rebellious adolescence that can never be realised . theres a deep sense that im a little girl or an unruly teenager . theres a reluctance , or inability, to accept that im an adult, that life didnt stop then , that the world didnt wait for me, time kept going and it left me behind.
how can I already be an adult when i never had the chance to be a child?
