I don’t feel like I’ve ever gotten a break in my whole life. For my entire childhood my parents were abusive and neglectful. My mom would yell for help every other night and tell me to call the police on my dad. My dad was an alcoholic. My mom didn’t feed me much when I was a kid and I once went a week without food. The repercussions of this affect me to this day. My dad was often too drunk to take care of me, and my mom was mostly absent to escape my dad. 

I first thought about suicide when I was ~8. I dealt with depression for all of my teenage years. I was institutionalized when I was 14. I almost died when I was 15 due to a rare syndrome caused by my depression medication. I missed a year of school due to this syndrome, and had to learn how to walk again. I was sexually abused when I was a teenager. I was in a freak incident on a plane. 20 people were injured on that flight and I am still afraid to go on planes. 

Many of my friends have killed themselves. Some have died to cancer. All of them died young. I have greatly hurt others, and people that I care about don’t want anything to do with me anymore either because I hurt them or I am too mentally unwell for them to manage being around me. I understand both these things so I generally avoid people. I just expect people to either leave me or die at this point, so I feel like I never allow myself to grow attached to people anymore. 

I have witnessed gruesome death. I am constantly hyper vigilant. I am afraid of being assaulted, but also afraid to own a gun because I know I would just kill myself with it. I am in chronic pain. I have never been a healthy weight, and every time I try to gain weight, something always happens to make me get depressed and lose it again. This time, my uncle is dying. 

I just feel so numb and dead. I’m only 21 yet I feel like I have lived through an entire lifetime worth of trauma. When will I ever feel safe and secure?

I am a straight A student in college, getting a degree in science. I even got As in all of my organic chemistry courses. I am smart and I am also fortunate when it comes to my looks. But because of these things, everyone assumes my life is perfect.

But I am so tired.