to me this is progress because ive blocked out 95% of my childhood and most of my teen years and even now theres a lot of things i dont remember from even a few months ago because i automatically block things out. its not that i dont want to remember things even recently, its just habit for my brain to try and protect me i guess. ive been trying so hard to figure out if theres any kind of trauma or reason for me to be this way or reason for me to constantly invalidate my emotions and bottle everything up and just shut down so fast and i have not been able to see anything from my past besides my parents divorce because i still remember that theyre divorced. and every couple of weeks i'll feel like i dont deserve this diagnosis because i dont have anything that could have made me become this way for lack of a better way of putting it.

last month my therapist had surgery and i didnt have any sessions for three weeks and so i did some thinking and out of nowhere i had a memory of when i was young (from before elementary school up until maybe first grade) of being in a daycare program and there were older girls there (they werent much older than i was) that bullied me. they isolated me and made sure i knew that they didnt like me and wanted nothing to do with me even though all i wanted was to hang out with them and be a part of their group. i just wanted to play with them and be part of their conversations and i was pretty mature for my age because i had siblings who were a bit older than i was so i had to get used to acting older than i was.

but every time i tried to be a part of their group, they made it known that they thought i was annoying and they gave me the shittiest toys to play with or a toy that didnt go along with what they were playing with so i would have to play by myself. they would huddle in a circle and make it seem like they were talking about me and at one point one of them gave me a bracelet and tried to take it back and i ran from her and fractured a bone in my foot. but i still wanted to be a part of their group. i was hurt and upset by the exclusion but it didnt register that it was bullying. but i didnt want to hang out with the kids my age because i was so focused on wanting that acceptance. and when i didnt get it i just decided to talk to the teachers or do a solo activity.

dealing with the weight of that realization now hurt a lot. and it added on to other experiences of mistreatment throughout my life that i let happen to me or that i just brushed under the rug and blamed myself for. it has been drilled into my head from a young age that i am annoying and that even if i bring up whats bothering me, nothing will change. so my emotions dont matter. any time i got upset at home, my siblings and my dad would get mad at me and i felt even worse. i let people dictate how i should talk to myself and how i should or shouldnt validate myself because they showed me how and they did a horrible job of it.

i got choked up in therapy because of how heavy everything felt and how it felt to say all of it out loud and i had to fight to not fully think about it because i didnt want to cry. my therapist said that if i was there she would have hugged me and it felt good for someone to recognize that i needed that. i dont have anyone that i can really talk to about this outside of therapy so im just coming here but it feels good to be able to know that im not just broken and that im not the one to blame for being so messed up. other people have created the harsh environment in my brain and unfortunately i have to work to fix it but i dont have to put the blame on myself anymore and it feels so so good so i thought id share my little bit of progress at unlocking some memories finally