wow I just realized too much too quickly. after a friend who was pretty toxic told me she had been diagnosed with bpd I googled it and it drew me in. From there I couldn’t stop, and I when I saw signs of it I used what I knew to confirm why people were behaving in ways that made me uncomfortable for reasons I cannot explain. I became obsessed with diagnosing people, even just to myself, when they fit the negative characteristics. Like, I REALLY wanted to believe the worst in people with bpd. You know, projecting. And projecting something I knew deep down was myself, and then villainizing it. And I was really so content doing this feeling great, I was telling my mom that I had become fascinating with studying personality disorders months ago and she listen patiently and then said “we didn’t cause any trauma raising you!” Even though this was 3 months ago and I’m just realizing this now the statement still haunted me. 

The catalyst for all this? Cutting my hair. Literally, that act has radically changed my entire life in 2 days. My whole life my body was criticized from the time i was 4 or 5...no shit, i have baby fat because I’m a baby! I was criticized, told what clothes looked “unflattering” (anything that wasn’t baggy). I remember being a little kid and asking my mom if I was fat and she said “you have some extra weight on you” WHO SAYS THAT TO A FIVE YEAR OLD ?! I never saw anything wrong with this though...any of it...constantly body shaming me into exercising, despite the fact my brother could do whatever he wanted (he needed extra attention due to health problems/etc since the time he was born, and a learning disability, etc) so since the time I was 1 I was expected to take the back seat and take care of myself , which I did because I literally had no choice. And then my mom would process to devote her entire life to my brother, who was just accepted as “flawed” and allowed to do whatever he wanted- including beating the shit out of me at absolutely any point. This was considered roughhousing, and I was always an active participant when it came to the blame, despite the fact that I would literally just be walking through the room. I was only given attention when I was doing something wrong or my mom wanted some drama to talk about or some random accomplishment to brag about. Did anyone else get those national honor society bumper stickers that they send to everyone but you literally just have to pay to be in it?? That organization targets parents like mine. My mom’s expectations of me were always confusingly low, when I took AP classes in high school she was vehemently against it because “I could be getting As in regular classes instead of Cs in AP classes (I literally needed to challenge myself in school to prove I was worthy of SOMETHING). I had to pay for my own AP tests, which I took and got college credit for, and then a year later my mom bragged on Facebook about how I had gotten college credit and saved her a ton of money for being so smart!! When in reality I had to explain to her what these courses even meant. 

Oh my god, how is this all just hitting me now? Oh right. My hair. While my whole life I had my body criticized for being *slightly* chubby due to the fact I could never play any sports that interferes with my brother’s hockey schedule, I was put on a strict “no junk food ever” diet from the time I was in kindergarten, my mom would cook dinner every night of my life which she always claimed was because she was just so devoted to being a good mom despite the fact that she hated doing it (she always said the same thing about driving too- “but I do it because I have to!”) and we would have mandatory family dinners every. Single. Night. That mostly consisted of my dad talking about very specific work problems and my mom listening and my brother and I being bored, but “this was daddy’s chance to vent about work to mommy!” And I was like “well why does it have to be to you? You aren’t a computer programmer and don’t understand the majority of what he’s talking about” and she was like yes but he needs to talk to I listen. Why did my brother and I have to be there then? This was only ever explained as “because we’re a family!”

I grew up in a very wealthy suburb and my mom took great pride in the fact she “wasn’t like other moms”. She would only buy clothes from Costco/target/jc penney and LOVED that she “wasn’t pretentious like all the other hockey moms!” The irony was that she came from EXTREME wealth. My dad did not, but he is smart and creative and gave up his lifelong dream and the job he loved, which was being a journalist, to learn software engineering right before 2000 when my parents were living in an apartment downtown and had one year old me, about to have my brother. My mom also worked, but literally had soooooo many different jobs my whole life which I always thought was so fun and cool! Oh my god. Her major in college was “religion” because she was gonna be a priest or something like that but then found out she couldn’t get married (I clearly know nothing about the official titles in Christianity Bc we grew up very NON-religious....so wtf? This was going to be your life path and now you don’t even care enough beyond taking your kids to Christmas mass every other year?)

Her full time job became my little brother’s dyslexia tutor. When he was born, he had a heart condition that required open heart surgery at 2 months. Obviously, this is very stressful. He is 18 months younger than me so I would have been almost 2 at the time. Between the ages of 3-4, I had unexplained seizures that required those CT scans where they load your head up with wires, which I did remember and was terrifying. But I had to stay up all night so I would be asleep for the scan so my parents took turns “hanging out” with me all night, and this is always talked about as this CRAZY adventure that I was SO lucky to have gotten. I was only 4 years old and I still remember the doctor saying that “it helps if they’re tired out before but staying up ALL night isn’t necessary” as I’m sitting in a chair with wires attached to my head having no idea why this was the culmination of the only time i had ever gotten attention. 

Now I have to say, I never considered my parents being bad at ALL because, as I’m realizing now, my dad did all the work for the two of them loving me and showing me I was important, even though he worked full time and had gotten laid off right around the time I started school, while my mom worked random night shifts at different department stores (which were always “beneath her” but “it’s just for fun!” I get now that we didn’t have money and my parents didn’t want us to think we were poor, and honestly looking back now this is the most she ever contributed. The job she has now, when she got it 2 years ago, my dad announced that he was “so proud!” That she is making an actual income! And I never realized that everything else she did was just volunteering/micromanaging my brother’s life/devoting her life to his learning disability (which looking back I don’t think was even that bad, I think after his surgery, having a flawed child to fix gave her a purpose, or maybe she realized she neglected me and wanted to overcompensate with him...idk. But I spent my entire childhood expected to take care of myself/teach myself everything (I learned to read really early on and after that I never got any more academic support from her other than when I was doing poorly). I never had tutors...which is fine, except my parents spent what looking back now was probably tens of thousands of dollars taking my brother to the best dyslexia school she could. At one point he went 3/4 days a week, and she would always talk about how expensive it was. I would get dragged to every tutoring session, every IEP assessment, and just sit there and read. Which I always thought that since I could read, and he couldn’t, I must be the golden child. I got cocky from this for sure. But reading was the only thing I could ever do. I rarely got to hang out in groups of kids, and I developed massive attachment issues anytime my mom would take me anywhere...because the on time I would get attention was when she was taking me somewhere to drop me with a bunch of people I’d never met. I just wanted to be left alone. If not a “social activity”, I spent the other half of my time sitting in ice skating arenas watching my brother play C hockey. It started when he was on a ymca floor hockey “league” when he was 3. I remember my mom (I say remember because she tells this story constantly) taking about how some dad was giving his kid an intense pep talk on the sidelines. “Come on dude! These are two year old!! Chill out!!! Wow some parents are wayyy too invested in their kids lives” well from that day one my brothers hockey was our family’s raison d’être. I was always forced to play a sport, but anything I actually liked there was some reason it was “asking too much”: I really wanted to figure skate, but my mom said I would have to wear a bike helmet, because one time she fell down and hurt herself skating. This was a non-negotiable. So I could play hockey only Bc I wasn’t about to be the single figure skater wearing a motherfucking bike helmet!!! And then I was “stubborn” and “selfish” for that. I tried to do gymnastics instead, which I loved, but one day I had a “makeup lesson” with a different coach who was HORRIBLY verbally abusive towards me because I was slower than “her” girls who were typically in that session, literally making me stand to the side and wait until the other girls got to go multiple times, and then would watch me do 1 thing and fail and made some nasty comment making fun of it and made us all move on. And I realized at the time how completely fucked up that was, and I had 1 more makeup class left to do (I think the makeups were because we had been on vacation or I had been actually sick) and my mom said that if I didn’t complete the session with the abusive coach again, despite the fact I was bawling my eyes out after, I had to quit gymnastics entirely. So I quit gymnastics. Because I was a selfish spoiled brat for not going to back to complete that one makeup class. But I was always told to my face that my mom would always trust any adult over me, no matter what. So I must just be acting overly sensitive/being a baby/not trying harder. 
The helmet thing. Oh my god my brother and I always knew this one was off. Her obsession with bike helmets. To do anything. If we razor scootered, bike helmet and knee pads and wrist guards. One time my brother biked to his friends house without his helmet and my mom found it and drove over and screamed at him in front his his friend and friend’s mom. Like, blood boiling like he had just committed the worst crime known to man. But this was just normal to us. 

My brother, being a “growing boy” and “star athlete” would always get to eat whatever he wanted. Any junk food, my mom would buy for him Bc “he actually burns off the calories”. Otherwise, all the food we ate was plain chicken breasts with broccoli or spaghetti or tacos. We had the same 3 snack options only that never varied: string cheese, baby carrots, yogurt, because this what my dad liked. Oh, and pretzels. That was “junk food” in our house. When I got old enough to start actually “caring about my health” aka having years upon years of life-consuming eating disorders, I would ask my mom for certain foods I liked from the store, and she would ALWAYS complain that I “only liked anything that was expensive”. Except I ate less than my brother, so that logic never made sense, but when I pointed that out she just told me maybe I should burn more calories and it wouldn’t be an issue. 

Oh my god. Everything I’ve ever done in my entire life that I thought was normal all along. Having an eating disorder which she was extremely aware of was “asking for attention” and “being to lazy to exercise”. I was blamed for “only liking expensive things” and would never get anything nice that I wanted, but my mom would spend MORE money to get a bunch of smaller shitty things, or clothes that SHE liked that were always super ugly and plain and baggy. Clothes were gifts. Oh you want a new shirt? Your birthday is coming up. We were allowed new clothes only at the beginning of the school year. By the time I was 11, I had mastered eBay and was buying ugg boots and juicy sweatshirts like the girls at school had with my babysitting money and eventually flipping for a profit. Making my own money was my only way out, and we would get paid small sums for extra chores but somehow they were always “boy” tasks only my brother could do. Mowing the lawn was the only significant money maker ($20, but we have a huge backyard). I was not allowed to use the gas lawnmower ever, but they got a little mechanical one one that required 10x more work and allowed me to use that, but I never did a good enough job so I lost those privledges. By the time my brother was that same age, he was using the gas one. I fought so hard for this double standard, pointed out the sexism, and finally was allowed one attempt, but waited like 5 minutes past when I was supposed to start and “lost privileges”. My whole life was like this. Just months ago my brother and I planned a road trip to to his college to pick up his stuff. He said “leaving in 5” and I said ok and exactly 5 minutes later pulled out of the driveway and left. He would do this picking me up form college to if I didn’t accommodate his needs in a 30second or less window of time, and my mom would say “he told you exactly when to be ready, I would have left too. Maybe be ready on time and it won’t be a problem”.

My brother would wrestle with me aggressively any time I walked by him and my mom would get mad at us BOTH for “roughhousing” and it was fine, because I was bigger than him anyway! (Yes because this gives him a free pass to assault me at any given time. Also thanks for the reminder). My body dysmorphia was so bad. I remember looking in the mirror at age 5 and wishing I wasn’t so fat. FIVE!!!!!! I hated every thing about my appearance my whole life but my mom would always call me “beautiful”. Like, instead of my name. She just did today, actually. 
The only thing that was ever “right” about me was my hair. I have extremely thick hair, and as a kid it was perfectly wavy and curly and I got complemented on it ALL the time. So everything about my appearance was problematic, but people gave me attention for my hair. It became my only source of value. My hair was/is SO thick and heavy and was very hard to take care I’d constantly as a 5/6 year old, but when I didn’t brush my hair well enough or it for tangled which was always because it’s curly and thick and I was a CHILD my mom would threaten to cut it off. The amount of time this was used as a threat. I had nightmares about having short hair, and honestly, deep down that’s all I wanted: to not have this massive burden to constantly take care of. But when she realized how affected I was by that threat she would use it for other things. I hated showering because, well, I had been taught to hate my body...so I would avoid being naked. I would sit in the bathroom with the shower running and then turn it off, until my mom found out and started sitting in on me. I was like 19 or 10 when this started, and it went until I was like 12. Shower door is glass see through across from the toilet, where she would sit with her crossword puzzles and complain about having to do that. My brother was disgusting, would literally wipe his ass on my bath towels VISIBLY and then accuse me of doing that to him, and I would get blamed “because even if you didn’t do it, you have poor hygiene so it’s believeable therefore your fault”. 

So much more, and I realize I need to go to a therapist but guess what? My mom took me to therapy my whole life and never explained why, although early on it was very clear the main issue being addressed was my weight. I was actually so happy to have someone to talk to for once!! And then it hit me that no, I really was only given attention for this singular problem. I wonder why I became overweight as I got older?? Even then, it wasn’t terrible, and I was called obese. Literally the doctor showed me a graph of my weight and my dot was in the halfway line of overweight for my height and I was called obese CONSTANTLY after that when I did ANYTHING. The only place I felt safe was the downstairs bathroom which had a lock. I would sneak junk food from anywhere I could get it and eat it on the toilet with the door locked and wrap the trash in toilet paper to hide it Bc once my mom found out and in trouble for -not eating in the kitchen/dining room -hoarding food -being dishonest -being unhealthy/obese -intentionally disobeying the rules 

Ok so eventually therapy got taken away because I wasn’t losing weight, which at this pint I was straight up told the reason because I was upset as I finally had a real bond with an adult. Then after years of eating disorders and gaslighting and zero self esteem or freedom (she would always say “I cannot understand parents who kick their kids out of the house- if you did anything that bad we would just never let you leave!” As a “joke”.) i had terrible acne at 16 and was recommend to go on. Birth control- my mom wouldnt let me because “you aren’t having sex”. No, I’m not because my face is covered in painful cystic acne my self worth is nothing, but so what if I was? Why does that matter? And she would just say “because I don’t want you having sex” and that was it (she is very actively pro-women’s reproductive rights, etc) ok fuck you mom. No wonder by 17 I was getting fucked by a line up of guys in a friends attic at a house party. I remember coming down after being completely objectified is the most animalistic way yo I could imagine, and I genuinely felt valued for the first time in my life. See! Someone WILL have sex with me! 

As soon as my mom found about drinking/drugs/ staying out past 10pm, i was on permanent house arrest. i didnt have my own car, and the "privelege" of being driven by my friend was taken away- i had to ride the bus with the middle schoolers as a senior in high school bc "we could be smoking weed". humilation was always the goal.

right right. my hair. so my first real trauma moment was when i stole this mean girl's magnet she "got on the yearly hawaii trip" from her locker after bullying me. or maybe i was just jealous she to have nice things and wanted her to shut up. thats it actually. i was suapected, lied and said no, and then went to the ends of the earth to paint it with nail polish and casually drop it on the ground (logic was...trauma). when my mom found out i lied i felt like i was actually going to die. she threatened to cut off my hair, which i honestly cant remember if that happened but im assuming yes bc the trauma still lingers any time i hear a phone ring like i did that night. yes, now i recall. she did, and it was an awful haircut and my brother called me ugly for weeks on TOP of fat, which he was allowed to do constantly because it was "true". just a couple years ago he told me to put a bra on under my pj shirt bc he could "see my boobs" and "they are disgusting". my mom saw nothing wrong with this. 

anyway, i cut my hair off. myself. my whole life that was my only sense of worth or value and i did it. and i feel incredible, and went to work and got showered in compliments, despite being more scared than anything in my entire life. and thats what it took to take that power away and see my own worth and beauty for the first time in my life. i am not the human trash i was led to believe, the ugly fat girl no guy would ever want to have sex with. the one that was manipulated by "pro parent" therapists while on suicide watch, that was forced to sign a parent release form when i turned 18 to continue eating disorder therapy because "she was paying for it" . fuck. i need to get out of this house