I don’t know if you need trigger warnings here, so sorry if you don’t but I always want to be sure.

I have been feeling extremely mentally ill recently, having very extreme thoughts and being so anxious I can’t sit down, eat or function normally. I had no idea what was going on as I didn’t have a specific trigger this time, I just relapsed badly and I didn’t know why. 

And then something popped up on my snapchat memories from two years ago. A photograph of my friend which I remember specifically because I had nowhere else to go that day but stay there and that was the beginning of the really rocky journey I was about to embark on.

Two years ago, I was raped by someone I thought I knew. I never told my parents (who have always been substance abusers and emotionally abusive and in the case of my father physically abusive since I was a young child) but I became very withdrawn and sick, missing several days of college and refusing to leave my bedroom.

Shortly after, my mum attempted suicide. I’m not entirely sure why. My dad told me it was my fault, for being so depressing and ruining their family by refusing to just be ‘normal’. My dad told me to get out. He didn’t want me anymore, they didn’t want me disrupting their perfect life. 

And that was my last day at my parents house.

That was my last day in a part of the country I called home before I ran several hours away.

That was my last day that I could see my friends before I became too anxious to get close to anyone enough to make friends.

That was my last day of hope for the person I could have been, for the A-Levels I was about to complete and university I was about to attend.

That was my last day of being myself.

Since then, I feel like a shell. I am so empty and hopeless. I am so cut off and angry with everyone and angry with myself. I don’t trust anyone and I don’t trust myself. I spend every day wondering whether I truly am a piece of shit, whether my mum really did want to die because of me. I wonder what I have done in my life to deserve this.

I am in so much pain. I feel homesick for a home and a life I no longer have. I feel like a big chunk of me is missing. I feel grief and loss for myself, for the person I could have been if my family hadn’t been this way. I feel that I died two years ago, today. 

I’m not really looking for anything here. I just really, really needed to share that. I have never shared it before.