What I Learned in Six Years
- Locked due to inactivity on Nov 30, '19 3:54am
Thread Topic: What I Learned in Six Years
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I was an active member of GoToQuiz during some of the most horrifying years of my life.
When I joined the forums, I was 12 years old. The forums represented something completely new to me. It was my first time interacting with other people on a website. The forums were bursting with life and energy, constantly active with people posting about events in their own life and even receiving replies. A place where you could talk about yourself and strangers would read it and respond to it was unfamiliar to my growing preteen brain. I was mesmerized by the concepts of “soaps” and “glomping,” quickly learning how to “XD,” “*nuzzles*,” and “:3” along with the rest of 2013 Internet. As a 12-year-old, I was especially cringey. Reading back on my old posts, it’s easy to become consumed with embarrassing self-hatred and shame, but many posts reveal aspects of my life that were even more disturbing than my constant usage of “-chan” and “kawaii desu~ :3.”
At home, I was being abused. My mother would, in addition to physically beating me with whatever nearby object she could get ahold of, constantly belittle and berate me. I got in trouble at school a lot. It isn’t surprising, given the fact that I witnessed my father beat my mother on a few occasions and she would then beat me at home. One of my first memories is of my mother giving me a concussion for not getting out of the bathtub fast enough. I was around the ages of 4-6 during that incident. I thought violence and yelling was simply how people solved problems. Many of you might remember my disturbingly violent posts and references to gore. I was a weak child, but writing out violent fantasies helped me feel like there was some sort of control in my life. It wasn’t healthy and all I really needed was a visit from CPS and a child-psychologists, but that wasn’t my reality at the time. I was severely underweight as well, although constantly posting about how I wished to lose weight due to my mother often telling me what a fat whore I was. She didn’t feed us, choosing to get high in her bedroom instead and selling our food stamps for drug money. I wasn’t allowed to use the bathroom or get water either, risking a beating if I tried. This led to me wetting my bed well into my teenage years and getting back-to-back UTIs. I began to think the pain was just normal.
The first time I opened up about my abuse, I was immediately shut down and accused of lying and exaggerating. I knew even at that time that something was wrong with my home life, that something wasn’t normal, but the comment by this user telling me that “children these days” exaggerate and can’t handle being “disciplined” fed into my imposter-syndrome, something that many victims of abuse must deal with. I began to believe that user was right. When my mom beat me, I must have deserved it. She often told me she hated me and I once overheard her on the phone telling a friend she didn’t love me even though I was her child. If this user was right, that these things were normal and I was just being disciplined, then I must have been the devil incarnate to get my own mother to hate me.
As I got older, I began to realize more and more how bad things at home really were. I even began to post about it regularly, but instead of receiving validation like I hoped I was usually complained about and told to stop being edgy. Those people weren’t wrong exactly. In fact, I had a bad habit of lying on the internet as well, like every other 12- and 13-year-old on the internet, intertwining lies within true stories to try to make myself appear more interesting. However, what truly disturbs me the most about my old posts aren’t the ones where I talk about my home life and reveal the bad things that were going on. What disturbs me is the posts where I pretend everything is okay, where I post about forgiving my mother and trying to make things good again. My mother wasn’t always beating me of course. There were times where things were comparatively peaceful. I posted about these times and reading back on them now makes my stomach sink as I begin to think about her manipulation and abuse. I wish that someone, anyone, could have told me how wrong it was. I wish somebody would have helped me before it was too late.
That leaves me with the present. I now know I have OCD and what they call “complex PTSD” due to my childhood experiences. At 15, I went to a mental hospital and revealed to the staff and my father what was happening at home. Upon leaving, I went to live with my dad. A year later I would begin to see a specialist for trauma and OCD. Now, I am medicated and in university to become a paralegal, despite my mother’s insistence that I would never amount to anything in my life.
My purpose in this post isn’t to guilt-trip anyone. If you get anything out of this post, let it be this: believe people. Love people. Reach out to people. Don’t stay silent. Be empathetic, be understanding, be the one that reaches out. And for god’s sake, think about what you’re posting before you post it.
Above all else, you are valid. Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re exaggerating or lying when you’re opening up about something.
skip class and eat ass kiddos -
I love you so f---ing much homie ❤
This was a really brave and incredible thing to post. -
Your story is incredible, I'm so proud of you and all that you've accomplished! You're doing great, and I really appreciate the moral you're showcasing here
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Really impressed you made it through all that. Keep going fam.
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Thank you ♥♥♥
Thanks, I like to think I'm doing pretty well
Yeah me too lmao
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