I’m a 22 year old woman and I was self reflecting after reading all my medical records because I realized there really is something wrong with me mentally. And the more I think about the experiences I had so far, I realized a lot bad things have happened to me because I always had to learn through experience.
All I knew as a kid was to not misbehave. My guardian and everyone else who lived there didn’t really build a bond with me. I was treated like I was already supposed to know everything so they couldn’t understand why I did certain things and was always annoyed. I feel like I was emotionally neglected.
As a pre-teen/teenager, nobody told me about sex or getting a boyfriend or even how friends might not really be your friends. And I never felt comfortable to ask about it either because they didn’t create a space for me to want to be that open. My guardians never spoke to me about setting boundaries or having respect for yourself.
Now as an adult once again, people get annoyed often when I don’t understand certain things like with work and being fairly new in the work force, people already expect to know how to do everything and it’s frustrating and embarrassing because sometimes I don’t know and sometimes I make mistakes and feel guilty for doing so. Even making friends and maintaining friendships is hard because most things people my age does, I’m simply not interested in, so I do feel like an outcast. And the times when I do feel like I have it all together, there’s someone there to correct me.
For the past 3 years I’ve been diagnosed with anxiety, depression & certain traumas that have affected me heavily. Doctors have recorded how when I talk about trauma, I laugh and smile to minimize its significance. I have a hard time making friends. The only person that I can go to and talk to is a therapist. I don’t have anybody I can call in case of an emergency or for advice or if I just need someone to talk to. It’s been diagnosed that I am autistic which I don’t believe but I won’t knock it yet. On the positive side, I am very goal oriented so that does motivate me to continue on with all the plans I have.
Reading all of this in my medical record made me very emotional and helped realize that there really is something wrong with me and I’m really not okay even though I try to pretend to be okay.
I feel very lonely and neglected. I feel like I’ve been failed. Even though there were people in my life who gave me a roof over my head, food in my tummy and clothes on my back, they all failed me. I’m mostly disappointed in my parents who brought me into this world and ended up not taking care of me. I can’t be mad at the guardians because they didn’t bring me in this world and they didn’t expect to be taking care of someone else’s child (these weren’t guardians looking to adopt, these were people helping my parents out). I really can’t be mad at anybody because they are all humans going through their own problems. It’s just confusing to me because if I decide to bring somebody into this world, I don’t want them to go through what I had to, I’d want them to be better. I wouldn’t want anybody to feel how I feel. I feel like I can’t be around anybody, I feel like I’m the problem & my feelings feel like a weapon formed against people so I try to justify other peoples actions to minimize my own feelings.
I hope one day I can have a group of people that I can call family. I hope one day, I won’t be afraid to speak up. I hope one day I will stop feeling lonely and I hope one day I feel comfortable in my skin.