I’ve been seeing my therapist for over a year and I had one session with a psychiatrist recently. Psychiatrist says he wants to keep bipolar 2 in the back of his mind but still unclear and my therapist seems to think everything I do is completely normal. Of course, there is an implied tone of disagreement there. The truth is that I’m unsure. I’ve spent my entire life thinking it’s normal to feel the way that I do. Not literally - I’ve always been extremely self reflective and have picked myself apart to the bone. From early childhood I can remember completely hating who I was and feeling an immense sense of guilt and shame for every bad thing around me. It hasn’t stopped. It’s definitely gotten worse now that I’m older and have made many mistakes I can actually take credit for. I love my therapist and she’s doing her best with the information I give her - I just have a habit of lying and altering the intensity of my situation. I tend to downplay certain situations in order to protect the people involved. I tend to make situations sound worse to make myself sound worse. I feel like I make everything up in my head. I feel like a complication and a burden to everyone around me. I feel like no one sees me and neither do I. I feel like no one knows the real me and I fear that I will never figure out who that person is.
Here’s what I know:
1) Sometime before pre-k I had a thing with a neighborhood kid that was closer to 10. We’d play these “games” that were explicit and I was usually the “woman” in the scenario. I remember thinking that this person liked me the way my dad liked my mom.
2) bullying started at home when my brother and sister would call me the f word and many family members would tell my mom how gay I was due to my music, toy, and tv interests. This would continue well into middle school.
3) when I was about 4 I learned that my siblings were not my dads biological children and the divide started. I was the only thing my parents shared as a biological connection despite all the division. I had no choice but to be the center.
4) when I was about 4 or 5 my mom left for 3 months to another city and I called her everyday from the principals office crying to tell her how much I missed her. I could literally not function without her.
5) When I was about 6 I got caught kissing my girl cousin and was shamed profusely for it.
6) Somewhere between 3-8 my parents would break up and get back together - usually as a result of infidelity. I slept with my mom and would witness lots of verbal abuse, physical intimidation, and some physical abuse from my dad. When I try to remember my mom through my childhood self, I remember her crying.
7) things I remember that I don’t have dates for: dad catches me with a bra positioned against my chest in the mirror and scolds me. Dad catches me shaving my legs after wanting to be like my aunt, and scolds me. Got used to being disappointed with gifts because it was always the most boyish things that I knew they knew I didn’t like - made me feel confused and misunderstood. Was set in front of a TV at a very young age alone to watch the lifetime special “A Girl Like Me: A Gwen Araujo Story” - a true story about a trans woman that was murdered simply for existing and liking a boy who I related to very much. It made me feel if I dared to exist the way she did, i would be murdered. Wet the bed until I was about 7 or 9. My parents divorced and everyone blamed and shunned my mom. I would write “I hate myself” enough times to feel up a paper when I upset my parents. I’d hide in closets and under tables. My dad disappeared for a month and finally called from a private number to tell me he would see me soon and that he met a girl. The first time I met my stepmom was at a bbq and that night I expressed wishing my dad could move back and she butted in that he had priorities to take care of - established that she was a bigger priority than me. My siblings would cry often as they felt he was forgetting them, he would consistently tell them we would always be equal to him. He lied. I would make my mom feel terrible when she couldn’t meet him halfway until she found someone to borrow gas money and/or a car or ride from. My step mom gets pregnant and says that her child will never know who my brother and sister are and that my dad never loved them he only pitied them. I believed her. Later when I felt otherwise, i only felt shame for not standing up for them.
During middle school - present day, I have developed crushes on anyone that was nice to me and I’d pretty much be obsessed with them. Not stalk them, but my day was and is dependent on how they treated me.
I started dating my boyfriend when I was 17 in senior year of high school and we are still together 9 years later. 1 year in he told me he cheated on me the entire first year as he had never left his ex. I led away to college and we had been going long distance. I went on to cheat on him over a hundred times in often unsafe practices. I tried to leave him numerous times before and during the cheating and before I ever even left for school bc I knew it wouldn’t work but he’d cry and I didn’t like to upset him so I stayed. Any time he tried to leave me, I treated it like a test to see if I would abandon him and I always did my best to pass those tests. I always did. He caught me cheating and I lied and said it was only a few times. He still doesn’t know the extent of the cheating. We have never been sexually active with each other - mostly just passionate making out in the beginning and some oral but once I moved it all stopped completely almost. July 2022 he says he met someone else and they make him feel attractive, loved, liked, and like an actual boyfriend. He said we were basically just friends and he wanted a partner. I begged him to stay and apologized for all I had done. He said in order to stay we’d have to be in an open relationship.‘I agreed. A month later, I tested positive for HIV and he negative. He stayed. I didn’t tell anyone else. I lost my insurance and had to stop seeing my therapist. Hardest few months of my life. December 2022 I took a delta 8 gummy and realized I was strong enough to let him go and healed a big part of my inner child. January 2022 I reconnected with an ex who was ok with my status and I realized love was possible for me. I tried breaking up with him, he begged me not to - so I agreed to try. Eventually pushed the ex away and would continue to push him away despite having the title of a couple. He said we could close the relationship, I said no.
There’s more but I think I’ll stop here.
My dad and other people
I blame my parents 
My anxiety is so bad I’m anxious about writing this!🙁
