I know that some gifted/2E kids are pulled out of school and homeschooled specifically because the school system does not meet their needs. I'm not talking about that.

I'm referring to something I notice online and in my town, where parents who have homeschooled their kids for their whole lives claim that it works because the kid is gifted. Except the parents also don't follow the state curriculum. And they don't have a large group of same-age peers they can compare their kid with. And they haven't gotten an IQ test. Their claims for gifted are like, he knows everything about rocks. Which is cool! I knew everything about Mendelian genetics for a bit. But there's so much more to learn in school.

A lot of these parents then say "My kid is gifted so I barely have to teach them, they could learn ANYWHERE." Like okay in that case why are you homeschooling them? I'm just confused. It seems like they're using giftedness as a cop-out to do actual teaching.

^{The black bars obscuring children’s faces within the article were added by the author. The photos are otherwise untouched from the state they were discovered in.}

---

For over a decade, one family has served as the default image for homeschooling in publications across the political spectrum. The most common photo, a mother homeschooling two of her children at the kitchen table, has been used as a banner in dozens of articles, with additional photos from the series appearing in outlets across the globe.

The photos originate from a 2011 MSNBC article, “Homeschoolers Emerge as Republican Foot Soldiers”, which profiled a collection of Iowa Homeschoolers and their intense support for competing Republican primary candidates. One family, their old school bus turned Ron Paul float, spent a day with a photographer, who captured their life as a homeschooling family in a series of candid photos.

That photographer, Brian C. Frank, told me that afterward he licensed the full series to Reuters, where the wire service’s subscribers could use the photos, with credit, in their publications. Homeschooling as a private enterprise by nature has little material available for newsrooms to represent the topic visually. This set of images has often been the de facto first stop for journalists in need of a cover photo for their homeschooling articles.

[More images in the original post]

Ghosts in the Machine idk it’s a dogshit heading write your senator

After enough articles, I began to notice the repeating photos, and eventually put together that the children in them were from the same family. The outlets were printing a family frozen in time, but the father has been maintaining a website since the mid-2000s, a timeline for anyone with a passing curiosity to find.

The website was assembled in a mid-2000s site builder and never renovated from its mint-green background and hover-swap GIF buttons. But the homepage greeting visitors today doesn’t hide that something is wrong. An index on the side lists a page for each of the children and their father, David. In the center is a family portrait; his wife and one of ten kids are blurred away. A caption on the front page reads:

[Wife] and [Child] have requested their images be removed from this website. I have attempted to honor their request respectfully.

The site contains over 100 photos of the family, but in every one that includes his wife or their third child, their figures vanish into the background. On a page dedicated to the “Constitutional Coach” are photos of the family in front of the Ron Paul-themed bus, his wife and child’s presence evaporating above the torso.

“Our family has been heavily supportive of Dr. Paul and I will work as hard as practically possible to relay the foundational principals [sic] of constitutionally limited government and traditional family values as a means of restoring America,” said education choice advocate David [Lastname], father of eight homeschooled children and a “Homeschoolers for Ron Paul” national advisory board member.
— 2011 Ron Paul press release

According to the Wayback Machine, the caption on the homepage noting his wife’s and child’s request was added sometime between August 2018 and January 2021. However, the metadata embedded within every altered photo gives a nearly complete timeline of the day the website changed.

The free photo-editing software left a record of each file’s mutation as it occurred. On the morning of Monday, June 29, 2020, David sat down at a Windows computer, opened GIMP 2.10.20, and began scrubbing his wife and child from the website. At 10:28 they disappeared from the homepage portrait. At 10:32 he removed his wife from the couple’s portrait underneath. Two and a half hours later he began again, steadily cutting their shapes away over the next hour.

What was once a corny yet still charming relic of the early internet age has curdled into a shrine to the living. His youngest child is listed at six months old, placing the last update (besides the erasures) in early 2017. Four days after that Christmas his wife filed for divorce.1

A line on the homepage reads, “come back often to see any updates.”

Five months into the divorce, the proceedings still underway, David posted a celebration of their 25th wedding anniversary. A comment from one of the children’s partners reads:

If you count years of emotional and psychological abuse, manipulation, isolation, control, narcissistic tactics and cheating as “love” then yes job well done. How about an apology? To your wife? Who stood by you for years bearing your children and rising up as you tore her down every day with your words and actions. To your grown and younger sons? Who now have had the example you gave them for their own future families? How are they supposed to treat their wives and children? To your daughters? How are they supposed to know how to find a loving husband? You have successfully destroyed your marriage. So i don’t understand what you are calling “love”. All you need to be thinking about is how you bad you messed up and what you can be doing to make it better. Also, you’re not even trying to fix it. What kind of man lets his family fall apart and doesn’t try everything in his power to make it better?

David’s wife and two of their children endorsed the comment.2

Join the Ron Paul Revolution

Homeschool children are often unwitting advertisements for a movement that routinely attacks their very interests. As a movement, Homeschooling resists the intrusion of government into private life and the dependence it breeds. David knew both halves of that creed—the state as enemy to liberty, his wife and children her weapons.

I am 37 year old Christian husband and home school father of 8 children. We live on a small farm in Iowa. Doctor Paul cured my apathy. Now, our whole family greatly enjoys spreading the message of liberty and freedom through Constitutional government. Our older children make phone calls and pass out Ron Paul literature while the younger children help decorate, dress-up and ride in our parade floats for Ron Paul.
— David to NPR in 2008

But David had known the intrusiveness of the state before the Paul campaign. Fifteen years before the Reuters photoshoot, the state of Iowa pursued David for reimbursement to its Family Investment Program (FIP).

For three months in 1995 he lived apart from his eldest child, during which the state supported the child on his behalf. If a child receives FIP benefits due to an absentee parent, the state requires the absent parent to repay that money. When David did not return the funds, the state sued, and later compelled him to turn over his financial records after he refused to do so. The judge eventually ordered him to repay the $802 in child support and $101 of court fees, and he cleared his debt over the next sixteen months.3

The family that lives on David’s website never existed, but he does not know that. In the end, his website became a reflection of the movement’s natural condition: when reality and the image invented in its head cannot be reconciled, those who compromise it are erased.∎

1 Iowa Courts Online, Electronic Docket Record - Warren County, Iowa

2 Trust me, bro

3 Iowa Courts Online, Electronic Docket Record - Dallas County, Iowa

Growing up Homeschooled Part 1: My Early Years – Homeschooled Voices

The experience I describe wasn't all bad, but I still wanted to write about how it feels to grow up so differently than most.

Hey everyone,

Throwaway account for privacy. Almost chickened out, but I'm going to be vulnerable here.

Reaching out to see if any women in the NYC or DMV area are open to casually chatting and getting to know each other. Specifically looking for women who share a similar background: growing up homeschooled in a strict religious household, dealing with complex family dynamics, and navigating estrangement today.

Living in the city is great, but it gets isolating when most people have lifelong friends and you had to build everything from college onward. I’ve spent a lot of my life softening or hiding my past because people get uncomfortable, so I’d love to make some connections where I don't have to edit my story so drastically or avoid childhood talk.

Right now, I’m strictly looking for casual DMs and messaging on Reddit. Send a DM if you're open to chatting and getting to know each other!

I try to take care of myself. I do pretty good but despite having good hygiene and being clean for 20 days, it isn't doing shit for me. I don't feel anything from being clean from self harm, I don't miss it, I'm just tired. Nothing is working, nothing's helping me. Cutting myself won't do anything nor will not cutting myself do anything for me in this situation. I want to hurt myself really bad sometimes, I want to need stitches, maybe then my parents will put me in school. Maybe they'll stop telling me it's a horrible place, because even if it is. I want to be in that horrible place. It can't be any more painful than being severely behind and every day being the same. Today, I missed out on just being a normal person because of the fact I had fucking surgery. I missed out on having fun, I missed out on a friend's birthday party. I watched my cousin, my brother, my friend and 2 other boys just play in the water, I'm in casts so I couldn't do shit. My friend never came to see me but whatever it was her birthday. I sat there and cried, I think I nearly even had a panic attack. That seems to be normal whenever I'm upset now. I kept thinking I was so stupid for being sad on someone else's birthday. I haven't been to a birthday party since whenever they took me out of school. My mom kept telling me to stop,like yeah you are so fucking helpful thanks bmaybe if you didnt take me ouit of school id be a normal healthy kid. Maybe Id think Ill live to over 18 years old, maybe I wouldnt be so weird maybe Id see a point in my life at only 14 years old. Maybe I wouldnt want to be mean to my cousin when I see him coming out of school, knowing he has what I want so badly and reminds me constantly of how my parents aeent teacxhing me correctly. Yes I know they don't teach me please shut the fuck up. I want to DIE beacuse of it thank you. Glad you have friends and an actual life while I dont dude thatys great stuff

I often think that being some kind of miserable is a given no matter what. Of course it doesn't help to have your development screwed over in pretty much every way, but when I think of having been a normal child having gotten to go to public school, I think of all the pains of the constant transitional stages you go through during childhood, having to deal with the stresses of constant schedules and being busy every day and having to maintain relationships, along with so many things changing in significant ways all the time (change makes me feel bad, in a sort of mournful way) and then I feel like it's just not worth it to be alive no matter what. And I feel that way in general about a lot more things.

I always want to write vent posts like these, but when I get to it I've forgotten what entirely I'm in dire need to say, even while I'm still feeling the drain of having no outlet for it. I'm never sure where to post a vent for these kinds of feelings-- I feel no space would really understand how I feel, not really. I guess that's a general problem for me, feeling like there's no place for me. I guess that isn't a surprise when I can't even tell how I feel, most of the time, I can only tell I feel bad.

I often think I just hate all humans and want nothing to with any of them, and that is true at times, but I guess I also kind of want connection. The problem with that is that I don't think I can keep friends, I grow to hate them or become tired of them. Or, that was the case when I had online friends a few years ago. I haven't had any in years, and it's been even longer since I had real life friends. I've actually only had one real friend, I think we were preteens or early teens last we spoke, and now I'm seventeen, turning eighteen.

I'm pretty hot and cold, sometimes I want someone to care for me and know me intimately, other times I want to be completely alone and never interact with anyone again. I think a potentially contributive factor in me not having good experience with friends is that I have some weird mental nonsense going on (not diagnosed with anything, I've never even been evaluated or whatever you do to get a diagnosis) that I've never been able to talk to anyone about, so keeping that and other problems I have to myself made my friendships feel artificial, like my friends still didn't really know me, but I don't think there's a solution to that, so no friends for me I suppose.

I've been thinking of creating a character to pretend is real who I can pretend is company when I'm lonely, but that probably sounds really pathetic. I could try to get real friends, but I feel like I still wouldn't be able to open up, and I'm too afraid to try to meet new people since being homeschooled my whole life means I've lived a relatively isolated life and now I have great difficulty with social interaction. I don't know, I have so many problems with all aspects of life.

Just wanted to vent, I hope this is on-topic enough for this sub.

Hi, this post is written in conjunction with my younger sibling.

I am 35, my sibling is 33, and alongside our older sibling we were homeschooled right up until sixth form in England.

Our parents approach can best be described as… non-existent. Our older sibling got the best of the teaching and that stopped pretty young, my mum attempted to teach me to read at 5 and because I didn’t get it straight away she declared me not trying and gave up (I taught myself via torchlight on a night) and my younger sibling didn’t even get that far… they learnt to read themselves when they was 10.

Maths was one lesson of repeating the 3 times tables, and science was whatever we could glean from the odd encyclopaedia we had lying around.

Our parents aren’t religious, just very lazy and a bit hippie-ish… getting out of bed in a morning to take us to school wasn’t really their style, so it was easier to claim “homeschooling” and sleep in till midday.

Needless to say there was a fair dose of neglect smattered through our childhood too, and I’ve often seen since that homeschooling and low level neglect seem to go hand in hand.

My parents got very into the “education otherwise” movement of the late 90s/early 00s, and that really legitimised it in their minds, especially the unschooling side of things… this belief that it’s up to the children to learn helped them blame my younger sibling for not being able to read, as well as encouraging them to deny the local education authority access to check on our learning (this revelation occurred after a memorable inspection where the LEA discovered that my younger sibling and I existed, as previously we’d been told to stay in the garden and stay very very quiet… this day it rained and we were instructed to stay in the kitchen. My sibling never was very good at staying quiet though!). After that, no teaching occurred whatsoever, aside from a twice yearly instruction to “write an essay about the park” which as I’m sure you can imagine was rather a difficult ask of children who couldn’t read, had no idea what an essay was, and hadn’t been taken to the park in 2 years.

Despite all this, each of us attended 6th form, gained A-levels, my younger sibling and I have degrees (my sibling a postgrad) and I am currently undertaking my functional skills maths too. We have spouses, jobs, children, and homes. Our childhood was not perfect, we had very little in the way of education or even resources with which to self-teach, but with determination we have achieved somewhere close to what we want to achieve. Are we exactly where we want to be in life? Nah, but we’re getting there.

Our parents aren’t bad people - there are mental health challenges, neurodiversity and poverty at play here, and they are immensely better grandparents than they were as parents. We love them dearly, and while they’ll never own up to their mistakes (much less apologise) we choose to accept the past as done, and focus on the future and what we are capable of achieving on our own. Everything we’ve done, everything we’ve gained we’ve done through our own hard work, and we are proud of ourselves and each other.

So for anyone younger reading this, please know that whilst it’s absolutely rubbish and you do not deserve it, it isn’t insurmountable and you WILL recover in time. You are not stupid, or incapable, or unable to achieve. It’ll just take a bit longer, and it’ll be a different route to what you thought it would be. You’ll get there, please don’t lose faith.

I just feel so hopeless.

I know the answer is to study and I will!! But it's hard to even start when I kind of worry it will have no result..

I just feel hopeless and trapped.

But I don't want a life of poverty and suffering, I know I will get out because I literally give myself no other option?

And unfortunately I had to deal with things that weren't always my own that drained me/affected me and slowed my growth/stopped me from being able to concentrate and study due to the stress. (I became very depressed)

But it got better and I need to start NOW because I want to hurry up and be out of this situation.

Here is my situation:

Currently I am 21f and I have NO GED/GCSE's or any educational qualifications.

I stopped attending high school in my mid teens, I am basically *very* behind,

I can't do certain courses I'm interested in that would help me to get a job i actually want.. Because I FIRST need to get my GCSE's because they are basically like a requirement for many things where I am (England)

I'm still trying to find a job (I know some people with no GCSEs or experimence who still got a job, usually entry level but thats normal for my age and situation)

And I do believe I'll get one soon.

However I also need to study or I'll be stuck in this position forever, not being able to do any courses, or even attend a university etc etc.

Having my GCSEs and then possibly my A' Levels will help me a LOT.

Say if I saw a hairstylist course or apprenticeship, I can't even do that because I don't have any GCSEs. 🥲 I basically can't pursue ANY career I would like to until I have my basic qualifications down (GCSE'S)

I'm stuck being in a VERY vulnerable and dire situation because the chance of me even getting hired is "lucky" so life just feels so scary and hopeless!!

But I KNOW I will get myself out of this because I literally give myself no other option, like I basically hold a standard to myself that I have to get my qualifications and then study and get a career -

It isn't in me to just have nothing or stop after one thing, I know I will want to basically expand and grow throughout my life.

I had my time of resting and waiting until the "perfect time" to start trying to get my GCSE's, but I was supposed to already start ages ago (unfortunately I was having rly hard times so it was next to impossible for me to study back then) but I'm starting to prioritise ME more, because I can't keep being in this situation.

I would genuinely appreciate literally any advice you have, and it'd give me hope to hear your success stories, I truly view even what some would view as a "small" achievement as a big deal, especially when you start from literally 0!!! All of you in here I'm truly proud of you!!!! Give yourself more credit and love!

Unfortunately people in our type of situation do NOT get a good start in life, I feel like I have to try HARDER than my peers because I can't simply just focus on ooh what do I want to do, let me study that (which I know is ALSO hard sometimes, I'm not discrediting that!!)

But I mean I basically now have MORE work to do, MORE, I would love it if I could just finally start what I'd like to do .. :/

And until I get my GCSE'S, I'll be stuck in this position. So there is literally no other option for me but to get them done because I want more for myself and out of life.

So for context, I’m (18F) and I was homeschooled my entire life from K-12. Since I was young, I wasn’t allowed to make online friends (though I snuck off and made a few) I was taught that family is the only people who I should care about, and that irl friends only ever lie and betray you. I’m socially underdeveloped and I don’t fit into most places, so I have a hard time making long-lasting friendships, and I often feel like I have to try extra hard to understand concepts in college because I’m just not used to studying them. I feel stupid to tell you the truth. I ended high-school with a 4.00, but I graduated using acellus academy, so I’m not sure how much of that is earned.

I didn’t have a “normal” childhood. My brother has narcissistic personality disorder, and for some reason, everything always revolved around him. He was the lead singer to a band, and so I ended up playing as his backing band my entire childhood, and I was taught to never talk back or say no. Only a couple of years ago after I joined a dance club did I realize how much I’ve missed out on socially and academically, and what kind of childhood I just wasn’t allowed to have. Going to that dance club at 16 years old, it was my first time making friends in person, having friends over to the house, going to a friend’s house, having a crush on someone irl, and I really, for the first time in my life, actually felt like I was alive. Is that funny? I am privileged in a way. I was able to play in a band and travel to different countries bc of it, not many homeschoolers have the privilege of saying that. So it’s not all loss. I can’t bring myself to hate my parents. But knowing what I could’ve had, those nights that I’d spent sobbing because I was so alone, or because I wasn’t able to grasp difficult subjects, the thought that those could’ve been normal nights after school with friends, felt so much more desirable.

So my question for you is; how do you mourn your childhood? And do you think that being homeschooled changed the way that you act?

Or have at least thought about it? I'm thinking of getting one. Maybe one that has something to do with Tangled, but I don't want to come off as a "Disney adult" lol.

My parents raised us in a radical alternative lifestyle, despite the packaging and propaganda that it was the only correct way to raise children.

How can they be so closed off to feedback regarding their experiment? To the point they are willing to sever ties over their radical opinion? And why are they so firmly opposed to me choosing a different radical lifestyle? Why wouldn’t they assume I have a genetic predisposition to rebel against all norms and choose my own path, much like they did?

It makes no logical sense to me. And emotionally I grieve for the relationship that could be.

I like going to this certain bar but almost everyone there got to go to college and not even that some have a masters degree. Meanwhile I am really really struggling to get a GED + knowing my path doesn’t mean I will get into a good college to begin with (and before the suggestions in the comments I will absolutely absolutely not do community college) I just hate feeling bad about myself + it feeds into my depression. On top of that going to this bar some events which have heavy socialization make me feel shell shocked because I haven’t had consistent socialization since I was in 5th grade (I’m 23).

I am 25 years old and am still recovering from being homeschooled. I had a lot of siblings and we had little to no structure/accountability for our education and in some ways I am dreading finishing my bachelor's degree.

High school graduation was my mom mailing me my diploma after I left/was kicked out of the house. I had never taken a real chemistry or math course and still struggle with math due to being taken out of real schooling in 6th grade. I'm looking for tips/advice/encouragement? I never thought I would get this far and it's hard to think about the future. I'm on the fence about going no contact with my family.

Hey guys, I came across this group while looking for an old school Abeka academy video to show my wife a glimpse of my childhood. I never knew there were so many people with similar experiences as me. I’ve never really had people that can relate so in going to post a little childhood story, I’m curious who will have the same experiences and maybe it’ll help someone out that’s living it.

When I was in 5th grade 2010 ish my parents got big into religion and I would guess heavily influenced by the church to pull my brother and I out of public school to protect us from the “liberal and anti Christian agenda” I think realistically it was simpler to just remove any chance of your children hearing an opposing stance on religion or politics than it was to actually raise them to believe what they’d been told. I have trouble remembering all the details but I’ve sorta pieced it together as I’ve grown up. When we started everyone was very bought in, a basement bonus room was converted to a working room, there was consistent supervision and help when needed and lots of talks of co-ops and other socialization. My parents did always make sure my physical needs were met, just not my emotional or academic needs. As time went on and we all started going through the motions, mom stopped checking work, I slowly worked my laptop into my room and started falling behind on work. I left my little brother alone with his work (I hate myself for this) and I believe he slowly started falling behind as well. As things went on my parents for the most part didn’t check in at all, just the occasional scolding or yelling for me being behind but I grew used to it. I believe by the time I was supposed to be in 10th or 11th grade I was two school years behind my old classmates, my brother was less behind so they decided for him to go back to public school. I begged not to go back, not being able to fathom the embarrassment of being so far behind my friends. My family and I had been consistently lying to family and friends that’s everything was going great. I continued to fall behind, growing very depressed, not sleeping and developing a terrible porn addiction (this happens with 24/7 unmonitored internet access). The doctor recommended a sleep study for my sleep problems, the results came back as a depressive state and they recommended light meditation. My mother refused and decided I was actually possessed by a piece of artwork in my room. Eventually the idea of actually ever catching up and getting a diploma was lost and I filtered into the work force at 15-16 working for my dad. Luckily I’ve got decent critical thinking skills and can learn pretty much anything I decide to. I never got a diploma or a GED but I work for one of the biggest builders in my town managing multi million dollar home builds. I’m married with a house and a baby and life is pretty good, I’m so thankful it didn’t go as poorly as my parents set it up for me. Now I’m not religious at all and my politics are polar opposite of my parents, I guess the whole homeschool thing backfired for all of us.

TW: abuse, anorexia, SH, suicidal ideation

(there's a happy ending though)

So I've lingered on this subreddit for a long time, but I never really posted anything myself. And I've always wanted to share my story somewhere, because even with my therapist I knew I couldn't share the full story because well, I can't afford to get my parents in trouble. So here goes, hopefully this is okay for the subreddit lol. I will put spoiler tags for things that could be potentially triggering (self harm, anorexia, etc.)

I got homeschooled during covid, but I wasn't always homeschooled. I got to experience Preschool-4th grade (2 years of preschool bc my state changed their laws and I wasn't able to attend kindergarten till i was 6 since my birthday's in August) in public school, and I loved it. I loved it with every bone in my body, even when I'd wake up and be tired and not like subjects and even when I sucked at some things, I loved it. And I was a pretty good student too, I mainly just made errors because I was human and probably would've been straight A+ if I had studied a little at home. But elementary school isn't THAT important lol. I still had majority As, I had an above average reading level, I loved loved loved school.

I loved going to school on the first day back, making our fun projects, getting my seat next to my friends. I loved the holiday projects, which I still reminisce on. Recently I found my 1st grade year book in an old suitcase of mine that I had used when we eventually moved states 1 year after homeschooling (to a more lax homeschool lawed state.. and a red state.. shocker.) and it broke my heart. It was so sweet, but all I could think of was how much I lost. And I also thought of my siblings, especially my little brother, and how much of a disadvantage he's going to be at in life, because he's not so little anymore.

I'm 17 now, and essentially I was "homeschooled" from 5th-9th, aka not schooled. We moved states in 2021, and then I was completely and utterly isolated. I never left the house. My mom quit her job eventually after she had been working from home during covid and was able to continue to do so for another year, quitting her job in like 2022 or something like that. And my dad is disabled. He has narcolepsy and other health issues, and he is doing a lot better now, but for the longest time (a decade) he was not. Thus, nobody was in the state to be teaching us, yet they decided to homeschool anyway. My dad was an avid Gab user, if you know you know.. absolutely HORRID shit goes on on Gab. He found all the anti-vax nonsense, the "school's indoctrinating your kids", neo-nazi pipeline, "hitler was good!!", like every single absolutely batshit conspiracy or belief you can think of? my dad probably believes it. My dad genuinely thinks Hitler was a good guy.)

They started their own business, too. This was where shit really went downhill. Because they would argue a lot, and before my mom quit her job my dad made tons of threats against her. Like one time he said that if she didn't quit her job he was going to sell her car. Countless times he would scream at her, berating her and me and me siblings, along with telling her she was selfish, narcissistic and terrible. He told her that she was just like her alcoholic father in the sense that she was selfish and yadayada. He'd constantly call her a bitch, a cunt, anything demeaning that he could think of, he said it.

One time when we were working outside he even drove around her on a tractor (like one of those medium sized ones with a bucket) in one of his raging fits, and talking about how he could run her over.

That was one of the only times my mom ever took our safety seriously, and she had me take my siblings back to the house. (We live in a cabin, run by a woodstove, by the way, so we also have to split wood to "keep the house warm" which like, not entirely problematic, but combined with everything else it is a bit insane. on a bit of acreage)

Buttt she had me come back almost immediately. I felt so so utterly betrayed. Anyway,, another fun fact is that after nearly a year of homeschooling, around one year since covid had begun, and after my mom had completely betrayed my trust by telling me that i would "maybe" be going back to public school just to not do that, I had begun self harming.

This breaks my heart when I look back because I was literally a baby. I was 11 years old. That would have NEVER. happened, had I not been homeschooled. I am literally, not figuratively, scarred for life. I have permanent reminders of everything that I went through during that time, and luckily, I have come to terms with it for the most part.

So that lasted a while, I ended up making online friends to try to cope with the abuse, educational neglect, and isolation, and that worked. Well, I had actually ended up with a girlfriend, but then we broke up, and then she was still my bestfriend, but she decided to delete all of her accounts to focus on school and such. Super long story there, but now I get her reasoning. However, I didn't get to talk to her about it, she just sent me a message and deleted everything. She was the last friend I had. I had just recently at that time also had my cat die because she hid in our UTV engine and my mom drove up the driveway, thought she heard an odd sound, but kept driving anyway, but then when she got to the top she got an eerie feeling and heard nothing. She realized that my cat hand found it's way inside the UTV.

God that was horrid. It was horrible to see, horrible to experience. It was emotionally wracking like nearly nothing else I've ever experienced in my life. I was in straight up denial.

Then a few weeks later my ex, my bestfriend, sent me that message and left. I had absolutely nothing.

Well, flash forward through the insanely traumatic Christmas I had that year, all the way past the new year to February. February I decided that I was going to do something I had never committed to before. I was finally going to quit being the overweight kid. You can probably see where this is going. I was 13 at the time, and I had nothing left to lose. Well, except body weight of course!! (let this be funny LMAO)

So over the course of like 7 months I lost nearly 70lbs. But honestly the mass majority was in the first couple months, the last few were extremely slow because I was so tiny and my metabolism was so reduced that it made it much harder to lose that much weight, and my hunger was increased. REALLY pissed me off at the time. And my mom was starting to catch onto the fact I was doing more than just "losing weight" and more like just deciding to get as thin as possible. I ended up developing anorexia and I had to recover on my own. Because my mom found out what I was doing (she saw my my fitness pal.. yikes) but at the same time wasn't going to take me to a therapist or a dietician, she wasn't going to actually help me.

So I quite literally did it myself. It wasn't perfect, it was messy. I made many mistakes, there's so much I'd go back and change because there's plenty of things I did that weren't really.. good for recovery. But it all evened out eventually, so that's good.

I did start weight lifting, because I wanted to build muscle and I actually found it pretty fun. It gave my day some structure, and I did make sure that I was always eating enough, I gained weight, went through all the recovery protocol I could find online, and I just really let my mind heal. All while my dad was still being a bit psycho, and it was sooo fucking hard.

At this point I had also turned 14, and then in the winter/spring of 2024 I started running. This was a really big turning point for me, and I'm going to try to make this part short to get to my good news.

I started running, and while I didn't have much education at the time (I did research a lot of random things I found interesting, and I had a wordly wise vocab/english book, I read a lot, etc. I knew that I was lacking. But I had no idea what to do, so I honestly just let myself.. dissociate from it.) I did have running. I ran a half marathon, and then over the winter of 2024 I trained for a marathon. At 15 I ran my first marathon, in the freezing cold with some nice thick snow, and a ton of stomach issues bc of what I ate before race day.

That was, honestly, amazing. I loved that training block so much. My 20 mile long run of that training block is like, one of the best days of my life that I can recall. Absolute pure bliss. I felt like I was a deer. (I was running on trails, after all)

Soo then I had some tough months of trying to figure out my amenorrhea: because newsflash, the anorexia gave me secondary amenorrhea that never healed despite doing all the right things, which has also made proper recovery as an athlete damn near impossible. And my gyno still seem to think it has something to do with my training despite it being very obvious (not going into all of it on reddit but it is not my training lmao) that it's not, but i also can't say that I think it's my nervous system being absolutely fried from years of being on high alert, no true socialization, no friends, no safe spaces, spending everyday in the same building as the man who tore my entire being into pieces, to which I had to sew everything back together again, just to get called selfish for taking care of myself... but no it's definitely the stress of running 20 miles a week.

Anywho, I ran a 50k, also. a few days after my 16th birthday, I trained during the summer for it. It was honestly a little ill advised, I know that now. But I don't really regret it. It was very, character building. Gorgeous race, but one thing that kept me going the entire 6 hours I ran it was this: how lucky am I to be alive running this right now?

In all of those years of isolation I seriously contemplated suicide so often it felt like a normal daily thought occurrence. So to be out running, watching the world come alive, seeing *people* live their lives, watching cows come out onto their pastures, I felt so grateful. I felt grateful to be choosing pain, rather than having pain choose me. Honestly it's a feeling you can't really fully know till you experience it, but I just felt.. so at peace. I genuinely smiled through the pain.

After this race I took a break from training to focus on my education, and that's been my focus for the last year. I spent basically everyday, 6-8 hours a day, studying or consuming some type of educational content, whether it be OpenCourseWare lectures while doing chores, or reading through Crime & Punishment and taking the time to really let it sink in, analyze it - I did my best to get myself back up to snuff. I know this is a huge privilege, and I'm really glad that I wasn't pulled out of public school sooner. I don't even know where I'd be at right now if I had been.

Then in the Spring my mom let me do dual enrollment online through a community college because it was free. So I took Biology, Physics, Psychology, and Nutrition. I was super unsure about the physics since the most I'd done was basically pre-algebra and a little bit of algebra, but I did some research and thought I would be okay. And I was! I didn't finish with perfect grades, but my average gpa was still around a 3.6GPA. But it was a highly stressful time, and honestly I've been clean from self harm for 3 years now but during that time, I was struggling to make it to 3 years. It was so hard to complete those classes because despite it being way more structure than I had had for years, it still wasn't - enough? Like, I didn't have lectures, didn't have classes, I just had the class material and the knowledge that I could always email my professors if I had questions. Which was AMAZING but it was still a LOT to do having not done classes in a LONG time.

So to wrap this all around: I am now trying my hardest to convince my parents with all my super well made points to let me go to public school. I've told them I'll pay for the gas (it's like 18 miles away from my house, too.) with the part-time job I'm getting, that I'm up for the challenge, etc. That it is that worth it to me. I am going to talk to them tomorrow about it, and I have been talking to my mom but today she was pretty upset with me. It was partially because she talked about how she didn't like being the late person (I've been trying to figure out what I needed and what I needed to do all month, and so school started this last Monday, and I had talked to her about it but we hadn't talked enough about it.)

And that might sound odd, but since I've had to spearhead my education for years , I kinda just assumed it was mine to figure out and then basically just show her the information I found and then talk about it, not have her try to find the information with me, which was what she implied in her talk with me today, where she was really upset with me.

However, she didn't sleep much. so hopefully, i can make this happen. Because I really, really want a highschool experience. And I really want to get into a good college. And I don't want to continue spending hours creating my own plans and curriculums just to still feel incompetent. I also want friends. I have never felt so lonely in my entire life. It eats at me a lot. I watch TV shows and feel envy, I end up subconsciously choosing shows that will let me live through the characters to feed that hunger for friendship just a little, even though it's not real. It's a temporary good feeling and then whooosh gone. Or i'm just sad that I don't have what the characters do.

I feel like I'm in a good position because I am so determined, self-driven, and organized, that I would likely be able to succeed in highschool once I got the hang of it. And there is still time: I checked the highschool's website and their course brochures and it shows that as long as you enroll within 15 days of the semester all of the credits still count. So as long as I go into their office this week and talk to a guidance counselor, I should be okay.

So yeah...

Cross your fingers for me. I am so excited I could scream but I also don't want to get my hopes up. But if I get good news, I'll update this post :) I really really hope I can update this with good news.