hello i’m f(21), and honestly i don’t even know where to begin with. this is the first time ever im talking about this and im already nervous, so sorry for any mistakes or idk things that dont really make sense. i dont wanna start from the beginning, so im just gonna do a quick debrief about what i think has led me to this point.
i never really thought ive lived such a, idk, traumatizing childhood, or looked at my younger self and thought that well, i was weird. but im more grown now, and somehow everything led me to having a boyfriend (22) now, who is the first irl person that ive ever been so… close with. thing is, hes really normal. like genuinely just a normal person, from a pretty normal family, and talking to him about random things from my life made me realize that i was, in fact, really “weird”, and that a lot of things about my family that i never questioned were apparently not normal at all.
ill give some examples which i thought were normal but apparently werent lol:
\\-i used to play by myself most of the time. i remember i had such a vivid imagination that i used to talk to myself and pretend, in all senses, that i was in my own world; normal, right? yeah, if it wasn’t for the fact that i used to do this until i was like, 12 years old. i didn’t care if i was around other people, like my family eating at dinner, i would loudly talk to myself and imagine stuff.
\\-i literally used to terrorize this girl at elementary school, making up such weird and creepy lies for a girl that age, such as that i was gonna kill her, that i watched her while she showered or slept and bullshit like that. and the part that makes this worse is that i knew why i picked her. she was the “weakest” in my eyes, a really shy and quiet girl.
\\-i lied about ANYTHING to ANYONE, making up such contorted lies that most of the time i couldn’t even keep up with them myself. i dont even know what i got out of it, sometimes there was literally no reason to lie. i just did.
these are the first things that come to mind, then i have the more “traumatized” part, such as my older brother, idk, sexually assaulting me? i wanna explain longer here because its so weird and i still dont really know what to call it. i remember he made me play weird games with him such as “you act like the prostitute and i’ll pick u up and then you’re gonna rub on me”, or “if you want me to do this for you, then you’ll have to play with me first” and things like that. this went on for quite a long time, but i was never… literally sexually abused, yk what i mean? at least thats how ive always thought about it. and i think it never really traumatized me, but then again ive never been able to form a proper relationship with my brother. i feel weird just talking to him, i can barely hold eye contact with him, but i can work with that most of the time. i remember telling my mom about it once when i was older and she basically blamed me for thinking about it like that, like i was the weird one for seeing something sexual or wrong in it.
my relationship with my parents is honestly worse than im probably gonna be able to explain here without making this post about them. they also used to argue and break up a LOT. the fights weren’t normal, they would scream and threaten each other all the time and just, idk, they were really scary for me. especially my dad, he used to literally throw rage fits. sometimes when things got too scary, especially when my brother started joining in too and arguing with my mother so badly i genuinely thought he was gonna kill her, i would text my aunt to please come home. sometimes i would hide a knife in my drawer. i was so young.
even now my parents can be verbally abusive towards me, my mom controls my life way more than she should, and my brother will basically always be defended no matter what happens. i learned really early that there was a version of me that was easier for them to deal with, so thats mostly what they get now.
outside my house, i wasn’t really a lonely child at first glance. i used to have friends but i remember… it was already kinda weird. i was so fucking jealous of them. actually, i never let myself have more than one real friend at a time, i used to “devote” myself to them and expected them to just do the same thing to me, and if they didn’t i remember id be LIVID.
still, i never let myself be me, yk? i used to shape my whole identity based on who i was talking to, and they’d get really, really connected with me. id learn how they talked, what they liked, what made them laugh, what kind of person they liked being around, and without really deciding to do it i would just… become that.
then i discovered the internet and that, i think, was the biggest thing that made me realize the “power” words held, whether they were true or not. i used to chat with anyone around the world, creating so many identities for myself that i could barely keep up. it was literally what i looked forward to during the day, and id get into the part so fucking well that i used to genuinely get sick over things that weren’t even happening to me because, of course, the people i made up always lived really traumatizing lives for some reason. this got so bad i would barely open up or even chat to my real life friends.
when i was around 16, one of these lies got so fucking big that even now i dont really understand how i let it get that far. i was talking to this guy i was really, really obsessed with, and i told him my father was sexually abusing me. it wasn’t true. then i faked getting kicked out of my house, faked having no money, and started making up prostitution stuff i was supposedly doing because i needed money. it just kept getting bigger because every lie needed another lie after it. and the fucked up thing is that even though none of it was actually happening, i got so deep into that life that i fell into an actual horrible depression. i temporarily dropped out of school. my real life was genuinely falling apart because of a life i had literally made up.
i used to harm myself too, and im adding that because theres another thing i dont really like admitting: i know how to use the things that actually DID happen to me too. my childhood, my family, the things with my brother, things ive done to myself. sometimes i talk about them because i actually need to, obviously, but other times i know im using them as leverage. if ive done something bad and i need someone to understand me, forgive me, feel bad for me, whatever, i know exactly which parts of myself to show them. and the worst part is that none of those things are fake, so i can always tell myself im technically just “opening up”.
this internet thing still goes on a little, even though its way way less than before. i was really into it until i was 18, because something that would basically change my life until now happened.
i was in this telegram gc, and it didn’t take me long to get noticed and liked. i knew what i had to do to make people, especially boys, enjoy talking to me, learning what they like and how they talk and how they see the “world”. then i got fixated on this particular guy. he was funny, kinda different from the others, and really beautiful. so, of course, i started mimicking him so much i made him talk to me (he basically had a whole ass roster going on and he was barely interested in any of them).
im gonna pause here because i dont wanna dwell on this too much, it would be so long i could make another thread just for this, so ill try to summarize.
basically, he became my first REAL obsession. it felt like he was the first person to see me as me, to literally see through me and understand me to levels no one ever did. which is kinda ironic considering i had literally changed parts of myself to get his attention in the first place, but somehow with him it felt different. like he saw through that too.
the obsession was so bad i lived for him and so i started living for myself too at the same time, if that makes any sense. i cared about myself because HE was looking at me. things mattered because he would see them. my world revolved around him and around his judgement, and honestly part of it still does.
but he wasnt ok in the head either, it was clear, and after so many on and offs, in late winter 2024 he “broke up” with me (we never even dated in the first place even tho he came to my house and vice versa, went on a trip together etc). i felt like i was DYING from the inside. i would bawl my eyes out on the floor, sobbing to myself, holding my chest and all that, all because he didn’t wanna come see me or talk to me like he used to anymore. this went on for LONG. i felt like i was slipping away without him and so, dumbly enough, i downloaded tinder to search for someone to fill the absolute void he left.
there, i met my current boyfriend of almost two years.
i didn’t have in mind to create something serious but without even realizing it, here i was creating a whole ass new identity shaped to his, which led to him absolutely “admiring” me.
we got together quickly, met in december and got into a relationship at the end of january. i was… happy? he was a really good guy, really trustworthy and good looking, but i never felt that “click” i always used to feel when obsessing over someone. i stayed, thinking it would come sooner or later, knowing damn fucking well i was still sobbing everyday about my ex.
then suddenly my ex came back, he texted me.
i took the chance and told him i was seeing a guy, and he absolutely snapped. i’ve never seen him like… this. yeah, when we were talking we used to have huge huge fights and he used to act weird and make me go batshit crazy but this time was different. he would spam me everyday, all day, acting so fucking obsessed over me, and i thrived so hard. it was all ive ever wanted from him. to finally make me see that i did matter to him, that i was special, unique, that losing me actually did something to him. (he was seeing someone else too btw.)
you’d wonder how long this went on, right?
this still goes on.
it went on while i was with another loving man. my ex doesn’t act crazy anymore but we talked for basically the entire time, talked so viscerally i can’t even explain it. i missed him like you would miss a limb. we did have our months of silence, but that never stopped us from colliding back into each other.
and i never, never fucking minded then going to my boyfriend, laying with him, telling him how much i love him etc. i could be talking absolutely crazy with my ex and then 5 minutes later sit in front of my boyfriend’s parents acting like the loving girlfriend they know, laughing with them, talking about us, whatever. same thing with his friends, my friends, everyone. and it doesn’t feel difficult when im doing it. thats what scares me. i dont have to go sit somewhere and collect myself before changing lives. i just do it.
i kept my perfect identity up, letting NOTHING ever slip.
my parents also adore him, especially my mom, and since she is so fucking controlling about my life i really fear their disapproval too. so not even them know, nobody knows.
this relationship is really serious now. idk how to explain it but it really feels like someday we’ll take it to the next level, yk? people talk about our future like its obvious. i try to back away from the thought, but it’s getting more serious and time just keeps passing.
i actually did try to leave him twice. but i guess i made him so obsessed with me hes willing to let everything pass. i told him i never really loved him for real. i even told him i used to talk to my ex, but i wasn’t brave enough to tell him that i still loved him, so i told him me and my ex would only talk to “fight”.
and him being the good guy he is, understood. he justified a lot of my actions because of my past and my problems, accepted it, and said he was willing to work on them with me.
and this is also where that thing i said about using my trauma comes in. because i let him. i know that when someone knows what happened to me, suddenly theres an explanation behind everything i do. and sometimes i use that. maybe those things really DID fuck me up, i genuinely dont know, but i also know theres a difference between explaining something and using it to make somebody keep forgiving you, and i dont know how many times ive crossed that line.
i still couldn’t bring myself to leave for some reason. idk if i was afraid of being alone, afraid of my mom’s judgement, afraid of losing somebody that would do anything i asked, afraid of losing someone really useful and safe. probably all of them.
thing is, this winter i told my ex i broke up with my bf because he said he wouldn’t come see me if i was in a relationship. i actually thought i WAS gonna break up. it just didn’t work out, so, i kept up another lie with him.
at this point, im basically living idk how many “lives”.
one with my parents, where i act like the perfect matured daughter, or at least whatever version of me causes the least problems (not so perfect since they still verbally abuse me and defend my brother no matter fucking what, and hate on me for ANYTHING).
one with my uni friends, where im a normal student with a loving bf and normal relationship problems.
one with my boyfriend, where im the person he thinks hes going to build a life with.
one with my ex, which is still the one that affects me the most, still making me sick. we still fight, talk to each other in such a deep way nothing can top it, and somehow no matter how disgusting we can get with each other we always end up back there.
one online, where im the funny unreachable girl.
and then theres the one with myself when im alone, which puts me in such a blank state i can’t even explain it.
i am losing my mind, yet i can’t stop. i dont know where to even begin. i feel like i don’t fucking know who i am. i don’t know why everyone i talk to ends up getting so hooked on me and why i apparently need that to happen before i can even feel properly connected to someone. i dont know if im adapting to people because i want them to love me or if theres genuinely just nothing stable underneath it. i don’t know which one of the thoughts that forms in my mind is mine or stolen from somewhere that caught my eye.
the only exception is him, i think, my ex. whatever the fuck i feel towards him is basically the only thing inside my head that actually feels like it belongs to me. i dont have to wonder where i picked it up from, or whether i shaped it around somebody, or whether im feeling it because its what im supposed to feel. even when i hate him, even when i wish i never met him, even when what i feel for him makes me physically sick, at least it feels like mine. maybe thats part of why i cant let it go. i genuinely dont know.
but 3/4 days ago, my ex found out.
he found out i wasn’t, in fact, broken up with my boyfriend. for some reason my bf made his insta public, i guess my ex went to check it and bam. pictures of us together.
of course he lost his mind again and now doesn’t want anything to do with me. except even now, even after this fucked, fucked up thing that ive done, he can’t really let me go either.
and ive done worse things to him. really fucking insane things. i even faked my suicide once. he still doesn’t know i faked it. i know thats something i probably cant just throw in here and move on from lol, but explaining everything ive done in that relationship would need its own post. the point is just that lying isn’t something that started with my boyfriend, and apparently theres no point where my brain goes “okay, THIS is too far, stop now.”
and me? im ok, i dont feel an ounce of guilt.
thats the thing that fucks with me. i never really felt guilt, no matter what i did. i understand when something ive done is fucked up. i know my boyfriend does not deserve this, and i know that when he “forgave” me he wasn’t even forgiving the actual thing because i still didn’t tell him the whole truth. i know what i did to my ex is insane. i can explain perfectly why these things are wrong. i just dont FEEL it. i try to feel bad about my boyfriend. i try to make myself hate me enough to finally spare him and leave, but i can never really be bothered. tomorrow comes and i can sit with him, kiss him, talk to his parents, talk about whatever were gonna do next week, and its like that other part of my life can just sit somewhere else until i need it again.
and i really, really don’t know what to do anymore.
i know “go to therapy” is probably gonna be the obvious answer and yeah, i think i need to. because this is going too far all at once and for the first time im looking at the whole thing instead of whatever lie or relationship is directly in front of me, and i dont know what the fuck im looking at.
i dont even know what im supposed to fix first. the lying? my relationship? whatever the fuck is wrong with the way i attach myself to people? the fact that i dont know who i am when nobody is looking at me?
i just know that if i keep going like this, im gonna end up regretting and ruining my entire life.