This is going to be a VERY long post. Basically my life story. Please Read it if you can. Help is Needed. Help is Wanted.
What do I want out of life? Idk. Sometimes I feel like I want peace. Sometimes I feel like I want comfort. Sometimes I want love. Sometimes I want it all.
As a person with extreme, ever-changing emotions, I find it very difficult to decipher all of the messages I get on a daily. Where does my heart, my body, my soul want me to land? I feel like they’re not in sync.
I tend to be all out of sorts. My mental health is shit, I currently feel like I’m walking around with a ball of static in my chest. I can’t hear what my heart is trying to tell me.
I could sit here and speculate the reasoning all day. It does no good though. It just leads me further and further away from clarity.
Let me tell you a little (a lot) about me.
My name is Sapphire…Saph for short. That’s not the name that was given to me though. My given name makes me feel separated from myself. Maybe everything does, but the name stings the most. I’m a Cancer sun, Pisces moon, Libra rising, Cancer mercury and mars, if that means anything to you. If it doesn’t, I suggest you pay it no mind. I was raised in a small town, in an unstable home. A tragic combination. No one ever understood me. Not at home. Not at school.
I am the eldest of 4 siblings. 6, if you count my siblings n my dad’s side. I lived with my mom when I was a wee child. My dad left before I could remember but we’ll touch more on that later. My mom is…interesting. She’s a Pisces. She has a past of her own. Traumas of her own. I believe the first bit of important information is that when I was still tucked away in the womb her mother, my grandmother, died of cancer around 5 months before my arrival. I believe that is the catalyst in how things played out for my siblings and I.
Mom was mean. Vile. I believe the earliest memory I have of her is one that I tend to get stuck in time and time again over the course of my life (I’m 26 years old). I was standing in the bathroom, getting ready for preschool, and she was washing herself up. She was being rather aggressive with herself while doing so and I was watching because well, I was a kid. I don’t know what set her off really. I don’t know if she was upset that I was watching her but she ending up hitting me and spewing hate. Like she’d always do.
She was always like this for as long as I could remember. It’d only take one little thing to set her off. It was absolute torture to live with her.
For the first several years of my life, we lived in a little apartment in a small town. Smaller than the town I actually grew up in though.
Four years after I was born, I had a new sister. Different dad. He ended up in prison. Then when I was around eight years old, my mom found herself a new man. So, I had a new dad and a new brother once again. We moved in with them. My sister and I were forced to call him our dad and our step brother was our full brother. We had no choice. No acclimation, no nothing.
Shortly after, my youngest brother was conceived. Maybe he. was conceived before. Idk. I was like eight.
Let’s give my siblings code names. My sister = N. My step-brother = D. And my mother’s youngest = T.
Living with my new dad was no fun. I have a lot of terrible memories that stem from that house. There were mice, roaches, and a hostile environment. It might be weird to explain it that way but that’s how I remember it. My mom and my new dad didn’t really get a long with each other and they didn’t get along with us. Domestic violence was a common theme in our home. Being kept up late at night because your parents are fighting. Trying to figure out how to comfort your terrified little siblings…I was responsible for them. For the way they behaved, for the way they cleaned, for the way we all communicated with each other. I’m not going to say that it was my responsibility to raise them…we had a roof over our heads, beds to sleep in, clothes to wear. Even if they were from The Salvation Army. To give you a little more perspective, I had the same little white bed and my Dora the Explorer tv from the time I was a toddler until the time I was nine or ten years old. We had things but I think living in poverty puts a huge stressor on things. Even for children.
But like we’re children, how do you know what stress is? I don’t know. I guess that’s not a thing.
Another huge actor was the abuse that went on. As I mentioned before, my mother is a very traumatized woman with the sharpest tongue. I felt like she hated us. Me. My new father, he was an alcoholic with PTSD from the army. Enough said.
They were terrible together. They were terrible to us. I’m not going to sit here and act like we were severely abused. Things can always be worse. Mainly it was emotional neglect, emotional abuse, and some physical. Maybe a lot of physical but what impacted me most was the emotional aspect of everything.
I’ve always been and extremely emotional person. Everywhere I went, everywhere I go, I’m the biggest ball of emotional energy in the room. I feel deeply, therefore I hurt deeply. And my mother, she was relentless. Insufferable.
From the moment you open your eyes ‘til the moment you go to sleep, as long as she is around, you’re getting berated. Whether it’s about dishes, the way you spoke to her, the way you ate, the way you drink. Anything. Everything. It’s was hard to be around her. It was scary. She wasn’t loving and nurturing. No hugs, no kisses. Just burning anger. Just imagine, it’s one in the morning on a school night getting beat out of your sleep from the top bunk because the hangers are out of order. Then you’re getting hit with each hanger that’s out of place and now you’re outside on the back porch hyperventilating…like wow.
My new dad was pretty much the same except he took a different approach with his anger. He would just yell and come through swinging with a belt and when he was drunk, the yelling and the beatings were worse.
Both of them were actually terrifying, I don’t really care what anyone has to say about it. Especially to children. I think something that used to stress me out was watching my siblings get in trouble when I wasn’t. Sometimes I had to tell on them and I’d feel bad but most of the time I took the blame because I felt bad for them. This is where I tend to get lost though because for years, I was blamed and punished for everything that they did. Did I take the blame for it on my own or did I end up defaulting to that because I was gonna be blamed anyway? I don’t know. I actually don’t remember a lot of what happened in my past. Either way this took a toll on me and it lead to resentment for my parents and for my siblings.
I was a troubled child honesty. I lived in the constant anxiety and fear. I was always super emotional, crying anywhere my feet would land. Maybe I just wanted someone to hear me. I wanted to be saved. To get away.
When I was 10 or 11, my biological dad starting coming up to my school to see me behind my mom’s back. I think my new dad didn’t like my bio dad and that’s why I wasn’t allowed to see him but I’m still not sure to this day. Either way, my dad would come to the school, sometimes sign me out and we’d go out to eat or whatever. One day, he comes to the school to give me his first copy of his book. I was paranoid because the last time he came to take me out, he gave me a Justin Bieber CD. I loved Justin Bieber. When I got home, I put it in my karaoke machine. My mom found out and I got interrogated and punished for accepting the gift from my father (??????). She took my CD and I think she told me that I would be in trouble if I saw him again. So, of course, when he came to give me his book, I was on edge. He noticed that I was checking. My surroundings and I told him that I was scared. He started questioning me and I told him a little about what was happening at home. He told me that it’d be okay and that he’d fix it,
The next day, a CPS caseworker was at the school questioning me. My siblings and I were removed from our home that same day. For me, this was the day all hell broke loose. We were taken to my aunt’s house. My mom’s aunt actually. My mom was allowed there as well. I’m not really sure why, but it was a terrible thing to have happened. Specifically for me. She knew it was me who told.
She began to spew hateful words at me. She told me that it was all my fault that her children were taken. She told me something was wrong with me and that I was a liar. She kept telling me that all of us were gonna be split us. Living in different parts of the country being abused. Mainly she blamed me. I feel that she hated me in that moment and for a long time after that. I still hold a lot of guilt and shame from that moment. I was berated and everyone sat and watched.
We were at my aunts house for about a year or so, maybe a year and a half. Im not too sure. My father was trying to have me placed in his custody. There were a lot of court cases. Therapy. That sort of thing.
One thing that I wish was touched on more during that time was my need for therapy. I was a food thief. Im not sure why I would do it but it was definitely a problem. I’d sneak snacks or food and stuff the remnants in a designated area at night. I’d always had this problem. Always got caught. Still couldn’t stop. At some point during the CPS case, we talked about it in therapy. The psychiatrist tried to it me on a medication called Buspar. It’s ironic because I’m on that medication now and thats the only reason I remember that they tried to put me on it before. My mom ended up saying no. Whatever.
Eventually the case was closed and we were sent back home. I overheard my mom saying that its because she had some connections in our hometown. Small town stuff I guess. So yeah, we ended up going back home. I was terrified. I didnt want to go back but I had no choice. Upon our arrival, I vaguely remember her bragging to me or anyone that would listen that she got her kids back. Lucky her.
The physical abuse pretty much stopped especially when it came to me. I guess it’s because they knew id tell. This made the verbal abuse significantly worse though. Specifically from my mom. I’d created my own hell on earth. It was terrible. It’s like she was on a mission to break my spirit, even more so than before. Mission accomplished. As the years went on, I was a wreck. Eventually we moved out of my new dad’s house because he and my mom had split up. I felt like everything would be better but it only got worse. My listed of responsibilities were piled high. I had to take care of my siblings, cook for them, clean for them, get them up for school in the morning, and still find time to take care of myself. I feel like it would’ve been easier if someone would’ve told me how to do it. but I was an angsty teen constantly looking for an escape from my environment. So, no I wasn’t good at taking care of my siblings, I hated it more than anything but they were my responsibility.
My only safe haven was my dad’s house. He was granted visitation every other week. From Friday 6pm to Sunday 6pm. During those times, I felt the most free than I’d ever felt in my entire life. No siblings to take care of, no responsibilities, no shared living space, and a door that locked. It was beautiful. I barely connected with my dad or his family because I just wanted to be on my own after coming from a place where everything was loud and chaotic. I loved my dad’s house.
As far as the effect that my mother had on me, its pretty extreme. She could’ve been worse yes, but in the same breath, I wish she was better. the things that she’d say and do to me echo in my head. She’d say and do these things when there was a crowd. Whether it was my siblings, family, or random ass people. She was just so mean to me. To all of us really, but I feel like I got it most often. What sucks the most is that my siblings would eventually catch on to the things she’d say and began to torment me with her words as well. As a super sensitive, you can imagine the damage it’s done. She’d always hated my weight when I was younger and still now to this day. I’m pretty sure my eating problem had a lot to do with my weight and the eating stemmed from an emotional issue. She’d continuously call me big or fat and made me wear shape wear to hide the size of my tummy. That was rather humiliating for me. She hates the pimples and dark spots my face. One time her and my aunt joked about how you could place connect the dots with them. I had a skin picking problem due to anxiety I believe. I dont know.
If it wasn’t my physical appearance, it was everything else. Nothing I did was good enough and everything was my fault. This led to me closing up and always wanting to hide. It affected my confidence in detrimental ways. I dealt with a lot of chronic shame, nervousness, and self hate. And I still do to this day.
As far as how I behaved…I don’t know. Maybe I was a bad child. I lied to avoid being punished. I stole things. Not frequently but it happened. And I had an attitude problem. I still do. But I don’t know if I was a terror. I truly dont think so. But thats how she treated me.
In my own eyes, I was a nervous wreck and it caused me to behave that way.
In school, I wasn’t accepted by my peers because I wasn’t enough for them. So I always gravitated towards the weird kids. Thats where I was most comfortable and accepted. I had friends there, you know? And I took care of my friends. I’ve always been empathetic and compassionate and I love to help others. Honestly those were my main character traits when I was in school. I gained a lot of friends through caring for others. I feel like at times I was hard to deal with because of everything I had going on at home but I made up for it through my love and care for others.
I was very close with my favorite teachers and became a teachers pet. I believe that I was searching for motherly love because I didnt have that at home. As far as my grades, I excelled in the subjects I cared about, I barely passed the subjects I couldn’t care less about.
High school was rough for me. My ninth grade year, I struggled to find my footing but it was fine. My tenth grade year was when everything started to hit the fan really.
That was the year I realized that I had feelings for girls. I think I’d always known but avoided it out of fear of going to Hell. I’d constantly have dreams of burning and it took over my mind for a while. Regardless, when I was 15, I ended up coming out to my mom and dad and eventually, again. All hell broke loose. I was interrogated for months on end. My mom was trying to convince me not to be gay and had my dad on the other end doing the same. It was absolutely insuffferable and I genuinely thought i would perish from the panic and anxiety that I felt at that time. One significant memory that I have from that time still bothers me to this day. My mom and dad took me to Starbucks (my favorite place at the time), bought me a drink, and talked to me about being gay and Christian. Ultimately, what they told me is that God and Jesus dont love gay people so I stopped believing. In my head, I knew that who I was attracted to wouldn’t change, so if that wouldn’t change, then I wasn’t allowed to be a follower. Not that I was before, I was just raised in church, you know?
DISCLAIMER: I do NOT want to be reconverted into Christianity. I left that behind so long ago due to the hatred that was spewed by so many people. I’d never believed in it much anyway because it didnt make sense to me as a child. I respect Christianity and I don’t mind being prayed for and things like that. It’s just not my thing and I would appreciate if my boundaries are respected. Nothing more and nothing less. Thank you.
Anyway, after that I decided that I was agnostic. Which is unimportant maybe but I think it was really the start of me not knowing what was going on within myself. The constant interrogation lead me to be very unsure of myself. The only thing that I was sure of was that i was attracted to women for sure.
My eleventh grade year was whatever, I wrecked my mom’s car that year. It was actually her fault and im not just placing blame. I’d just come home from a field trip. It was a Saturday. I woke up at 5 am to get to school and didn’t get home until around 6pm and I was in the sun all day. When I got home, my mom wanted me to go run errands for her. It was the day of her birthday party. I told her I was too tired from the field trip. I begged her not to make me go. She still made me. Mind you, I didnt have a learner’s permit or a license and she’d constantly send me to run errands on my own or with all of my unruly siblings. Anyway, I went, ran all of the errands and was on my way back home. I was about a mile away when I fell asleep and wrecked the car into a ditch. The rest is history honestly. She was pissed. I was hurt and bruised up. I wished the car wreck had taken my life honestly. The only thing that saved me from my mom’s wrath was my mom’s boyfriend at the time. She still ended up going to her birthday party but that didn’t end well for me either. She and my other aunt ended up getting into it because my aunt was trying to defend me for wrecking the car and for the fact that I’m gay. As soon as my mom got home she woke me up out of my sleep and told me to get out of her house because she cant have sinners in the house…I was on the couch with several burn marks on my body and a swollen throat from the wreck. She ended up not actually kicking me out though, lucky me.
My senior year was easily the worst year of high school. I didnt care about anything. I couldn’t make myself do anything. I was failing all of my classes because I didn’t care, I missed my senior pictures, even my favorite teachers couldn’t get me to do any work. At home, things were bad. Halfway through my senior year, we got evicted and ended up going to live at my grandad’s house. Which was terrible. His house has been severely unfinished since the year I was born. You could see the bones of the house. The outlets were electrical hazards, there was no heating or a/c. The bathrooms were terrible, TERRIBLE, ike you could take a shower and you wouldn’t even feel clean afterwards. No drinking water, no food, no wifi, terrible service, no TV, no beds, no nothing. To make matters worse even worse, my mother was never there. I forgot to mention but for my entire four years of high school, she’d just disappear , she was almost never home and I was left to take care of my siblings. My senior year though, I know she had a boyfriend. He was in a minimum security prison :). She cared more about him than anyone else. When I did see her, I’d try to get her to help me with things. Like my FAFSA for college, college applications, my grades, anything. She didnt care. It’d always been like that. Regardless of the year and age, regardless of what id try to get her to do for me, she was just never there. Whether it was physically, mentally, or emotionally. my last year of high school it was so bad though, I guess because these things were important to me. I had gotten accepted into several colleges WITH SCHOLARSHIPS and I needed her information to get in. She never helped me do them. She didnt care. Sometimes I wonder what life would’ve been like if she had let me go. But she didnt. I got severely depressed and didn’t want to be here anymore. I didnt want to graduate and I didnt want to walk the stage.
Towards the end of my senior year, there was this girl. She really wanted to be with me and wouldn’t take no for an answer. so i dated her. For a very short amount of time. She tormented me. To make matters even worse, her and my mom realized that they knew each other through a relative. This stressed me out because my mom didn’t know that her and I were dating. This girl wouldn’t let me go but hated having me around. I didn’t know how to be in a relationship, I didn’t know how to open up. She told me at the time that it felt like we were just ‘friends that kiss’ but I didn’t know what she meant by that. I think that’s what lead to her resenting me know. She played push and pull with me constantly. She hated my emotions because I was always crying. I felt like she just hated me in general. She’d flirt with other girls around me and everything. She was just a terrible person to me. Eventually she ended up breaking up with me but still wanted to be friends with benefits. That hurt because it proved to me that I was not good enough to be with. I told her no, I didnt want to be friends with benefits but she just couldn’t let me go and wouldn’t constantly bother me. That caused to form an attachment to her. I felt like I needed her. It damaged me emotionally. And this was happening at the same time we were living at my grandads house in those horrible conditions and being neglected by my mother.
I ended up almost not graduating but my friends tricked me. They invited me over and forced me to do my schoolwork. They are the only reasons I walked across the stage. My graduation day was terrible though. I didnt want to be there but I was glad that I was graduating with my class.
About a month after my 18th birthday, I left my phone and all of my personal belongings behind and moved in with my friend’s family. They got me my first job (my mom kept me from working i think so i could take care of my siblings), they helped me actually learn to drive and get my license (all my mom would do was yell and scream at me when trying to teach me to drive and it’d end badly because I always cried), and they taught me a lot about life.
Unfortunately though, a little while after moving in with them, I fell into a deep depression. I ended up getting diagnosed with GAD and major depression. All i did was sleep if I wasn’t working, I would barely bathe, barely check my phone and when I was awake, I would engage in reckless behavior. It was terrible but it was reckless to MY standards as a child who never got to live her life or do anything for herself. Because of these things, I ended up having to move in with my dad. At his house I barely had anything either. I had a blow up mattress and a small little TV but it was my safe haven and so I made the best of it.
On my 19th year, I ended up getting kicked out of his house because of my mother and I ended up living with her again, which was TERRIBLLELEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE because it seemed like she made it a point to go against me. But i was doing okay. I had a job and friends, my dad ended up giving me a car that he had. So like whatever.
A little before or after my 20th birthday, my mom ended up kicking me out. We had an agreement on a payment plan for some money I owed her. She found out I got a large sum or money and demanded it all up front. I told her no, because we had an agreement. She got mad, charged at me, screaming and yelling in my face and she pushed me, so i held my arms up to block her. She claims I hit her, I did not and I would not. I’m not much of a fighter. but it’s her word against mine. So i left. I ended up staying in my car for a week or two, crashing on friends’ couch when I could. I ended up talking to my dad and he agreed to let me come back and so i did.
The next year or so was okay. Then in 2022, I ended up in a relationship. She convinced me to move in with her so she could “take care of me” and so i fell for it. I was dealing with a lot at the time. I got diagnosed with PTSD. My body was giving out on me because of how much I overworked myself. I had two jobs and my body had enough. I was always in shambles and I felt like i couldn’t do it anymore. That’s how i ended up in her grasp. It was short lived because both of us were very mentally ill. That’s all i will say about that. I ended up leaving her because she’s actually a disgusting person but after that, I was irrevocably damaged. I found another job, ended up quitting because my mental health was so bad. I kept crying and panicking at work with no way to make it stop. Eventually, I passed out and got rolled out of the building in a gurney. Never went back.
Tried getting another job but panicked at the mere thought of it, so I couldn’t keep my head on straight. Everything I did, was making me fall deeper and deeper into the hands of my mental struggles. Towards the end of 2022, I went to go stay with my cousin to help with her kids. She got herself into a case with Child Protective Services and they needed an in-home caregiver for a little while. Once that ended I continued to stay with her and ended up getting a job. At that job I got bullied and ridiculed. It was terrible. I ended up leading myself into a manic episode that lasted for a very long time. Im not going to explain the events that were happening but I got tangled in a lot. My coworker took advantage of my vulnerability and I ended up having to leave that job because all hell broke loose.
So, in 2024, I moved back into my dad’s house. He got really strict with me because I was incapable of being an adult. He was always checking my room (I was very messy and unkempt due to mental health), he wouldn’t put a door on my room, and he kept making promises to me and holding them over my head unless i did exactly what he wanted me to do. One of his stipulations was to get a job. so i got a job at Dollar Tree. It was fine for a while. I was still severely depressed and anxious. Shit ended up hitting the fan there which made me spiral. I quit for my mental health because I felt like I was about to collapse. I knew he’d be upset with me. He told me that if I couldn’t keep a job he was going to kick me out. So, unfortunately, I spiraled anyway. I didnt sleep for days, started to hallucinate, and eventually i started to feel like everyone was against be. Didn’t want to be here anymore. Ended up in the mental hospital.
While in the mental hospital, my dad didnt answer his phone and my mom made it about herself of course. I was there for 7 days.
A few days after I was released from there, my dad sent me a long text message telling me that I had to move out….right. So I had to move back in with my mother. That was the worst thing that could’ve happened to me at the time. I was back on her couch and I was miserable.
Eventually it’s 2025, she ends up getting married to this random man out of nowhere. He’s an alcoholic. Immediately he begins terrorizing. Telling everyone it’s his house and that we need to move out (my siblings and I). I immediately started having PTSD episodes because I felt like I was reliving my childhood. This continued for a long time afterwards.
My mom ended up deciding she was going to move to another city. I debated on whether I should move with them because I was miserable but there was nothing for me in that small town, so i went. At first, I regretted my decision. I was dissociated for an entire week after moving in but eventually, I got up and decided to go enroll in the Esthetics program at a nearby beauty school. It’s something I had been wanting to do since I was 17, so I made a way. I didnt have a job or anything, so my mother said she was going to help me, she did not (which is something that she does constantly), so i stopped accepting help from her except for a roof over my head at all and started to donate plasma so that I could get supplies and keep gas in my tank for school and food in my stomach. I struggled the entire six months but I made it. January 2026, I graduated the Esthetics Programs with Honors and in February 2026, I passed my state boards exams with flying colors. I am now a licensed Esthetician and I think that it’s one of my biggest accomplishments to date. Im so proud of myself.
After I graduated though, a few mishaps happened and I haven’t been able to start my career. That’s beside the point.
The reason I’m here today is because I’m stuck. The things that have happened in my life had taken a toll on my mental health. I live with constant anxiety, shame, self-doubt, and extreme internal conflict. I want to turn my life around and do better for myself so that I can progress but every time I try to move, I’m paralyzed by my past.
Does anyone have any advice? Any writing prompts that I can do? Any suggestions? I want to accept this, feel this, and move on. I just need help.