Forewarning: This is my story, and I don't expect many to read it. I've only told one person some of this, but I guess this is an opportunity to tell a few more.
Well, I grew up with an alcoholic mom. My dad split when I was 2 or 3. My mom and I were kinda homeless for a few years, until she met a guy who she fell in love with. We ended up moving in with him. He had a nice little place, with 5 acres or so of land. He was divorced, and had a few boys but they were all a bit older than me.
The youngest is 5 years older than me. So when I was 7, he was about 12. He was sort of warped. Something wrong with his head. He started sexually abusing me before my mom and I had been there for even a year. Now, add this to a kid who already has weird issues because his childhood has already been fucked up and his mom is crazy.
As you can imagine, I withdrew. Depression, anxiety, nightmares. I acted out a lot in school. Learned about drugs in 3rd grade from kids I knew who had junkie parents.
The abuse went on for years. The kid didn't live with his dad, he stayed with his mom, but came over every weekend. Most nights when he'd come in my room I would just pretend to be asleep until everything was over.
Eventually I became a very, very light sleeper (and still am, at 18) so I started putting a cup or toy in front of the door at night. This was when I was around 9 or so. When he'd open my door, the cup would fall over and wake me up. It didn't really do much but it at least gave me a little bit of warning.
So, that went on until I was about 13 or so, happened once or twice past that but I grew the balls to tell him to fuck off eventually.
All my life there I lived in the same bedroom, with the same bed. Memories just seemed to seep through the walls all the time, and I started to fucking despise my mom for never being able to see the signs. Cutting myself in middle school, sleeping only a few hours a night then passing out in school and failing classes, then turning to drugs when the school saw my scars and told my mom.
After that I emotionally stabilized a little bit, but my drug use kind of spiraled. Never anything serious for all of high school, mostly weed and psychedelics because they helped light up the world from the constant darkness I was in. High school was a little weird, I never really fit in because previously I had gone to a private Christian school but I got expelled for talking shit about religion and a few other more serious offenses (nothing actually bad though). Plus, I was awkward as fuck because I had been a hermit all my life, so socializing was hard for me. Once I met some other users and punks it got a little easier because they had been through shit too, so we could all relate, even though we never really talked about our pasts. We didn't have to.
I did have this one girlfriend in high school though, fell head over heels for her. Helped me a lot, things just really seemed to make sense for a while. I was pretty happy. I told her about all the shit that happened to me, and she helped me not feel so negative. I felt passionate, about school, music, books, my future. That ended after two years, as all things do, and I just kind of went numb. Devoid of passion, negative or positive. Stupid of me, I know, but I was just a kid (still am I guess) and really didn't know how to handle losing my best friend and first love.
I ended up coming into contact with my dad again, towards the end of high school. He invited me to visit him in the state he lived in. I left a few days later, had my friend take me to the airport. I texted my mom once I had been there for a day or two, and told her I was there and loved it and was gonna stay.
I was there for almost a year. Ended up being unhappy. My dad's way of life collided with my own too much. I grew up poor, humble, in a rural farm town, with a type of freedom a lot of people don't know. He was at the high-end of the middle class in an annoyingly wealthy area, which just made me angry at him for some reason.
I ended up leaving again. Back to where I started. When I got back to my home-state, I decided to never live with my mom again. I started living in a trailer in a very tiny, rural town about 30 mins from where my mom and little siblings lived, and doors started opening. I inherited a business (which is good, because I failed out of high school) and life got better.
Right now, I'm on something of an... extended vacation (9 months so far) but I'm trying to scrape together the money to end it so I can get back to the life I was building back home.
It felt good to say all of this. Maybe I should get some counseling when I get back home. And stop doing drugs. Anyways... if you read all of this, thanks. You now know more about me than most people I've known for years.