Same. I'm 35 and I recently started my healing journey... kind of in October, but mostly late January. By the way if any of this resonates and you want to talk, feel free to message me.
My story, like many, is generational trauma. My Mom had me with my bio Dad when she was 16, and he didn't even identify himself as my father for my birth certificate... though he did pay child support. My Mom ended up with my Stepdad who adopted me when I was 14. All of them had tons of physical and emotional trauma inflicted on them as kids.
I knew my childhood wasn't great. I wasn't in complete denial. However, I thought that because I wasn't physically abused generally (my Mom smacked across the face two times growing up), they did a much better job than their parents did. But the truth is that they were emotionally violent with me and abused me constantly. I now realize that it wasn't any better even though I didn't get physically abused much... it was always under the surface and the emotional abuse was horrible.
Essentially, I have been gaslighting myself my whole life on how bad it really was. Now, I am with an amazing therapist and we're working on me just... sitting with the trauma. Some days I can barely function- I had one day where I literally was supposed to be working but could not get out of bed all day. Most days I can function some. Some days a lot- I try to maximize those days. But for me, the only way to really heal is to face all of the trauma and the feelings head on and just... sit with them. It's hard, but I'm getting through it. I'm also trying to actually see my trauma responses for what they are and train myself to have different ones.
Currently, I'm reparenting myself. Literally treating myself like I would a small child. For instance, I am having groceries delivered because 5 year old me can't face walking in a store. So I told her to pick out a treat. She wanted me to bake her a cake... so tonight I'm baking a god damned cake with fucking sprinkles and fluffy vanilla icing and it was so expensive to buy everything for it but fuck. She wants a cake and she's sad so I'm getting her a cake!
Some examples that I thought weren't awful and now realize are: At 7 years old when I would get in trouble, I would have to sit on my bed for anywhere from 1-3 hours. I had to sit in the very middle, perfectly still, and I could not lie down or even sway from side to side. I had to look as if I knew I was in trouble and I was contemplating what I had done. At around 10, they switched to having me write sentences. The minimum was 200, but by the time I was 12 or so, it was regularly 600+. Once, she had me write 1000 sentences.
(TW: SI) They read through all of my diaries at 14 and found out I was suicidal. My Mom mockingly asked "Do you need a councilor or something? You're just acting out for attention." And then grounded me for something else, but we both knew she was grounding me for that. It was a week of sitting on my bed with nothing but the bible for company.
When I was almost 15, my Mom found out I had been cursing at school. So she accused me of tons of other things- taking my bra off and tucking in my shirt so boys could see my breasts, watching things I wasn't supposed to... but the weirdest one was that she claimed she was giving me extra money on my lunch checks for school lunches to buy snack cakes with. She asked me what I was doing with it. I said I didn't even know about it. She said that she checked with the school and it was being spent. And then asked if I was trading snack cakes for drugs. Literally. I thought she was crazy, who trades weed for a cupcake you know? But that's not the craziest part. She was lying. She wasn't giving me extra money. However, she didn't want me to catch her out, so she started giving me extra money on my lunch checks.
She couldn't tell me she lied about all the things she accused me of, so she got me in trouble for all of it. She made me call my long distance boyfriend and break with him and tell him it was my idea and then grounded me to my bed with the bible for a month. I got "privileges" back slowly (apparently doing anything but sitting on my bed was somehow a privilege) over the next three months. I was grounded for four months total, mostly over things she accused me of but knew I probably didn't do. She told me this as an adult and assured me that lying to kids is a powerful tool for parents to catch kids... telling lies.
And though there are many more, this gem. Because of the above, when we had porkchops one night, I said sarcastically, "I'm surprised you trust me with a knife." She came over and very calmly took the knife and cut up my pork chop. And then backhanded me across the mouth as hard as she could. I told her later I was going to call CPS and go to a foster family. She said, "Go head, see how that works out for you. The families are horrible people who will abuse you." The next day I get home from school, and there's a "Goodbye" banner, some cupcakes, and my aunt is over. My Mom informs me she called CPS and told them I wanted a foster family, so someone is going to come pick me up. This family is very into discipline and I will be miserable and never get to come home. Of course, I started sobbing and begged her to call them off. So she pretended to. As an adult, I talked to her about this and her answer was, "I don't remember doing that, but it's something I would have done. Anything to get you not to run away because I was terrified of you and your brother running away and getting picked up by a stranger."
So that's my story... I'm realizing now my childhood was just one traumatic event after another and my parents abused me horribly. It's still sinking in emotionally, but it's the truth.