Where should I even begin? I guess at the beginning?

I had a really traumatic childhood at the hand of others, which didn’t include my family. I had an abusive person in my life who I thought was a "friend" from when I was about 6 to the age of 18, when I realized I needed to escape her tight grasp on me. I grew up knowing only that, having few friends, and thinking that was what a friend was supposed to be.

She was mainly emotional abusive, which was bad enough in it’s own right considering how much she would destroy me with her words. Once in a while it would get physical. She was also very abusive to the animals she had. I wish that I could have done something about all this earlier, but I was in shock and so  traumatized and didn’t know where to turn. No one told me that friends could be abusive to you, I was always taught it was about family or significant others. To others it might seem easy as just not being her friend, but I had no one else, and she would blackmail me if I ever stopped talking to her or didn’t bend to her will. Going to highschool and meeting new people was the best thing that happened to me because I was able to see that not everyone was like that, and I slowly distanced myself from her. It was the best thing that I have ever done for myself.

Other issues I had growing up were at the hand of other men in my life. When I was 9, that was the first time I had been sexually assaulted. It happened many times and with different people up until I was about 20, that was the last time that it happened to me.

My father is also a figure in my life who has let me down many times. He suffers from mental illness as well. His main problem is his bipolar disorder. I try to empathize with him, but I just can`t seem to forgive him for the things he has done. When I was a baby, he left my unattended on the changing table, where I accidentally injested baby powder and began throwing up blood. He once threatened my moms and our lives, he told her one night while they were sleeping that he would kill us if she had moved an inch. My mom layed completely still that night. My mom had to raise us 3 kids, plus an older kid, my father. He didn`t work, he didn`t do anything, and my mother had to take care of him. She finally divorced him when I was about 3. He went to a mental institution, was released to a halfway house and now lives by himself. Since then he hasn’t been to much of a father to me. I actually look to him as something that I don’t want to turn out as. He heavily smokes even though he recently got cancer, he gambes to the point which he had to declare bankruptcy twice. I often blame him for giving me the predisposition for my mental illnesses.

I’m getting kind of ADD right now, I think I’m going to call it an entry ath this point. I’ll make another entry later that actually has to do with my OCD/anxiety/etc/etc/etc.

peace, love & candy.