I am new to this whole getting help thing. I have been trying to learn to actually accept the help rather than just letting it go into one ear and out the other. People and friends ask what happened to me and I just can't find the courage to say anything. Not because I am afraid I will be judged or belittled but because I don't want to deal with, so why should others?

I have been abused all my life. They call it Domestic Violence when it's your family that is the abusers. In my case my abuser was my mother. Mother, which in the dictionary is considered a female parent. Well, then you can look up the definition parent and see that is actually another term for protector or guardian. I never had one.

The bruises that I had to cover up were nothing but the same old thing; I would get in fights at school just to make excuses for them. I couldn't hide the emotional abuse. It was every day I had to hold down three jobs and barely be at the house, but when I did finally reach the house to take a one night break, I would be the one getting yelled at for not cleaning the bathroom or doing a grown woman and a grown man and his two children’s clothes.

How was I supposed to take care of four people? I worked as a caretaker and then in the evening depending on the day I was a barista or a sales associate then right back to being a caretaker…

Where did I fit in? I had no chance to hang out with friends I had no time to be a soccer ball to my mother, and I had no time for anything… Now I have all the time in the world and I feel like I am alone and confused and frustrated all at the same time. I don't know who I am, the true me.